Father got a new collar and a rabbit made of cloth, Mother got a Teddy bear and a tin bug that walked across the floor and went click-click-click, Freya got the ball and a cloth cat which was bigger than mine but didn’t taste so good and I got a wooden duck that flapped its wings and opened its mouth when you moved it. I didn’t think that the Family knew about the time the duck made me fall into the brook, but they must have. I suppose Ju-Ju told them. That cat talks too much, anyway.
And we all had sweet biscuits and candy which the Baby fed to us until the Mistress told her we had had enough. After that we were allowed to stay there and play a long time. [I chewed that rubber cat until it stopped squeaking and then tried the duck.] The paint tasted very good. Freya stole a bag of candy from the tree and ate half of it before I found out about it and took it away from her. Really, her manners were awful that day!
[I chewed that rubber cat until it stopped squeaking and then tried the duck]
I ate the rest of the candy so as to punish her for stealing it, but I didn’t really want it and after I had eaten it I began to feel sick. It was just as well, I think, that they let us out just then. I don’t know what the rest did, but I hurried right down to the stable and got behind the flower-pots and had quite a miserable time of it for a while. You see, besides the sweet biscuits and all that candy, I had eaten most of a rubber cat and one wing of a wooden duck. I think, though, that it was the yellow paint that made me sick.
I felt better in the afternoon and crawled out and went back to the house. The Baby had a new sled and she was coasting down a little hill behind the house. She would sit on the sled and take one of us dogs in her arms and then Nurse would give her a push and off she would go. I coasted twice but didn’t care much for it. I wasn’t feeling quite well yet. For dinner that day we had turkey, and it was fine; almost as good as liver and corn-bread. I was very glad that I felt well enough by that time to eat all that was given to me—and some of Freya’s. Then William took us down and put us to bed and that ended that Christmas Day. I had had a very good time, on the whole, but I was a little glad that Christmas didn’t come very often!