[112]CHAPTER XTHE LAST CHRISTMAS IN ENGLANDInafter days the last month spent in England seemed like a dream to the children. There was a fortnight during which packing-cases and new flat cabin-trunks came to the house, and were filled with a multitudinous collection of things. When all the stacks of garments, little and big, were ready, Mrs. Conway went in and out of the different rooms, the little girls at her heels, fingering an ornament here she felt she must take, a book there, looking with moist eyes at a picture that had looked down on her most of her life. Yet she did not wish to cumber herself with unnecessary luggage, so the selection had to be a small one. There were two tall silver candlesticks, snuffer-dish, and snuffers she could not leave behind.“My mother gave them to me when I was married, and said I was to give them to my eldest daughter whenshemarried,” she said, “for her mother had given them to her, and before that,hermother had given them toher.”[113]“Oh, of course you must take them,” said Phyl, and felt added dignity that she had one of her wedding presents before her.“The cake-basket is not quite so old; but that shall be for Dolly,” the mother said, and lifted up the silver basket Dolly had always admired ardently.There were tears in Weenie’s voice.“When I gets married,” she said, “what’s you got for me?”Mrs. Conway found a cream-jug with a handsome handle.“Did Dranma’s Dranma’s have it?” was Weenie’s critical question.“Yes,” said Mrs. Conway.“Zen I won’t have it,” said Miss Weenie. “Don’t want nasty old fings for my wesing present. Want nicey new fings.”So the mother found a butter-dish that possessed the necessary qualification, and, to make the gift larger, a silver folding fruit-knife that Mrs. Conway had always used was added to it.“Now I have wedding presents for you all,” she said; “so no more silver, except spoons and forks.” Only a few books were to go, she said, just one small boxful. They might choose twelve each, and she herself would select the rest.A whole day flew, of course, in the choosing, and then the stacks carried into the big bedroom for packing were frequently disarranged for some change to[114]be made, so hard was the decision. Amongst those finally packed wereThe Wide, Wide World, a little brown, shabby volume that was Phyl’s chiefest treasure, and the first book she had possessed,Little Women,Alice in WonderlandandIn the Looking-Glass,Ivanhoe,Andersen’s Fairy Tales,Grimm’s Fairy Tales, two or three other books of Fairy Tales,Robinson Crusoe,Readings with the Poets,Jessica’s First Prayer, Macaulay’sLays of Rome,The Swiss Family Robinson,The Lamplighter,Misunderstood,Uncle Tom’s Cabin,The Scottish Chiefs,The Arabian Nights, an annual or two,Little Wideawake, which was Dolly’s first book, and a volume or two ofSunshine.The stack of dull-covered lesson-books was a small one, and such was the mother’s pre-occupation she did not notice. There wereMangnall’s QuestionsandStepping Stones, books so heartily hated, their sense of duty was too keen to leave them behind. There wasMary’s Grammar, that once they had been attached to by the seeming innocence of its stories, but that on further acquaintance they mistrusted entirely as being a species of powder in jam. There wasButter’s Spelling Book, and a blue geography in the question and answer form. Also a very thin atlas, and the one of the two table-books they possessed that didnotcontain “weights and measures.”The days leapt along; the last boxes were corded. All good-byes to friends had been said. “Yesterday[115]was Monday,” Phyl said once in surprise, “and now to-day’s Saturday!” and even the mother agreed with her.There came the final move. The boxes went early, then breakfast came—a strange meal, eaten without a table-cloth, and with cups and plates that no longer belonged to them—breakfast with a world grey to blackness out-of-doors, and within a fire that refused to burn up so early, and gas that flickered as if to help the melancholy effect. Then a four-wheeled cab for the long drive to the station; the backward, fearful glance of the three at the old, quiet, dull-coloured house, and Harriet standing waving there, red-eyed; then the forward, eager one at the thought of the life a-stretch.A long journey in the express train to London. Phyl had learned its rate was sixty miles an hour, and was staggered by the announcement, for ordinary trains she found ran only thirty to forty.