_ How Time takes wing for the busy! It's only six days to Christmas and I've still my box to get off for Olga and her children. We've sent to Peter some really charming snap-shots of the children, which Susie took. The general effect of one, I must acknowledge, is seriously damaged by the presence of their Mummy.
Dinky-Dunk doubts if he'll be able to get home for the holidays. But I sent him a box, on Saturday, made up of those things which he likes best to eat and a set of the children's pictures, nicely mounted. I've also had Dinkie and Poppsy write a long letter to their dad, a task which they performed with more constraint than I had anticipated. I had my own difficulties, along the same line, for I had taken a photograph of poor little Pee-Wee's grave with a snow-drift across one end of it, and had written on the bottom of the mounting-card: "
We must remember." But as I stood studying this, before putting it in next to Poppsy's huge Christmas-card gay with powdered mica I felt a foolish tear or two run down my cheek. And I realized it would never do to cloud my Dinky-Dunk's day with memories which might not be altogether happy. So I've kept the picture of the little white-fenced bed with the white snow-drift across its foot....
Susie is in bed with a bad cold, which she caught studying astronomy with Gershom. Poppsy was not in the least put out when she watched me preparing a mustard-plaster for the invalid. My daughter, I am persuaded, has a revived faith in the operation of retributive justice. But I hope Susie is better by the holiday. Whinnie has the Christmas Tree hidden away in the stable, and already a number of mysterious parcels have arrived at Casa Grande. Bud Teetzel very gallantly sent me over a huge turkey, an eighteen-pounder, and to-morrow I have to go into Buckhorn for my mail-order shipments. We have decorated the house with a whole box of holly from Victoria and I've hung a sprig of mistletoe in the living-room doorway. The children, of course, are on tiptoe with expectation. But I can't escape the impression that I'm merely acting a part, that I'm a Pagliacci in petticoats. Heaven knows I clown enough; no one can accuse me of not going through the gestures. But it seems like fox-trotting along the deck of a sinking ship.
I stood under the mistletoe, this morning, and dared Gershom to kiss me. He turned quite white and made for the door. But I caught him by the coat, like Potiphar's wife, and pulled him back to the authorizing berry-sprig and gave him a brazen big smack on the cheek-bone. He turned a sunset pink, at that, and marched out of the room without saying a word. But he was shaking his head as he went, at my shamelessness, I suppose. Poor old Gershom! I wish there were more men in the world like him. The other day Susie intimated that he was too homosexual and that it was the polygamous wretches who really kept the world going. But I refuse to subscribe to that sophomoric philosophy of hers which would divide the race into fools and knaves. "It's safer being sane than mad; it's better being good than bad!" as Robert remarked. And I know at least one strong man who is not bad; and one bad man who is not strong. _