s that is the least one can
say for a fellow-creature who shows a great deal of bare skull, and is
not otherwise good-looking.)

"He is clever," she answered, "wonderfully clever; so clever and so odd
that sometimes I fancy he is hardly 'canny.' There is something almost
supernatural about his acuteness and his ingenuity, but they are so
kindly used; I wonder he has not brought out any playthings for us
to-night."

"Playthings?" inquired the young man.

"Yes; on birthdays or festivals like this he generally brings something
out of those huge pockets of his. He has been all over the world, and
he produces Indian puzzles, Japanese flower-buds that bloom in hot
water, and German toys with complicated machinery, which I suspect him
of manufacturing himself. I call him Godpapa Grosselmayer, after that
delightful old fellow in Hoffman's tale of the Nut Cracker."

"What's that about crackers?" inquired the tutor, sharply, his eyes
changing colour like a fire opal.

"I am talking of _Nussnacker und Mausekoenig_," laughed the young lady.
"Crackers do not belong to Christmas; fireworks come on the 5th of
November."

"Tut, tut!" said the tutor; "I always tell your ladyship that you are
still a tom-boy at heart, as when I first came, and you climbed trees
and pelted myself and my young students with horse-chestnuts. You think
of crackers to explode at the heels of timorous old gentlemen in a
November fog; but I mean bonbon crackers, coloured crackers, dainty
crackers--crackers for young people with mottoes of sentiment" (here
the tutor shrugged his high shoulders an inch or two higher, and
turned the palms of his hands outwards with a glance indescribably
comical)--"crackers with paper prodigies, crackers with
sweetmeats--_such_ sweetmeats!" He smacked his lips with a grotesque
contortion, and looked at Master McGreedy, who choked himself with
his last raisin, and forthwith burst into tears.

The widow tried in vain to soothe him with caresses, but he only
stamped and howled the more. But Miss Letitia gave him some smart
smacks on the shoulders to cure his choking fit, and as she kept up the
treatment with vigour, the young gentleman was obliged to stop and
assure her that the raisin had "gone the right way" at last. "If he
were my child," Miss Letitia had been known to observe, with that
confidence which characterizes the theories of those who are not
parents, "I would, &c., &c., &c.;" in fact, Miss Letitia thought she
w