after-life as such things may, when one is still a child.


IV

Christmas Eve was always, to Hugh, a day with glamour. He did not any
longer hang up his stocking (although he would greatly have liked to do
so), but, all day, his heart beat thickly at the thought of the morrow,
at the thought of something more than the giving and receiving of
presents, something more than the eating of food, something more than
singing hymns that were delightfully familiar, something more than
putting holly over the pictures and hanging mistletoe on to the lamp in
the hall. Something there was in the day like going home, like meeting
people again whom one had loved once, and not seen for many years,
something as warm and romantic and lightly coloured _and_ as comforting
as the most inspired and impossible story that one could ever, lying in
bed and waiting for sleep, invent.

To-day there was no snow but a frost, and there was a long bar of
saffron below the cold sky and a round red ball of a sun. Hugh was
sitting in a corner of Mr. Lasher's study, looking at Doré's "Don
Quixote," when the two gentlemen came in. He was sitting in a dark
corner and they, because they were angry with one another, did not
recognise any one except themselves. Mr. Lasher pulled furiously at his
pipe and Mr. Pidgen stood up by the fire with his short fat legs spread
wide and his mouth smiling, but his eyes vexed and rather indignant.

"My dear Pidgen," said Mr. Lasher, "you misunderstand me, you do indeed!
It may be (I would be the first to admit that, like most men, I have my
weakness) that I lay too much stress upon the healthy, physical, normal