ng toilet; always the same, never any
variety. Why are we not born, like dogs, with nice cosy rugs all over
us, so that we should just have to get out of bed in the morning,
shake ourselves, and be ready at once to go down to breakfast and do
the business of the day?

"Ah well! God knows what's best for us all," as an old charwoman said
to me, years ago, when she was remarking on how I had grown. I never
saw the application of the remark, and do not think I ever shall.
Whether my growth was a subject to deplore, and she tried to comfort
me, or not, I cannot say; but she was evidently proud of the remark,
for she repeated it three times!

CHAPTER VI.

ON CHRISTMAS.

It is such a prickly time. Not only everything but everybody is
positively bristling with prickles. Go where you will, you cannot
avoid these pointed, jagged edges. You come across them everywhere,
and have to suffer accordingly.

To begin with, there is the holly. Now you could not find anything
lovelier in the way of foliage than holly, only such a little
suffices. At Christmas time you are literally saturated with it. In
every house you enter, in everything you eat, at every step you take,
nothing but holly, holly, holly.

Then there are the Church decorations, begun generally a week
beforehand. All the ladies of the place assemble in the vestry,
attracted there by divers reasons. Some, by the desire to have a
finger in every pie; some, because it is an opportunity to meet the
curates; and some, but a very few, from real love of the work. I
cannot understand these latter, I must confess. It is the most
disagreeable work I have ever undertaken. Such dirty work, too! Your
hands or your gloves grow perfectly black under the operation; and it
is a curious thing, that when this stage is reached, your nose
invariably begins to itch, and you forget the condition of your
fingers, and--well, the result is anything but becoming! It is so
comfortable, too, walking about the vestry, isn't it? The holly grows
so affectionate to your ankles, and at every step squash goes a berry,
and all its middle oozes out and sticks to the sole of your boot. When
you go home, you find you are at least an inch taller by reason of the
many corpses of berries you have collected!

Yes, Christmas decorations are delightful altogether. And so the
clergymen think, when they become excited in their sermons, and bring
their fists down sharply on some charming arrangement of