“Oh, dear, how they do get things up nowadays!” she exclaimed, holding at admiring arm’s length the monkey-on-a-stick. “Lifelike, isn’t it? You’ll want an orange and an apple, don’t forget. And I wouldn’t put in too many lollipops if I was you, or she won’t be able to eat any turkey. I got you a lovely little turkey. Nine pounds. Well, you don’t want to sit down to an elephant. I remember one Christmas I invited my sister to come up from Essex, and I thought she’d appreciate some turkey, so I told the fishmonger to send in a really nice dainty little one. Well, by mistake his boy brought round one that weighed thirty-two pounds and which had won the prize for the biggest turkey in Greenwich that year. In fact, it come round to me with a red and white rosette stuck in its how-d’ye-do as big as a sunflower. Well, it didn’t arrive till past eleven o’clock on Christmas Eve, and I was down at the ‘Nelson’s Head’ with my sister till closing time, and there it was waiting for us when we got back, tied onto the knocker. It gave me a bit of a start, because I’d had one or two for old sake’s sake, and I thought for the minute some pore fellow had gone and suicided himself on my front door. Well, there was nothing to be done but cook it, and my sister’s a small-made woman, and when we sat down to dinner with that turkey between us she might have been sitting one side of St. Paul’s and me the other. I give you my word that turkey lasted me for weeks. Well, the wish-bone was as big as a church window, and I could have hung my washing out on the drumsticks. It was a bird. Oh, dear, oh, dear! Well, I know when I threw the head out to the cat the pore beast had convulsions in the backyard, and as for the parson’s nose, well, as I said to my sister, the parson as had a nose like that must have been a Jewish rabbit. What a set out it was, to be sure! And my turkey which I ought to have had was sent up to a large family gathering in the Shooter’s Hill Road, and half the party never tasted turkey at all that Christmas.”
Mrs. Pottage continued in a strain of jovial reminiscence until her lodgers had finished supper, after which she wanted to accompany them upstairs to their room that she might help in the filling of Letizia’s stocking.
“The fact is,” she whispered hoarsely, “I put that stocking of mine out, because I’d bought a few odds and ends for her myself.”
She dived into the pockets of her voluminous skirt. “Here we are, a bouncing dog with a chube at the end of it to squeeze. She can’t swallow it unless she swallows the dog too, and I don’t think she’ll do that. The Story of the Three Bears, warranted untearable, which it isn’t, for I tore up two in the shop with my own hands just to show the young man he didn’t know what he was talking about. A toy violing. She won’t be able to play on it, but the varnish won’t hurt her. A drum—well, it was really that drum which decided me to use one of my own stockings. My calves have grown whopping. In fact, I’ve often said jokingly to Mrs. Bugbird that I ought to call them cows nowadays. That’s the lot, I think. Well, I shan’t wake you in the morning till you ring. Just one tinkle will be enough. There’s no need to turn it round as if you was playing a barrel organ, which is what the fellow who played the villain in His Life for Her did last November. He wound up all the wire somewhere inside the wall. A nice set out we had, and then he grumbled because I charged him in the bill for the work the plumber did to get it right again. Well, good night, and a merry Christmas.”
When the sound of Mrs. Pottage’s hoarse whispering had departed, the little candlelit room glowed in the solemn hush of the great white world, of which it seemed to be the warm and beating heart. Mother and father bent low over the cot and listened to the faint breathing of Letizia, watching lovingly those dark tangled curls and red-rose cheeks. The father bent lower to touch them with his lips.
“No, no, don’t kiss her, boy,” said the mother. “You might wake her, and she’ll be having such an exciting day to-morrow.”
Nancy blew out the candle on the table by the bed, and slipped her silver key beneath Bram’s pillow. A shaft of moonlight pierced the drawn curtains and struck the canopy of Letizia’s cot. The radiance vanished as gathering snow-clouds obscured the face of the moon. Nancy fell asleep to the sound of Bram’s watch carrying on a fairy conversation amid the echoes of Mrs. Pottage’s absurd stories.
CHAPTER IX
A MERRY CHRISTMAS
The snowy air had painted the ceiling of the room a lurid grey when Letizia woke her father and mother next morning. She was standing up in her cot, holding the footrails of the big bed with one hand and waving the toy dog in the other.