As by some such law as lurks in meteorological toy for our guidance in climes close-knit with Irony for bewilderment, making egress of old woman synchronise inevitably with old man's ingress, or the other way about, the force that closed the aphorist's eye-lids parted his lips in degree according. Thus had Euphemia, erect on hearth-rug, a cavern to gaze down into. Outworks of fortifying ivory cast but denser shadows into the inexplorable. The solitudes here grew murmurous. To and fro through secret passages in the recesses leading up deviously to lesser twin caverns of nose above, the gnomes Morphean went about their business, whispering at first, but presently bold to wind horns in unison--Roland-wise, not less. Euphemia had an ear for it; whim also to construe lord and master relaxed but reboant and soaring above the verbal to harmonic truths of abstract or transcendental, to be hummed subsequently by privileged female audience of one bent on a hook-or-crook plucking out of pith for salvation. She caught tablets pendent at her girdle. "_How long_," queried her stilus, "_has our sex had humour? Jael hammered._" She might have hitched speculation further. But Mother Earth, white-mantled, called to her. Casting eye of caution at recumbence, she paddled across the carpet and anon swam out over the snow. Pagan young womanhood, six foot of it, spanned eight miles before luncheon. * * * * * PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Christmas Garland, by Max Beerbohm