The shopkeepers—­wise men—­had found comfort in hard work, and were making elaborate preparations for Christmas.  The jewellers cut a fair show, and the drapers, too, But the grocer took, or rather would have taken, the cake if the “Law” allowed it to be baked.  His enterprise knew no limits; his display of holly (and indeed of everything else) was unprecedented.  The collection of odds and ends exhibited was picturesque to a degree (no more can be said for it).  There were no jellies, no tempting hams, no imported puddings nor nude poultry, none of the solid, savoury things associated with the festive season.  There were none of these; but holly, mistletoe, and Chinese lanterns made a fine phantasmagoria.  There were neat and compact packets of starch, interspersed with tins of mustard, to tickle the palate of the hungry passer-by; while scented soaps, in lovely little wrappers, intermingled in malodorous profusion.  Bottles of sauces never heard of by the present generation, and which yet bore traces of the solidified cobweb of half a century, were much in evidence.  So, too, was Berwick’s baking powder, as a sort of satire on the absence of such essential constituents as eggs, milk, flour, whiskey, raisins, etc. (we had plenty of suet).  Reckitt’s blue was there in abundance—­a finger-post, as it were, to the shade of the entire exposition.  Condy’s Fluid was not the least appetible thing on show.  Bottled parsley and kindred mummied souvenirs of pre-historic horticulture, half buried in heaps of shrapnel bullets (ticketed sweet peas!) and other ammunition of a like digestive kind, were also to the fore to sustain the fame of Christmas.  But starch was the all-pervading feature of every shop-front.  In one window a solid blank wall of starch was erected, with a row of sweet-bottles on top.  One would think that our linen at least should have been irreproachable; but it was not; because the Town Council happened to be experimenting on the practicability of establishing Municipal Wash Houses, with a view to economising water—­not, as the actual results suggested, to the saving of starch.

Lieutenant-Colonel Peakman had succeeded the lamented Scott-Turner, and on Wednesday long before daybreak he led a picked force towards Webster’s Farm, to steal a march on the napping enemy.  The napping enemy, however, was alive to the propriety of utilising but one eye in the lap of “Nature’s soft nurse.”  He could not see much with the open optic, but he could hear with the one ear he had taken the precaution of keeping open also.  Of the good sense of this precaution Mr. Peakman was somewhat abruptly apprised by the crack and blaze of a hundred Mausers.  Nothing daunted he returned the salute right gallantly, and with a doggedness that obliged the Boers to retreat, firing as they went.  The enemy’s gun at Oliphantsfontein soon chimed in with some well-directed shells, one of which failed to burst and was secured intact as a valuable trophy.  Nobody was hurt, and the force got back to town without further molestation.