or far-away, but ate our dinner with great content. I think, perhaps,
Christmas fare is even more uninteresting in India than at home;
turkey tastes more like white flannel, and plum-pudding is stodgier,
and there are no white and scarlet berries or robins; but otherwise it
is really a nicer day than in England.

Of course I thought a lot about the home people. I imagined Peter
waking and groping for his stocking. Oh, _have_ you forgotten what
it felt like to waken up and remember it was Christmas morning? I
sometimes wish I could still hang up my stocking. There is nothing in
Grown-up Land that equals the thrill the delicious bulginess of the
stocking, gripped in the darkness, gave one.

I think they would miss me a little at home. I know Mother would often
say, "I wonder what Olivia is doing now!"

And what kind of Christmas had you? A very festive one, I hope.

Very many thanks for the book you sent me. You couldn't possibly have
given me anything I like better. Somehow, I have never possessed a
copy of _A Child's Garden of Verses_, and this one, so exquisitely,
specially bound, will be a great treasure. I like, too, your reason
for choosing it. It is nice of you to like my childish reminiscences,
but it is rash to say you wish you had known us then. Looking at us
now, so quiet, so well-behaved, _such_ ornaments to society, you would
be surprised what villains we once were--at least on week-days! We had
what R.L.S. calls a "covenanting childhood." Looking back, it seems
to me that our childhood was a queer mixture of Calvinism and fairy
tales. Calvinism, even now, I associate with ham and eggs--I suppose
because Sabbath morning was the only time we ever tasted that