Aunt Mary should kiss him (as, of course, she would want to do), and he would not shiver; he would (bravest deed of all) allow Mary to read "Alice in Wonderland" in her sing-sing voice so long as ever she wanted...

Sausages! Sausages! In his shirt and his short blue trousers, his hair on end, tugging at his braces, he stood in the doorway and shouted: "Helen, there are sausages--because it's my birthday.

Aren't you glad ?" And even when the only response to his joyous invitation was Helen's voice crossly admonishing the Jampot: "Oh, you do pull so; you're hurting!"-- his charity was not checked.
Then when he stood clothed and of a cheerful mind once more in front of the fire a shyness stole over him.

He knew that the moment for Presents was approaching; he knew that very shortly he would have to kiss and be kissed by a multitude of persons, that he would have to say again and again, "Oh, thank you, thank you so much!" that he would have his usual consciousness of his inability to thank anybody at all in the way that they expected to be thanked.

Helen and Mary never worried about such things.