“We’ll have to catch hold of something very hard,” she told her sisters, drawing a long breath at the beginning, “or we’ll be whirled out of our seats and choked, I expect.”All three were somewhat disappointed to find none of these things happened, and that the locomotion seemed very little different from that to which they had been accustomed on their visits to the seaside. The roar and lights of a great station, where it seemed one half of the world was rushing to catch trains,[116]and the other half had come to see them off and wave good-bye; then a stuffy big cab again.One night in the big, quiet hotel, where the elder little maids had stayed once before in wealthier days on a visit to the great capital, the hotel that seemed so fascinating a fairyland to them, they had brought it into their play for months afterwards, and shed their fairy wings in order to play chambermaids and waiters. Indeed, there had been a Sunday evening when Dolly, brought to book for her sins, had grown pink with shame, and told how “when it was sermon time and she couldn’t understand, she couldn’t help thinking how lovely the church would be to play ‘hotel’ in.” And Phyl, equally pink, had confessed also to imagining she was the boy chalking the number of each bedroom on the boots outside.“If the pews hadn’t had numbers on like those bedrooms, I shouldn’t have thought of it,” she added excusingly.Breakfast at the big hotel, a white world just becoming soiled and smirched outside. A dignified waiter behind the chairs of the three little maids.“Devilled kidneys, chops and tomato-sauce, York ham, eggsaux Champignons, or fried soles?” he says rapidly to Dolly. Dolly gives a slight gasp. It has been the unalterable rule of her life to let Phyl decide questions like these. Once even when she and Phyl were invited out to tea, and she was asked first what she would have, she grew red and hesitated, and[117]finally said in a very shy whisper, “I’ll wait and see what Phyl has, please.”“Devilled kidneys, chops and tomato-sauce, York ham,” begins the man again.“Fried soles,” says Phyl, who has deliberated thoughtfully.“Fwied soles,” says Dolly, relievedly.[Illustration]“Fried soles, an’ egg, an’ chop, an’ devilly,” says Weenie.“Fried soles,an’ egg, an’ chop, an’ devilly,” says Weenie.But after breakfast the mother goes off to find a lodging much less expensive for the last ten days. They take an omnibus and drive towards the East End to a tall shabby house that says “Apartments,” and stands in a row of others in a long, quiet,[118]shabby street. It is not very far away from the Docks, a most necessary qualification, for every day now they all go to look over the great ships that lean against the black wharves as if resting before they fight their way over the seas again.Mrs. Conway had fancied that being poor people now they could go with the poor third-class across those seas, and so save many pounds out of those few hundreds of hers. But when she sees it, and the motley crowd of nationalities assembled there on a departing boat, she shrinks from such a step. The shipping agent she has approached is kindly and interested in the young widow and her little girls. He tells her it is impossible for her to contemplate it. She must go second-class; but he will stretch a point, and imagine Weenie is two years younger than she is—in fact, he will allow the three children to go on one adult ticket.“But I isn’t two years younger than I is,” Weenie says agitatedly. Her sharp ears have heard the conversation, and she fears she is to be deprived of some of her rights.“Yes you are,” says the gentleman solemnly. “You are only two, and a very fine little girl for your age.” And he writes out the necessary papers.The fortnight shortens; in three days it will be Christmas; in seven days they sail. They go to see some inexpensive sights—the Crystal and Alexandra Palaces, the Zoo, Madame Tussaud’s, the Tower of[119]London, with the wonderful armour and the Crown Jewels.Christmas Day. The landlady has intimated to all her boarders that she expects them to dine out in respect for the day, and allow her some rest. Mrs. Conway and the children muffle up to their eyes. All that can be seen of Phyl are two excited blue eyes and the curl or two that peep from under the seal-cap.Outside there is no snow, only a black drift here and there. A heavy yellow fog obscures everything. Once Weenie strays, and is quite lost for the space of three minutes, during which the greatest excitement and anxiety prevail; finally she is found again, weeping bitterly, not six feet away. After that they all hold each other carefully and walk four abreast, not a difficult thing, for most of the world is cosily indoors to-day.They go to St. Paul’s and hear the Christmas anthem. The great solemn place is not a quarter full; the air hangs chill and strange; the light is dim in the far-away aisles and pews, but near the altar gas is burning.When the great organ rolls vibratingly through all the place, and the far-off voices of the choristers rise to the huge domed roof and die away, Phyl and Dolly grip each other’s hands very tightly, their throats swell, and they badly want to cry; though why they have no idea. But Weenie sniggers during most of the service, for she has put one of the little flat[120]hassocks on top of another, and, standing on the erection, tries to imagine she is as tall as her mother.