“Hi-hi!  What is the matter?  Have you seen a ghost?”

We couldn’t speak, but there was no occasion; he was willing to talk for us all, for he had just seen Satan and was in high spirits about it.  Satan had told him about our trip to China, and he had begged Satan to take him a journey, and Satan had promised.  It was to be a far journey, and wonderful and beautiful; and Nikolaus had begged him to take us, too, but he said no, he would take us some day, maybe, but not now.  Satan would come for him on the 13th, and Nikolaus was already counting the hours, he was so impatient.

That was the fatal day.  We were already counting the hours, too.

We wandered many a mile, always following paths which had been our favorites from the days when we were little, and always we talked about the old times.  All the blitheness was with Nikolaus; we others could not shake off our depression.  Our tone toward Nikolaus was so strangely gentle and tender and yearning that he noticed it, and was pleased; and we were constantly doing him deferential little offices of courtesy, and saying, “Wait, let me do that for you,” and that pleased him, too.  I gave him seven fish-hooks—­all I had—­and made him take them; and Seppi gave him his new knife and a humming-top painted red and yellow —­atonements for swindles practised upon him formerly, as I learned later, and probably no longer remembered by Nikolaus now.  These things touched him, and he could not have believed that we loved him so; and his pride in it and gratefulness for it cut us to the heart, we were so undeserving of them.  When we parted at last, he was radiant, and said he had never had such a happy day.

As we walked along homeward, Seppi said, “We always prized him, but never so much as now, when we are going to lose him.”

Next day and every day we spent all of our spare time with Nikolaus; and also added to it time which we (and he) stole from work and other duties, and this cost the three of us some sharp scoldings, and some threats of punishment.  Every morning two of us woke with a start and a shudder, saying, as the days flew along, “Only ten days left;” “only nine days left;” “only eight;” “only seven.”  Always it was narrowing.  Always Nikolaus was gay and happy, and always puzzled because we were not.  He wore his invention to the bone trying to invent ways to cheer us up, but it was only a hollow success; he could see that our jollity had no heart in it, and that the laughs we broke into came up against some obstruction or other and suffered damage and decayed into a sigh.  He tried to find out what the matter was, so that he could help us out of our trouble or make it lighter by sharing it with us; so we had to tell many lies to deceive him and appease him.