One of my neighbours, a very kindly American, being told by her boy that he wanted to go off early on Christmas Day, thoughtfully asked him if he would then rather have the money instead of the Christmas dinner. He considered a moment, and to her surprise elected to have the dinner.
On Christmas Day, immediately after the first breakfast, which is very early in the tropics—seldom after seven, often long before—she went into the kitchen to give her orders for the day, and there to her great surprise she saw her boy tucking into his Christmas dinner which the cook had cooked for him.
“Me eating it now, missus,” he explained with a grin.
“But, Howard!” cried the lady, “how can you possibly eat your dinner immediately after breakfast?”
“Wanting a long day,” he explained, and the explanation seemed to him perfectly natural.
His mistress knew that boy. There is a negro pudding made of grated coconut, coconut milk, corn-meal and sugar, baked. Not a bad pudding if a little is taken, but Howard one day got outside a large pie-dish full, and then came rubbing his stomach and groaning to his mistress.
“Why, Howard,” she said a little severely, “I should think you did have indigestion. Why didn't you put half that pudding away till to-morrow?”
“Ah, missus,” he said, “when he in dish, pudding hab two masters. Now———” No, words were unnecessary. He'd certainly got that pudding.
I suppose his case was on a par with that of the woman servant in the same place who, usually going barefoot, appeared on that same Christmas morning of 1920 in a pair of elaborate boots, very high-heeled and much too small for her. She could hardly totter when she came to wish her master and mistress a happy Christmas before setting out on her holiday. Her mistress said nothing. She had exhausted herself over Howard, but her husband, the old doctor, took it upon himself to remonstrate.
“Oh, Alice, how can you wear such boots!”