“These funny little hassocks are much smaller than those at our old church,” she announced audibly, once.Out in the dreary streets again. The emotional mood of Phyl and Dolly has passed, and they profess themselves dying of hunger, and enter into a pleasurable discussion as to what they will have to eat.Mrs. Conway has supposed that plenty of restaurants will be open, and that they will be able to get a dinner “Christmassy” enough to satisfy the children, and still inexpensive. But up and down streets they go, anxiously scanning signs, and not one of the places is open; the mother’s heart begins to fail her. She has been obliged to forego hung stockings, Christmas-tree,—all the bright merriment of the season. Surely she will not have to let her little ones go without their dinner.“It won’t matter about holly and burning fire around the dish for once, if we can only have the pudding,” Phyl remarks; half-an-hour ago she had said pudding without those accompaniments was not pudding at all.“We could do without vegetables and things if only they could let us have turkey, or fowl, or something,” said Dolly.Weenie begins to cry for sheer need of something to eat.Up streets, down streets—the mother dare not go[121]too far afield for fear of losing her bearings entirely in this thick wretched fog—and all this part of the world shows blank shuttered windows and inhospitably closed doors. At last they find a place where the door, though not open to invite customers, is ajar.There is a delicious fragrance of roast goose in the foggy air outside, and they all sniff it luxuriously.The mother pushes open the door, and they troop after her in eager anticipation. But the shopkeeper is far from pleased at this advent.“I am not prepared for customers to-day,” she says shortly, “the door was left open by accident.”“But I can smell roast goose,” Phyl says, excitedly.“So can I,” says Dolly.“An’ me,” cries Weenie.“Surely you can prepare a meal of some kind for us,” says the mother. “I will pay you well for your trouble”—she has grown quite reckless.“If there is plenty of goose, we can do without pudding,” says Phyl.“The goose is cooked to order,” the woman returns. “There’s a party of gents coming in, and the vegetables and pudding is for them too.”“They wouldn’t miss a leg or two,” Phyl says imploringly. “Oh, surely they don’t want itall!”“There are five of them,” says the woman inexorably. “I couldn’t possibly touch it, nor yet break the pudding.”Weenie begins to cry afresh.[122]“I wants my dinner,” she says again and again and again between her tears.“Have you nothing at all in the house?” poor Mrs. Conway says. “Is there nowhere near you could send for anything? My little girls are quite hungry.”The woman seems to find it hard to understand how it comes about that they are hungry and wandering about on such a day; they are well-dressed, and very warmly wrapped up. But when the mother begs her again to do her best to get them a meal, she consents reluctantly.“You’ll have to take the back room,” she says, “the gents have engaged the front one.”“We don’t mind if it’s the kitchen,” says Dolly joyously, “do we, Phyl?”They are led into a room full of small oil-clothed tables, with a common-looking cruet, a jug of water, and a glass bowl filled with lumps of sugar in the centre of each. The children try the tables one after the other, and finally seat themselves at a round one that holds a dirty menu-card.In the interval during which the woman goes very reluctantly to “do her best,” they study this card, and speculate as to what the “best” will be.“If they have three soups, roast beef, curry and veal pie, custard-pudding and fritters, on common days,” says Phyl, “surely they can find something nice when it’s Christmas Day.”[123]“But the woman says she has nothing at all in her pantry,” the mother says.“She said she’d send to the butcher’s by the back door,” contends Dolly.“But what could she get there to cook quickly?” says the mother; “you wouldn’t like to wait for a joint of beef to be cooked, would you? I am greatly afraid it will be nothing better than chops.”And nothing better it is, after a weary twenty minutes’ wait. The little girls’ faces fall greatly when the harassed-looking woman appears with a tray that contains nothing more than a dish of rather burnt-looking chops, and a plate loaded with potatoes. But they brighten when the mother requests that instead of one large one, four little tea-pots shall be brought, so that each may pour out for herself.For pudding, they have hastily stewed prunes, a box of figs, plenty of bread-and-butter, and strawberry-jam. And so hungry has the chill air made them, they are surprised to find they have greatly enjoyed their Christmas dinner.They go back to the boarding-house early in the afternoon. There are no fires in sitting-room or dining-room, so they betake themselves to their bedroom and light the gas, and cuddle close together and talk of Australia.And one more Christmas Day is a thing of the past.
