“There’s only these in the house, sir,” she said, “and the shops don’t open till Monday.”
“I don’t think in the circumstances my hospitality can be of much more use to you, can it, Colonel? Perhaps you would like me to ring up and get a taxi out from Aylesbury.”
“What’s that? Taxi? Why, it’s ridiculous to get a taxi out from Aylesbury to go a quarter of a mile!”
“I’m sure Mrs. Littlejohn wouldn’t like to walk all the way on a night like this?”
“Perhaps a taxi would be a good idea, Papa.”
“Of course, if you’d care to take shelter here … it may clear up a little. But I think you’d find it very wretched, sitting here in the dark?”
“No, no, of course, order a taxi,” said the Colonel.
On the way back to the house he said, “I’d half made up my mind to lend him some of our lamps for the weekend. I certainly shan’t now. Fancy hiring a taxi seven miles to drive us a few hundred yards. On Christmas Eve, too. No wonder they find it hard to fill their churches when that’s their idea of Christian fellowship. Just when I’d brought my film all that way to show them …”
Next morning Adam and Nina woke up under Ada’s sprig of mistletoe to hear the bells ringing for Christmas across the snow. “Come all to church, good people; good people come to church.” They had each hung up a stocking the evening before, and Adam had put a bottle of scent and a scent spray into Nina’s, and she had put two ties and a new kind of safety razor into his. Ada brought them their tea and wished them a happy Christmas. Nina had remembered to get a present for each of the Florins, but had forgotten Ada, so she gave her the bottle of scent.
“Darling,” said Adam, “it cost twenty-five shillings—on Archie Schwert’s account at Asprey.”
Later they put some crumbs of their bread and butter on the windowsill and a robin redbreast came to eat them. The whole day was like that.
Adam and Nina breakfasted alone in the dining-room. There was a row of silver plates kept hot by spirit lamps which held an omelette and devilled partridges and kedgeree and kidneys and sole and some rolls; there was also a ham and a tongue and some brawn and a dish of pickled herrings. Nina ate an apple and Adam ate some toast.
Colonel Blount came down at eleven wearing a grey tail coat. He wished them a very good morning and they exchanged gifts. Adam gave him a box of cigars; Nina gave him a large illustrated book about modern cinema production; he gave Nina a seed pearl brooch which had belonged to her mother, and he gave Adam a calendar with a coloured picture of a bulldog smoking a clay pipe and a thought from Longfellow for each day in the year.
At half-past eleven they all went to Matins.
“It will be a lesson to him in true Christian forgiveness,” said the Colonel (but he ostentatiously read his Bible throughout the sermon). After church they called in at two or three cottages. Florin had been round the day before distributing parcels of grocery. They were all pleased and interested to meet Miss Nina’s husband. Many of them remembered him as a little boy, and remarked that he had grown out of all recognition. They reminded him with relish of many embarrassing episodes in Ginger’s childhood, chiefly acts of destruction and cruelty to cats.
After luncheon they went down to see all the decorations in the servants’ hall.
This was a yearly custom of some antiquity, and the Florins had prepared for it by hanging paper streamers from the gas brackets. Ada was having middle-day dinner with her parents who lived among the petrol pumps at Doubting village, so the Florins ate their turkey and plum pudding alone.
“I’ve seen as many as twenty-five sitting down to Christmas dinner at this table,” said Florin. “Regular parties they used to have when the Colonel and Mr. Eric were boys. Theatricals and all the house turned topsy-turvy, and every gentleman with his own valet.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Florin.
“Times is changed,” said Florin, picking a tooth.
“Ah,” said Mrs. Florin.
Then the family came in from the dining-room.
The Colonel knocked on the door and said, “May we come in, Mrs. Florin?”
“That you may, sir, and welcome,” said Mrs. Florin.
Then Adam and Nina and the Colonel admired the decorations and handed over their presents wrapped in tissue paper. Then the Colonel said, “I think we should take a glass of wine together.”
Florin opened a bottle of sherry which he had brought up that morning and poured out the glasses, handing one first to Nina, then to Mrs. Florin, then to the Colonel, then to Adam, and, finally, taking one for himself.
“My very best wishes to you, Mrs. Florin,” said the Colonel, raising his glass, “and to you, Florin. The years go by, and we none of us get any younger, but I hope and trust that there are many Christmases in store for us yet. Mrs. Florin certainly doesn’t look a day older than when she first came here. My best wishes to you both for another year of health and happiness.”
Mrs. Florin said, “Best respects, sir, and thank you, sir, and the same to you.”
Florin said, “And a great pleasure it is to see Miss Nina—Mrs. Littlejohn, I should say—with us once more at her old home, and her husband too, and I’m sure Mrs. Florin and me wish them every happiness and prosperity in their married life together, and all I can say, if they can be as happy together as me and Mrs. Florin has been, well, that’s the best I can wish them.”
Then the family went away, and the house settled down to its afternoon nap.
After dinner that night Adam and the Colonel filled up their port glasses and turned their chairs towards the fire. Nina had gone into
