The latter gentleman met us at the foot of the staircase.

“Oh, there you are, Daniel!” said he, cheerily.  “I was just going to look after you and Uncle Teddy.  We’ve wanted you for the dances.  We’ve had the Lancers twice and three round dances; and I danced the second Lancers with Lottie.  Now we’re going to play some games,—­to amuse the children, you know,” he added, loftily, with the adult gesture of pointing his thumb over his shoulder at the extension-room.  “Lottie’s going to play, too; so will you and Daniel, won’t you, uncle?  Oh, here comes Lottie now!  This is my brother, Miss Pilgrim,—­let me introduce him to you.  I’m sure you’ll like him.  There’s nothing he don’t know.”

Miss Pilgrim had just come to the newel-post of the staircase, and, when she looked into Daniel’s face, blushed like the red, red rose, losing her self-possession perceptibly more than Daniel.

The courage of weak warriors and timid gallants mounts as the opposite party’s falls, and Daniel made out to say, in a firm tone, that it was long since he had enjoyed the pleasure of meeting Miss Pilgrim.

“Not since Mrs. Cramcroud’s last sociable, I think,” replied Miss Pilgrim, her cheeks and eyes still playing the tell-tale.

“Oho! so you don’t want any introduction!” exclaimed Master Billy.  “I didn’t know you knew each other, Lottie?”

“I have met Mr. Lovegrove in society.  Shall we go and join the plays?”

“To be sure we shall!” cried Billy.  “You needn’t mind,—­all the grown people are going too.”

On entering the parlor we found it as he had said.  The guests being almost all well acquainted with each other, at the solicitation of jolly little Mrs. Bloomingal, sister Lu had consented to make a pleasant Christmas kind of time of it, in which everybody was permitted to be young again, and romp with the rompiest.  We played Blindman’s-buff till we were tired of that,—­Daniel, to Lu’s great delight, coming out splendidly as Blindman, and evincing such “cheek” in the style he hunted down and caught the ladies, as satisfied me that nothing but his eyesight stood in the way of his making an audacious figure in the world.  Then a pretty little girl, Tilly Turtelle, who seemed quite a premature flirt, proposed “Door-keeper,”—­a suggestion accepted with great eclat by all the children, several grown people assenting.

To Billy—­quite as much on account of his shining prominence in the executive faculties as of his character as host—­was committed the duty of counting out the first person to be sent into the hall.  There were so many of us that “Aina-maina-mona-mike” would not go quite round; but, with that promptness of expedience which belongs to genius, Billy instantly added on, “Intery-mintery-cutery-corn,” and the last word of the cabalistic formula fell upon me—­Edward Balbus.  I disappeared into the entry amidst peals of happy laughter from both old and young, calling, when the door opened again