ys been told to put your slippers on and not to keep
the bath waiting, when there's Miss Helen and Miss Mary, as you very
well know, and breakfast coming in five minutes, which there's sausages
this morning, because it's your birthday, and them all getting cold--"

"Sausages!"

He was across the floor in a moment, had thrown off his nightshirt and
was in his bath. Sausages! He was translated into a world of excitement
and splendour. They had sausages so seldom, not always even on
birthdays, and to-day, on a cold morning, with a crackling fire and
marmalade, perhaps--and then all the presents.

Oh, he was happy. As he rubbed his back with the towel a wonderful
glowing Christian charity spread from his head to his toes and tingled
through every inch of him. Helen should sit in the chair when she
pleased; Mary should be allowed to dress and undress the large woollen
dog, known as "Sulks," his own especial and beloved property, so often
as she wished; Jampot should poke the twisted end of the towel in his
ears and brush his hair with the hard brushes, and he would not say a
word. Aunt Mary should kiss him (as, of course, she would want to do),
and he would not shiver; he would (bravest deed of all) allow Mary to
read "Alice in Wonderland" in her sing-sing voice so long as ever she
wanted... Sausages! Sausages!

In his shirt and his short blue trousers, his hair on end, tugging at
his braces, he stood in the doorway and shouted:

"Helen, there are sausages--because it's my birthday. Aren't you glad?"

And even when the only response to his joyous invitation was Helen's
voice crossly admonishing the Jampot: "Oh, you do pull so; you're
hurting!"--his charity was not checked.

Then when he stood clothed and of a cheerful mind once more in front of
the fire a shyness stole over him. He knew that the moment for Presents
was approaching; he knew that very shortly he would have to kiss and be
kissed by a multitude of persons, that he would have to say again and
again, "Oh, thank you, thank you so much!" that he would have his usual
consciousness of his inability to thank anybody at all in the way that
they expected to be thanked. Helen and Mary never worried about such
things. They delighted in kissing and hugging and multitudes of words.
If only he might have had his presents by himself and then stolen out
and said "Thank you" to the lot of them and have done with it.

He watched the breakfast-table with increasing satisfa