Mynheer van Gleck, whose meerschaum has not really grown fast to his
lips: it only appears so. There are grandfather and grandmother, whom
you meet at the St. Nicholas _fête_. All the children are with them.
It is so mild, they have brought even the baby. The poor little
creature is swaddled very much after the manner of an Egyptian mummy;
but it can crow with delight, and, when the band is playing, open and
shut its animated mittens in perfect time to the music.

Grandfather, with his pipe and spectacles and fur cap, makes quite a
picture as he holds baby upon his knee. Perched high upon their
canopied platforms, the party can see all that is going on. No wonder
the ladies look complacently at the glassy ice: with a stove for a
footstool, one might sit cosily beside the North Pole.

There is a gentleman with them who somewhat resembles St. Nicholas as
he appeared to the young Van Glecks, on the fifth of December. But the
saint had a flowing white beard; and this face is as smooth as a
pippin. His saintship was larger around the body, too, and (between
ourselves) he had a pair of thimbles in his mouth, which this
gentleman certainly has not. It cannot be St. Nicholas, after all.

Near by, in the next pavilion, sit the Van Holps, with their son and
daughter (the Van Gends) from The Hague. Peter's sister is not one to
forget her promises.

She has brought bouquets of exquisite hot-house flowers for the
winners.

These pavilions, and there are others beside, have all been erected
since daylight. That semicircular one, containing Mynheer Korbes's