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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume II

December 27, 1921

To Lady Ottoline Morrell

How lovely the handkerchiefs are with the little swans sailing round them. They arrived on Christmas Day its very self, too. You know how one watches for that Christmas post at this distance—I was in bed too, which made my longing even more fearful. I had to wait until someone crept up the stairs instead of lurking at the door. I really feel that I could write an entire book with each chapter beginning, “The post did not come that day” or “That morning the post was late.” And I at least would thrill and shiver with the horror of it. It's awful to spend such emotions on postmen! But there it is.

We had a ‘proper’ Christmas—even to a Tree, thanks to the Mountain, who revels in such things and would like all the year to be December. The house whispered with tissue paper for days, a pudding appeared out of the bosom of the air and the sight of that fired even my gentle Ernestine who began, from the sounds, to gambol on the ground floor and toss the iron rings of the stove on to the floor. The crackers, however, would not pull, which cast a little gloom over M., who relishes crackers, and the mottoes which were German were very depressing: “Mädchen, möcht ich Frau dir sehen.”

I am glad it is all over—but the traces, the signs remain for a long time…