Inafter days the last month spent in England seemed like a dream to the children. There was a fortnight during which packing-cases and new flat cabin-trunks came to the house, and were filled with a multitudinous collection of things. When all the stacks of garments, little and big, were ready, Mrs. Conway went in and out of the different rooms, the little girls at her heels, fingering an ornament here she felt she must take, a book there, looking with moist eyes at a picture that had looked down on her most of her life. Yet she did not wish to cumber herself with unnecessary luggage, so the selection had to be a small one. There were two tall silver candlesticks, snuffer-dish, and snuffers she could not leave behind.
“My mother gave them to me when I was married, and said I was to give them to my eldest daughter whenshemarried,” she said, “for her mother had given them to her, and before that,hermother had given them toher.”
[113]“Oh, of course you must take them,” said Phyl, and felt added dignity that she had one of her wedding presents before her.
“The cake-basket is not quite so old; but that shall be for Dolly,” the mother said, and lifted up the silver basket Dolly had always admired ardently.
There were tears in Weenie’s voice.
“When I gets married,” she said, “what’s you got for me?”
Mrs. Conway found a cream-jug with a handsome handle.
“Did Dranma’s Dranma’s have it?” was Weenie’s critical question.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Conway.
“Zen I won’t have it,” said Miss Weenie. “Don’t want nasty old fings for my wesing present. Want nicey new fings.”
So the mother found a butter-dish that possessed the necessary qualification, and, to make the gift larger, a silver folding fruit-knife that Mrs. Conway had always used was added to it.
“Now I have wedding presents for you all,” she said; “so no more silver, except spoons and forks.” Only a few books were to go, she said, just one small boxful. They might choose twelve each, and she herself would select the rest.
A whole day flew, of course, in the choosing, and then the stacks carried into the big bedroom for packing were frequently disarranged for some change to[114]be made, so hard was the decision. Amongst those finally packed wereThe Wide, Wide World, a little brown, shabby volume that was Phyl’s chiefest treasure, and the first book she had possessed,Little Women,Alice in WonderlandandIn the Looking-Glass,Ivanhoe,Andersen’s Fairy Tales,Grimm’s Fairy Tales, two or three other books of Fairy Tales,Robinson Crusoe,Readings with the Poets,Jessica’s First Prayer, Macaulay’sLays of Rome,The Swiss Family Robinson,The Lamplighter,Misunderstood,Uncle Tom’s Cabin,The Scottish Chiefs,The Arabian Nights, an annual or two,Little Wideawake, which was Dolly’s first book, and a volume or two ofSunshine.
The stack of dull-covered lesson-books was a small one, and such was the mother’s pre-occupation she did not notice. There wereMangnall’s QuestionsandStepping Stones, books so heartily hated, their sense of duty was too keen to leave them behind. There wasMary’s Grammar, that once they had been attached to by the seeming innocence of its stories, but that on further acquaintance they mistrusted entirely as being a species of powder in jam. There wasButter’s Spelling Book, and a blue geography in the question and answer form. Also a very thin atlas, and the one of the two table-books they possessed that didnotcontain “weights and measures.”
The days leapt along; the last boxes were corded. All good-byes to friends had been said. “Yesterday[115]was Monday,” Phyl said once in surprise, “and now to-day’s Saturday!” and even the mother agreed with her.
There came the final move. The boxes went early, then breakfast came—a strange meal, eaten without a table-cloth, and with cups and plates that no longer belonged to them—breakfast with a world grey to blackness out-of-doors, and within a fire that refused to burn up so early, and gas that flickered as if to help the melancholy effect. Then a four-wheeled cab for the long drive to the station; the backward, fearful glance of the three at the old, quiet, dull-coloured house, and Harriet standing waving there, red-eyed; then the forward, eager one at the thought of the life a-stretch.
A long journey in the express train to London. Phyl had learned its rate was sixty miles an hour, and was staggered by the announcement, for ordinary trains she found ran only thirty to forty.
“We’ll have to catch hold of something very hard,” she told her sisters, drawing a long breath at the beginning, “or we’ll be whirled out of our seats and choked, I expect.”
All three were somewhat disappointed to find none of these things happened, and that the locomotion seemed very little different from that to which they had been accustomed on their visits to the seaside. The roar and lights of a great station, where it seemed one half of the world was rushing to catch trains,[116]and the other half had come to see them off and wave good-bye; then a stuffy big cab again.
