pigs and
hens out of I ever saw. If its increase was small its temptations
were smaller, and that is no little recommendation in this world of
temptations. But, as a general thing, everything has grown, except our
house. That little cottage, over which Polly presides with grace enough
to adorn a palace, is still small outside and smaller inside; and if it
has an air of comfort and of neatness, and its rooms are cozy and sunny
by day and cheerful by night, and it is bursting with books, and not
unattractive with modest pictures on the walls, which we think do well
enough until my uncle--(but never mind my uncle, now),--and if, in the
long winter evenings, when the largest lamp is lit, and the chestnuts
glow in embers, and the kid turns on the spit, and the house-plants are
green and flowering, and the ivy glistens in the firelight, and Polly
sits with that contented, far-away look in her eyes that I like to see,
her fingers busy upon one of those cruel mysteries which have delighted
the sex since Penelope, and I read in one of my fascinating law-books,
or perhaps regale ourselves with a taste of Montaigne,--if all this is
true, there are times when the cottage seems small; though I can never
find that Polly thinks so, except when she sometimes says that she does
not know where she should bestow her uncle in it, if he should suddenly
come back from India.

There it is, again. I sometimes think that my wife believes her uncle
in India to be as large as two ordinary men; and if her ideas of him are
any gauge of the reality, there is no place in the town large enough
for him except the Town Hall. She probably expects him to come with his
bungalow, and his sedan, and his palanquin, and his elephants, and his
retinue of servants, and his principalities, and his powers, and his
ha--(no, not that), and his chowchow, and his--I scarcely know what
besides.

Christmas eve was a shiny cold night, a creaking cold night, a placid,
calm, swingeing cold night.

Out-doors had gone into a general state of crystallization. The
snow-fields were like the vast Arctic ice-fields that Kane looked on,
and lay sparkling under the moonlight, crisp and Christmasy, and all
the crystals on the trees and bushes hung glistening, as if ready, at a
breath of air, to break out into metallic ringing, like a million silver
joy-bells. I mentioned the conceit to Polly, as we stood at the window,
and she said it reminded her of Jean Paul. She is a woman of