The Imp's Christmas Dinner
"What'll I say?" he whispered back, and as the book-keeper answered that he need only tell them something about the tree, and as he had not had time to be really frightened, the Imp actually lifted up his voice and made his speech.
"It's for the little girls that run around with the baskets—it's a s'prise. I had a tree, too, but not so big! I—I—Oh! I'm to take 'em to 'em myself! Stop! Stop!"
For he had seen one of the waiters pull a small box from a low branch and hand it to a little girl dancing with impatience beside him. And so they got no more speeches from the Imp. But they had all seen him, which was the main thing, and they cheered him wildly as he scrambled from the table and dashed toward the tree, to wait upon the little cash-girls.
He gave his mother a graphic description of the whole affair as he lay, red with the excitement of it all, in his white little bed that night
"There were millions millions of 'em!" he said placidly, "millions of thousands! All eating their dinner! They said, 'Hurrah for George Scott! Hip, hip, hurrah!'"
"Lie down, Perry dear"
122