One night in the big, quiet hotel, where the elder little maids had stayed once before in wealthier days on a visit to the great capital, the hotel that seemed so fascinating a fairyland to them, they had brought it into their play for months afterwards, and shed their fairy wings in order to play chambermaids and waiters. Indeed, there had been a Sunday evening when Dolly, brought to book for her sins, had grown pink with shame, and told how “when it was sermon time and she couldn’t understand, she couldn’t help thinking how lovely the church would be to play ‘hotel’ in.” And Phyl, equally pink, had confessed also to imagining she was the boy chalking the number of each bedroom on the boots outside.
“If the pews hadn’t had numbers on like those bedrooms, I shouldn’t have thought of it,” she added excusingly.
Breakfast at the big hotel, a white world just becoming soiled and smirched outside. A dignified waiter behind the chairs of the three little maids.
“Devilled kidneys, chops and tomato-sauce, York ham, eggsaux Champignons, or fried soles?” he says rapidly to Dolly. Dolly gives a slight gasp. It has been the unalterable rule of her life to let Phyl decide questions like these. Once even when she and Phyl were invited out to tea, and she was asked first what she would have, she grew red and hesitated, and[117]finally said in a very shy whisper, “I’ll wait and see what Phyl has, please.”
“Devilled kidneys, chops and tomato-sauce, York ham,” begins the man again.
“Fried soles,” says Phyl, who has deliberated thoughtfully.
“Fwied soles,” says Dolly, relievedly.
[Illustration]“Fried soles, an’ egg, an’ chop, an’ devilly,” says Weenie.
“Fried soles, an’ egg, an’ chop, an’ devilly,” says Weenie.
“Fried soles,an’ egg, an’ chop, an’ devilly,” says Weenie.
But after breakfast the mother goes off to find a lodging much less expensive for the last ten days. They take an omnibus and drive towards the East End to a tall shabby house that says “Apartments,” and stands in a row of others in a long, quiet,[118]shabby street. It is not very far away from the Docks, a most necessary qualification, for every day now they all go to look over the great ships that lean against the black wharves as if resting before they fight their way over the seas again.
Mrs. Conway had fancied that being poor people now they could go with the poor third-class across those seas, and so save many pounds out of those few hundreds of hers. But when she sees it, and the motley crowd of nationalities assembled there on a departing boat, she shrinks from such a step. The shipping agent she has approached is kindly and interested in the young widow and her little girls. He tells her it is impossible for her to contemplate it. She must go second-class; but he will stretch a point, and imagine Weenie is two years younger than she is—in fact, he will allow the three children to go on one adult ticket.
“But I isn’t two years younger than I is,” Weenie says agitatedly. Her sharp ears have heard the conversation, and she fears she is to be deprived of some of her rights.
“Yes you are,” says the gentleman solemnly. “You are only two, and a very fine little girl for your age.” And he writes out the necessary papers.
The fortnight shortens; in three days it will be Christmas; in seven days they sail. They go to see some inexpensive sights—the Crystal and Alexandra Palaces, the Zoo, Madame Tussaud’s, the Tower of[119]London, with the wonderful armour and the Crown Jewels.
Christmas Day. The landlady has intimated to all her boarders that she expects them to dine out in respect for the day, and allow her some rest. Mrs. Conway and the children muffle up to their eyes. All that can be seen of Phyl are two excited blue eyes and the curl or two that peep from under the seal-cap.
Outside there is no snow, only a black drift here and there. A heavy yellow fog obscures everything. Once Weenie strays, and is quite lost for the space of three minutes, during which the greatest excitement and anxiety prevail; finally she is found again, weeping bitterly, not six feet away. After that they all hold each other carefully and walk four abreast, not a difficult thing, for most of the world is cosily indoors to-day.
They go to St. Paul’s and hear the Christmas anthem. The great solemn place is not a quarter full; the air hangs chill and strange; the light is dim in the far-away aisles and pews, but near the altar gas is burning.
When the great organ rolls vibratingly through all the place, and the far-off voices of the choristers rise to the huge domed roof and die away, Phyl and Dolly grip each other’s hands very tightly, their throats swell, and they badly want to cry; though why they have no idea. But Weenie sniggers during most of the service, for she has put one of the little flat[120]hassocks on top of another, and, standing on the erection, tries to imagine she is as tall as her mother.
“These funny little hassocks are much smaller than those at our old church,” she announced audibly, once.
