"How d'ye do, grandpapa?" shouted the
children eagerly and simultaneously, but, in
spite of the deep anxiety about grandpapa's
health, their eyes were fixed, not on his
face, but on the large parcel. We do not
believe that Matilda, Augustus, and Arthur
were abnormally heartless, but we are
convinced that if grandpapa had owned to the
last stage of a consumption, his avowal
would have produced less grief than a
discovery that the brown paper parcel contained
nothing but grocery.

Grandpapa saluted the three darlings in
terms as ardent as they were inappropriate.
Matilda, who wore the cleanest of pinafores,
and whose ringlets were in the most
unexceptionable order, he accosted as, "You little
slut!" Augustus, who was sheepishness
personified, he addressed as "You young rascal!"
while, "Well, my hero!" was the proud
exclamation with which he greeted Arthur, the
puniest and most fretful urchin that ever
destroyed the comfort of a nursery.

"I suppose you know what to-day is,"
said the cheerful old man. Two did know.
Matilda was aware that the day was Friday;
Augustus was of opinion that the day was
cold. The youthful Arthur kept his finger
in his mouth, and his views to himself.

"Then," said the good old man, drawing a
very unaccountable inference, "then, I have
brought you a New Year's Gift."

The brown paper parcel was put upon the
ground, at the end of this brief declaration,
and the children were commanded by the
parents to kiss grandpapa, an order which
was obeyed eagerly by Matilda, less
enthusiastically by Augustus, and not at all by
Arthur, who still held his finger in his mouth.
We refrained from alluding to the parents
before, because they were not necessary to
our picture; but they were in the room,
nevertheless.

The New Year's Gift, when released from
its brown-paper surtout, and an undercoat in
the shape of a large chip-box, proved to be a
thing of surpassing magnificence. It was
no less than a complete representation in
miniature of a Spanish bull-fight. There
were picadores with spears, and matadores
with daggers, most exquisitely costumed.
There were bulls in every possible condition,
from the most rampant life to the consummation
of death. There were galleries, that
could be put up and taken down again at the
pleasure of the owner, and a mob of
well-dressed ladies and gentlemen created to
occupy them in the capacity of spectators.
When the little figures had all been taken
out of the box and grandpapa, following the
instructions he had received from the toyman,
had set up each in its proper place, the
effect was indeed imposing. The parents,
loud in their applause, again commanded the
children to kiss grandpapa. The humble
companion was still more energetic in exclamations
of delight, while the children themselves
stood in blank amazement at the thought
that they were joint owners of so vast a
treasure. To be sure, the spear of one of the
picadores was broken in two; but, then,
that frail weapon might be regarded as a
sort of ring of Polycrates sacrificed to prevent
the ill consequences of an unmitigated
felicity.

Days rolled on—days, which to children
are years, with dinner-time for summer and
bedtime for winter—and the glory of the
Spanish bull-fight had become a little dashed.
The process of setting up the pieces in order
had, after a while, grown wearisome, and the
joint proprietors began to turn them to new
uses. With two or three spelling-books, a
Guy's Geography, a Walker's Dictionary,
and a Tutor's Assistant, a butcher's shop
was constructed, in front of which grandpapa's
bulls were suspended by the heels, as
vendible carcases, while the chief matador
and the Queen of Spain officiated as the
butcher and his wife. Occasionally the
unstable structure would fall down, and great
was the detriment caused by the comparatively
heavy volumes to the frail limbs of
the bipeds and quadrupeds that they had
treacherously sheltered. We incline to
believe that something like the old Castilian
vindictiveness dwelt within the body of those
small wooden Spaniards, and that on this
account Master Arthur was wounded by a
broken spear point, which entered the tip of
his finger, and there remained in the form of
a splinter. Sublimely disagreeable did Arthur
(never very engaging) become on the strength
of that memorable misfortune. The pain
caused by the presence of the splinter made
him moan with tedious misery throughout a
whole afternoon; but the slightest attempt
to remove it, with the point of a needle,
roused shrieks of terror that rendered
surgical aid impossible.

Again days rolled on, and grandpapa's
bull-fight had undergone still more serious
misfortunes. A sudden fit of cleanliness that
had impelled the children to wash every
individual bull, toreador, and spectator with
soap-and-water had, alike deprived the
raiment of the men and the skin of the beasts of
their pristine brilliancy. Heads, arms, and
legs had been demolished by careless footsteps,
and the fall of the box, with the whole
of its contents, from the front balcony to the
area, can only be compared to the earthquake
at Lisbon. As for the inexplicable losses that
occurred and perpetually thinned the Spanish
ranks, they surpass our powers of enumeration.

However, in spite of fractures, in spite of
diminished numbers, the bull-fight still
maintained its corporate existence, till one
unlucky day, when the three children,
embarrassed by their joint ownership engaged in
a violent war, and then concluded a still more
destructive treaty of partition, by virtue of
which the figures were divided into three
portions, each assigned to a separate owner.