one, and were contented and merry
with little. I recalled with longing my little den, where in the
midst of the literary disorder I love, I wrote those stories for the
"Antarctic" which Polly, if nobody else, liked to read. There was
no comfort for me in my magnificent library. We were all rich and in
splendor, and our uncle had come from India. I wished, saving his soul,
that the ship that brought him over had foundered off Barnegat Light. It
would always have been a tender and regretful memory to both of us. And
how sacred is the memory of such a loss!

Christmas? What delight could I have in long solicitude and ingenious
devices touching a gift for Polly within my means, and hitting the
border line between her necessities and her extravagant fancy? A drove
of white elephants would n't have been good enough for her now, if each
one carried a castle on his back.

"--and so they were married, and in their snug cottage lived happy ever
after."--It was Polly's voice, as she closed the book.

"There, I don't believe you have heard a word of it," she said half
complainingly.

"Oh, yes, I have," I cried, starting up and giving the fire a jab with
the poker; "I heard every word of it, except a few at the close I was
thinking"--I stopped, and looked round.

"Why, Polly, where is the camel's-hair shawl?"

"Camel's-hair fiddlestick! Now I know you have been asleep for an hour."

And, sure enough, there was n't any camel's-hair shawl there, nor any
uncle, nor were there any Hindoos at our windows.

And then I told Polly all about it; how her uncle came back, and we were
rich and lived in a palace and had no end of money, but she didn't seem
to have time to love me in it all, and all the comfort of the little
house was blown away as by the winter wind. And Polly vowed, half in
tears, that she hoped her uncle never would come back, and she wanted
nothing that we had not, and she wouldn't exchange our independent
comfort and snug house, no, not for anybody's mansion. And then and
there we made it all up, in a manner too particular for me to mention;
and I never, to this day, heard Polly allude to My Uncle in India.

And then, as the clock struck eleven, we each produced from the place
where we had hidden them the modest Christmas gifts we had prepared for
each other, and what surprise there was! "Just the thing I needed." And,
"It's perfectly lovely." And, "You should n't have done it." And, then,
a question I never will