It was, indeed, our joy over this latest requisition that stiffened into resolution an uneasy feeling that we ought to give Sally a slice of our luck.
After considerable discussion we decided to make her a present of the three Chinese mats. She had bought three of Planchet upon his last visit, and those we had just purchased would bring her set up to six. Lest we should repent our impulse, we did them up there and then and sent them off by Fitch the same afternoon.
* * * * *
Christmas was over and gone.
In the three days immediately preceding the festival, such popularity with the tradesmen of the town as we had forfeited was more than redeemed at the expense, so far as I was concerned, of an overdraft at the bank. Absurdly handsome presents were purchased right and left. Adèle's acquaintance was extremely wide. Observing that it was also in every instance domiciled in the United States, with the density of a male I ventured to point out that upon the day which my wife's presents were intended to enrich, all of them would indubitably be lying in the custody of the French postal authorities. Thereupon it was gently explained to me that, so long as a parcel had been obviously posted before Christmas, its contents were always considered to have arrived "in time"—a conceit which I had hitherto imagined to be the property of bookmakers alone. In short, from first to last, my wife was inexorable. But for the spectacle of Berry and Jonah being relentlessly driven along the same track, life would have lost its savour. Indeed, as far as we three were concerned, most of the working hours of Christmas Eve were spent at the post office.
The registration of a postal packet in France is no laughing matter. When a coloured form has to be obtained, completed, and deliberately scrutinised before a parcel can be accepted, when there is only one pen, where there are twenty-seven people in front of you—each with two or more packages to be registered—when there is only one registration clerk, when mental arithmetic is not that clerk's forte, when it is the local custom invariably to question the accuracy first of the postage demanded and then of the change received, when the atmosphere of the post office is germane to poison-gas, and when, you are bearing twelve parcels and leading a Sealyham, the act of registration and its preliminaries are conducive to heart-failure.
The miniature of herself, however, with which my wife presented me on
Christmas Day atoned for everything….
And now—Christmas was over and gone.
The New Year, too, had come in with a truly French explosion of merriment and good-will.
It was, in fact, the fourth day of January, and, with the exception of my cousins, who were upon the links, we were proceeding gingerly down the Rue du Lycée, en route for Lourdes, when my sister gave a cry and called upon me to stop.