Calcutta, Dec. 26.

When Kipling wrote his Christmas in India I think he must have been in a dak-bungalow down with fever, otherwise he would hardly have painted such a very gloomy picture.  I, at least, didn’t find it a mocking Christmas—­but then India isn’t my grim stepmother, as Victor Ormonde pointed out to me the other night, I can afford to be home-sick, can afford to let myself think of the “black dividing sea and alien plain,” because here I have no continuing city.  It is the real exiles, “shackled in a lifelong tether,” who may not think, but must go doggedly through their day’s darg.

I found it an agreeable day, from the morning when I got my presents and various offerings of flowers, to the evening, when we dined with some very kind people, and had an amusing time playing childish games.

I have often seen pictures headed “Christmas in the Tropics,” and looked with sentimental eyes at the people grouped among palm-trees on a verandah, while the girl at the piano sang what was evidently a song about “the dear homeland,” to judge from the far-away look in the eyes of all present.  It seems a pity to disillusion you, but it isn’t at all like that.  To begin with, it was quite chilly, and we were very glad of the big fire burning in the grate, and we did not look pensive or far-away, but ate our dinner with great content.  I think, perhaps, Christmas fare is even more uninteresting in India than at home; turkey tastes more like white flannel, and plum-pudding is stodgier, and there are no white and scarlet berries or robins; but otherwise it is really a nicer day than in England.

Of course I thought a lot about the home people.  I imagined Peter waking and groping for his stocking.  Oh, have you forgotten what it felt like to waken up and remember it was Christmas morning?  I sometimes wish I could still hang up my stocking.  There is nothing in Grown-up Land that equals the thrill the delicious bulginess of the stocking, gripped in the darkness, gave one.

I think they would miss me a little at home.  I know Mother would often say, “I wonder what Olivia is doing now!”

And what kind of Christmas had you?  A very festive one, I hope.

Very many thanks for the book you sent me.  You couldn’t possibly have given me anything I like better.  Somehow, I have never possessed a copy of A Child’s Garden of Verses, and this one, so exquisitely, specially bound, will be a great treasure.  I like, too, your reason for choosing it.  It is nice of you to like my childish reminiscences, but it is rash to say you wish you had known us then.  Looking at us now, so quiet, so well-behaved, such ornaments to society, you would be surprised what villains we once were—­at least on week-days!  We had what R.L.S. calls a “covenanting childhood.”  Looking back, it seems to me that our childhood was a queer mixture of Calvinism and fairy tales.  Calvinism, even now, I associate with ham and eggs—­I