Incredulity seemed to struggle with pity in his mind.
"I'm sorry. It sounds so funny. I didn't know there were people like that. The villagers are just the same. Mrs. Richards down at the Blue Dragon makes the biggest Christmas cake I've ever seen, lovely bluey-looking icing with preserved cherries in it, those big red ones, and almond paste an inch thick. Everywhere it's the great day in the year for feasting."
"Why?" I asked. "Why should Christmas Day be the great day for feasting? It's the day Jesus was born; why should that make people guzzle? A funny way of keeping His birthday, eating and drinking. I know what it is, it's what the Papists do: eat all day. That's it, it's Popish." My voice rose combatively in the good cause of plain and Protestant living, hash and heaven.
Weakly or wisely, he skirted the theological issue. "Don't be silly. Besides it's not only what you eat yourself. At Christmas time you always give a lot away to the poor people. Uncle Vivian gives heaps of logs and firewood and coal all round the village, and gives geese to the tenants and heaps of other things; giving things away is a good enough way of keeping Christmas, isn't it? There are presents. You get presents, don't you?"
"Never."
Here I was wrong, for on Christmas morning a parcel came addressed to Miss Mary Lee. It was the first I had ever received, except some new winter underclothes Grandma had sent me from Tawborough, and I undid it eagerly. Inside was a box of colours. I found from a little note inside the cover of the box that Great-Uncle John had sent me this in addition to his usual half-sovereign. This made me ponder. I had heard vaguely of his half-sovereign at long intervals of time, but had never thought of it in the light of a Christmas present. I had never seen or touched it; it was "put by" or otherwise dimly dealt with by Grandmother and Aunt Jael.
This box of colours was the finest thing I had yet possessed. No doubt the art of mixing paint was then in its infancy, and this box provided me with but a few of the simplest colours; no doubt a mere half crown box of today is superior both in number of colours and quality of paint. No doubt, but ignorance was bliss; no such odious comparisons came to cloud my joy. I had never seen a paint box before except through a shop window; and now I had one in my own hands and was gloating with all the joy of proprietorship over the twelve little pans before me and the high adventurous names with which each was labelled.
Gamboge, yellow-ochre; cobalt, Prussian blue; green-bice, Hooker's green; carmine, crimson-lake; raw-sienna, burnt-sienna; sepia and ivory black. There was also a mysterious little tube tucked away in a niche at one end and labelled Chinese white, the contents of which oozed out when pressed, like a white tape-worm. These names were a delight. Carmine: the colour which Brother Quappleworthy painted his sins in discourse. Crimson-lake: which called up a vision of a great sea of Precious Blood with wave-crests of scarlet-foam.
Robbie had several presents: a box of soldiers, a picture book, some sweetmeats and money.