Out in the dreary streets again. The emotional mood of Phyl and Dolly has passed, and they profess themselves dying of hunger, and enter into a pleasurable discussion as to what they will have to eat.
Mrs. Conway has supposed that plenty of restaurants will be open, and that they will be able to get a dinner “Christmassy” enough to satisfy the children, and still inexpensive. But up and down streets they go, anxiously scanning signs, and not one of the places is open; the mother’s heart begins to fail her. She has been obliged to forego hung stockings, Christmas-tree,—all the bright merriment of the season. Surely she will not have to let her little ones go without their dinner.
“It won’t matter about holly and burning fire around the dish for once, if we can only have the pudding,” Phyl remarks; half-an-hour ago she had said pudding without those accompaniments was not pudding at all.
“We could do without vegetables and things if only they could let us have turkey, or fowl, or something,” said Dolly.
Weenie begins to cry for sheer need of something to eat.
Up streets, down streets—the mother dare not go[121]too far afield for fear of losing her bearings entirely in this thick wretched fog—and all this part of the world shows blank shuttered windows and inhospitably closed doors. At last they find a place where the door, though not open to invite customers, is ajar.
There is a delicious fragrance of roast goose in the foggy air outside, and they all sniff it luxuriously.
The mother pushes open the door, and they troop after her in eager anticipation. But the shopkeeper is far from pleased at this advent.
“I am not prepared for customers to-day,” she says shortly, “the door was left open by accident.”
“But I can smell roast goose,” Phyl says, excitedly.
“So can I,” says Dolly.
“An’ me,” cries Weenie.
“Surely you can prepare a meal of some kind for us,” says the mother. “I will pay you well for your trouble”—she has grown quite reckless.
“If there is plenty of goose, we can do without pudding,” says Phyl.
“The goose is cooked to order,” the woman returns. “There’s a party of gents coming in, and the vegetables and pudding is for them too.”
“They wouldn’t miss a leg or two,” Phyl says imploringly. “Oh, surely they don’t want itall!”
“There are five of them,” says the woman inexorably. “I couldn’t possibly touch it, nor yet break the pudding.”
Weenie begins to cry afresh.
[122]“I wants my dinner,” she says again and again and again between her tears.
“Have you nothing at all in the house?” poor Mrs. Conway says. “Is there nowhere near you could send for anything? My little girls are quite hungry.”
The woman seems to find it hard to understand how it comes about that they are hungry and wandering about on such a day; they are well-dressed, and very warmly wrapped up. But when the mother begs her again to do her best to get them a meal, she consents reluctantly.
“You’ll have to take the back room,” she says, “the gents have engaged the front one.”
“We don’t mind if it’s the kitchen,” says Dolly joyously, “do we, Phyl?”
They are led into a room full of small oil-clothed tables, with a common-looking cruet, a jug of water, and a glass bowl filled with lumps of sugar in the centre of each. The children try the tables one after the other, and finally seat themselves at a round one that holds a dirty menu-card.
In the interval during which the woman goes very reluctantly to “do her best,” they study this card, and speculate as to what the “best” will be.
“If they have three soups, roast beef, curry and veal pie, custard-pudding and fritters, on common days,” says Phyl, “surely they can find something nice when it’s Christmas Day.”
[123]“But the woman says she has nothing at all in her pantry,” the mother says.
“She said she’d send to the butcher’s by the back door,” contends Dolly.
“But what could she get there to cook quickly?” says the mother; “you wouldn’t like to wait for a joint of beef to be cooked, would you? I am greatly afraid it will be nothing better than chops.”
And nothing better it is, after a weary twenty minutes’ wait. The little girls’ faces fall greatly when the harassed-looking woman appears with a tray that contains nothing more than a dish of rather burnt-looking chops, and a plate loaded with potatoes. But they brighten when the mother requests that instead of one large one, four little tea-pots shall be brought, so that each may pour out for herself.
For pudding, they have hastily stewed prunes, a box of figs, plenty of bread-and-butter, and strawberry-jam. And so hungry has the chill air made them, they are surprised to find they have greatly enjoyed their Christmas dinner.
They go back to the boarding-house early in the afternoon. There are no fires in sitting-room or dining-room, so they betake themselves to their bedroom and light the gas, and cuddle close together and talk of Australia.
And one more Christmas Day is a thing of the past.