A LETTER TO THE BACK-BLOCKS.
Dear Ginger,—A Merry Christmas to you! A bit late, you say? On the contrary, in plenty of time. It is next Christmas I am referring to. Over there, in your tropical land, when the sun stings your skin through your shirt and the sand blisters your feet through your boot-soles, when you butter your bread with a soup-ladle and the mercury boils merrily in the barometer, then, vainly pawing the air for mosquitoes with one hand and reaching for the siphon with the other, you gasp, "Gad! it must be getting on for Christmas-time."
But over here in England, where the seasons wheel round without any appreciable difference in temperature, where, if it were not for the gentleman who writes the calendars, nobody would know whether to wear straw-hats or snow-shoes, Christmas comes sneaking up behind you and grabs you by the pocket before you have time to dodge. "Christmas Eve already!" you exclaim. "Christmas Eve! and there's dear old Tom in Penang and good old Dick in Patagonia and poor old Harry in Princetown, and I've not written a word of cheer to any of them and now have no time to do so." That's what happened to me this year, anyhow; but I'm determined it shall not occur again, so—A Merry Christmas to you, Ginger.
This my first Yule in the Old Country, after many in foreign climes, was not an unqualified success. On the morning of Christmas Eve I went for a walk and lost myself. After wading through bog systems and bramble entanglements for some hours I came out behind a spinney and there spied a small urchin with red cheeks and a red woollen muffler standing beneath a holly-tree. On sighting me he gave vent to a loud and piteous howl. I asked him where his pain was, and he replied that he wanted some holly for decorations, but was too short to reach it. I thereupon swarmed the shrub, plucked and tossed the richly berried boughs to the poor little chap. In return he showed me where I lived—which indeed was not two hundred yards distant, but concealed by the thicket.
Later in the day Edward came in to tea, much annoyed. Bolshevism, he declared, was within our gates. He had been out to collect Christmas decorations in his own private fenced spinney, and confound it if some scoundrels hadn't been and gone and stripped his pet holly-tree of every twig! Anarchy was yapping at the door.
The Aunt soothed him, saying she had that very afternoon purchased a supply of splendid holly from a sweet little boy who had come round hawking it at sixpence a bough. I asked her if by any chance the dear little fellow had worn a red woollen comforter, and was not surprised when I heard that he had.
No sooner had I fallen asleep that same night than I was aroused by an extraordinary din. I lay there, comatose and semi-conscious in the pitchy darkness, and wondered what had happened. Presently I distinguished the bray of trumps, and I knew. "Golly!" I whispered to myself, "I'm dead. Cheer-o!" Then I recollected something I had read concerning ye sports and customs of ye Ancient British and decided it must be "Waits." I crept to the window and by a glow of lanterns beheld the St. Gwithian Independent Brass Band grouped round the porch, blasting "Christians, awake!" through their brazen fog-horns. I fumbled about on the dressing-table, missed the matches but found a half-crown. "Take that and trot!" I snarled, hurling it at them with all my strength. The coin hit the trombone a glancing blow on the snout, ricochetted off the bassoon and bounded into the rockery.
The music stopped abruptly as the bandsmen swarmed in pursuit of fortune. In half-an-hour's time they had pulled all Edward's cherished sedums and saxifrages up by the roots and turned over most of the smaller rocks without discovering the treasure. A conference in loud idiomatic Cornish then took place, with the result that two musicians were despatched to a neighbouring farm for picks, crow-bars and more lanterns; the remainder squatted on the flower-beds and whiled away the time of waiting by blasting "Good King Wenceslas" to the patient stars.
In due course the messengers returned and the quarrying of the rockery began in earnest. By 4.15 a.m. they had most of it littered over the drive, but had struck some granite boulders which defied even the crowbars. A further conference was then held, but at this point Edward made a dramatic appearance, clad in lilac pyjamas, odd boots and a kimono of the Aunt's, which he had worn as King Alfred in some charades the night before, and in the darkness had donned in mistake for his dressing-gown. His address was impassioned and moving, but had no effect on the Waits, who could only be persuaded to abandon their silver mine at the price of a second half-crown.