It so fell out, as they started, that Graham found himself walking at Miss Staveley's side, to the great disgust, no doubt, of half a dozen other aspirants for that honour. "I cannot help thinking," he said, as they stepped briskly over the crisp white frost, "that this Christmas-day of ours is a great mistake."
"Oh, Mr. Graham!" she exclaimed
"You need not regard me with horror,—at least not with any special horror on this occasion."
"But what you say is very horrid."
"That, I flatter myself, seems so only because I have not yet said it. That part of our Christmas-day which is made to be in any degree sacred is by no means a mistake."
"I am glad you think that."
"Or rather, it is not a mistake in as far as it is in any degree made sacred. But the peculiar conviviality of the day is so ponderous! Its roast-beefiness oppresses one so thoroughly from the first moment of one's waking, to the last ineffectual effort at a bit of fried pudding for supper!"
"But you need not eat fried pudding for supper. Indeed, here, I am afraid, you will not have any supper offered you at all."
"No; not to me individually, under that name. I might also manage to guard my own self under any such offers. But there is always the flavour of the sweetmeat, in the air,—of all the sweetmeats edible and non-edible."
"You begrudge the children their snap-dragon. That's what it all means, Mr. Graham."