Viola had pulled out all her extra eyebrows and looked sort of skinned, but she felt fixed up, so it was all right. She wore a red velvet dress that was pretty too. I wore a brown silk dress that had plaid trimming, and it put me in Miss Meek’s class, but I didn’t mind.
After we sat down, and made conversation in that stiff way that people do when they are all wearing their best clothes and aren’t quite used to them, Mr. Hemmingway stood up and picked up the smaller wine glass that stood by his plate—we had two sorts of wine—and he looked at me, bowed, and said, “To the United States and her lovely daughters—”
I thought it was very kind.
Then Miss Bannister blinked, and nodded, and squeaked out, “To the people we love who aren’t here—”
And I wasn’t a bit ashamed of the fact that my eyes filled with tears and that I had to blink and swallow like the dickens, because every one else was doing the same thing.
After we drank that Mr. Hemmingway said, “It was, if I recall correctly, the Christmas of ’76 that I first met the customs of Italy at Christmas and Epiphany; I can, I think, without undue assumption of certainty state flatly that it was in ’76, and I assert this, because in the fall of ’76 I was experiencing my first attack of bronchitis; and I recall this, because the June of that same year, ’76, as I have heretofore mentioned, I had taken a trip up the Severn—or was that, now that I probe, ’74? Let me see, let me see—”
And then Miss Meek boomed out her “Ho hum!” and every one felt more natural and lots better. After that the stiffness slid away—all in a second—and Miss Meek tossed her head and told about the fine Christmases she had seen, and Miss Bannister told of how the children in the village where she had lived sung carols, and Mr. Hemmingway searched after dates that wouldn’t come to him; and Viola and Leslie listened with more kindness than usual.
After we had had the lumpy, heavy sort of pudding that people always serve around Christmas, we sat back and talked some more while we waited for Mr. Wake and Sam to come. And at last the bell in the hall swung to and fro, and then there was excitement. Beata, who courtesied very low, let them in, and they called out their greetings and wishes to every one, even before I had presented them.
Mr. Wake had a big bag under his arm that was pleasantly lumpy, and he said that Santa Claus had dropped it on the hillside near Fiesole and told him to deliver it. Then we all stood up, and after Leslie had lit the many candles in the drawing room, she rung a bell, and we filed in.
She summoned Mr. Wake first, and I was glad she did, because going up to the table where she stood might have been hard for some of the others. And after Mr. Wake took his present, he gave a little boarding school bow—that dip at the knees that makes girls shorter than they are for the second in which they do it—and every one followed his lead. We did have the best time! But, and I suppose it sounds strange, it got in your throat and made it feel cramped. I can’t explain why, but when Miss Bannister and Miss Meek couldn’t, at first, open their packages because their hands shook so, it did make you feel queer.