"But well I remember one particular Christmas Day. I don't know that the remembrance is worth the telling, but I'll tell it all the same, because I was about seven years old, and went to 'a party.'
"I was much admired, and I in turn admired greatly a dark, thin boy of about ten, who had recited 'The Burial of Sir John Moore' (so jolly on a Christmas Day!). This thin boy was always going down to eat something, and after the recitation he asked me to come down and have an ice.
"You will, of course, understand that this was a real party—a staying-up-late, low-necked dress, and fan sort of party. When we had eaten the ices he suggested some lobster salad—which I thought would be very nice. He went to fetch the salad and left me dreaming of him and of his beautiful dark hair.
"Suddenly my dream was interrupted.
"A fat boy with stubbly light hair and freckles on his nose stood grinning at me and asking me to have some lemonade. I didn't want any lemonade, and told him so. Thereupon he produced a whole bough of mistletoe from somewhere or another, and without more ado seized me by my head and kissed me, and kissed me, and kissed me,—grinning all the while.
"I was in a rage, and flew at him like a little cat. He fled out of the room, up the stairs, I after him. I caught him on the landing, clawed him by the hair, and banged him, and dared him to kiss me again.
"He cried, the coward, though he was eight or nine years old. Adding insult to injury, he said, 'He didn't want to,' and I was 'horrid.'
"I thought he was horrid, for my pretty white frock was torn, and the thin dark boy, the boy I had fallen in love with, said I should not have spoken with such a cur, and that it 'served me right.'
"My heart was broken for the first time, and that is why I remember, and always shall, that miserable Christmas Day."