The following morning brought with it the opening of the box where the family presents were; but Ethelyn did not feel as much interest in them now as when they were purchased. She knew how out of place they were, and fully appreciated the puzzled expression on James' face when he saw the blue velvet smoking cap. It did not harmonize with the common clay pipe he always smoked on Sunday, and much less with the coarse cob thing she saw him take from the kitchen mantel that morning just after he left the breakfast table and had donned the blue frock he wore upon the farm. He did not know what the fanciful-tasseled thing was for; but he reflected that Melinda, who had been to boarding school, could enlighten him, and he thanked his pretty sister with a good deal of gentlemanly grace. He was naturally more observing than Richard, and with the same advantages would have polished sooner. Though a little afraid of Ethelyn, there was something in her refined, cultivated manners very pleasing to him, and his soft eyes looked down upon her kindly as he took the cap and carried it to his room, laying it carefully away in the drawer where his Sunday shirts, and collars, and "dancing pumps," and fishing tackle, and paper of chewing tobacco were.
Meanwhile, John, who was even more shy of Ethelyn than James, had been made the recipient of the elegantly embroidered slippers, which presented so marked a contrast to his heavy cowhides, and were three sizes too small for his mammoth feet. Ethelyn saw the discrepancy at once, and the effort it was for John to keep from laughing outright, as he took the dainty things into which he could but little more than thrust his toes.
"You did not know what a Goliath I was, nor what stogies I wore; but I thank you all the same," John said, and with burning blushes Ethelyn turned next to her beautiful Schiller--the exquisite little bust--which Andy, in his simplicity mistook for a big doll, feeling a little affronted that Ethelyn should suppose him childish enough to care for such toys.
But when Richard, who stood looking on, explained to his weak brother what it was, saying that people of cultivation prized such things as these, and that some time he would read to him of the great German poet, Andy felt better, and accepted his big doll with a very good grace.