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“Sherlock is too young,” says Mummy. Mycroft thinks this is ridiculous, because Mummy claims to be 32 when she’s really 37 and always says that age is only a number, but when Mycroft points this out, Father laughs and Mummy goes red in the face and says maybe he shouldn’t have dinner with the adults either.
Which really isn’t fair because Mycroft is ten, and that’s double digits which have to count for something.
“I don’t want dinner with grownups,” says Sherlock sulkily. “They’re boring.”
This is also ridiculous. Grownups aren’t boring, not when Uncle Henry is sleeping with the hairdresser and Aunt Eunice is ten thousand pounds in gambling debt and Grandmother eyes the new servants like candy.
Mycroft sits with the grownups and pretends to be old and wise and important. The crackers are loud and he covers his ears, and Grandmother laughs at him, so he knocks the gravy boat into her lap.
Sherlock is asleep in Mycroft’s bed. Mycroft pokes him awake.
“I can sleep here too,” says Sherlock, sulky even in sleep.
“Good, because I brought you something,” says Mycroft, and shows him Grandmother’s Christmas cracker, which he’d slipped into his jacket during the commotion.
Sherlock’s eyes light up; he reaches for the cracker eagerly, and Mycroft decides he needs to reassess the definition of boring.