It isn't as if I were petitioning
nightly for a grand house, a yacht, a four-in-hand, a diamond
necklace, and a particular man for a husband; but I don't see that
modesty finds any special favour with St. Nick. Now and then I
harbour a rascally suspicion that he is an indolent, time-serving
person, who slips down the widest, cleanest chimneys to the people
who clamour the loudest; but this abominable cynicism melts into thin
air the moment that I look at his jolly visage on the cover of a
picture-book. Dear, fat, rosy, radiant Being! Surely he is
incapable of any but the highest motives! I am twenty-eight years
old, but age shall never make any difference in the number or extent
of my absurdities. I am going to write a letter and send it up the
chimney! It never used to fail in the long-ago; but ah! then there
were two dear, faithful go-betweens to interpret my childish messages
of longing to Santa Claus, and jog his memory at the critical time!'
CHAPTER XV--'THE FEAST O' THE BABE'
It was sure to be a green Christmas in that sunny land, but not the
sort of 'green Yule' that makes the 'fat kirkyard.' If the New
Englanders who had been transplanted to that shore of the Pacific
ever longed for a bracing snowstorm, for frost pictures on the
window-panes, for the breath of a crystal air blown over ice-fields--
an air that nipped the ears, but sent the blood coursing through the
veins, and made the turkey and cranberry sauce worth eating,--the
happy children felt no lack, and basked contentedly in the soft
December sunshine.
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