This morning early Mrs. and Professor Young came over to ask father where they could find a Yule log and a peacock. They said in the "eternal fitness of things" they must have a log to burn all Christmas night and a peafowl to serve with "brilliant plumage" at the dinner table. Mrs. Young went around to the kitchen to ask Mammy Lou if she knew how to prepare the peacock the way they wanted it and brought to the table in its feathers with the tail spread. Mammy wasn't a speck more polite than she was last summer about the roosters. "No, _ma'am_," she told her, "Mis' Mary won't let even so much as a pin feather come on her table, much less a whole crittur covered with 'em. Looks like _that_ would turn a nigger's stomach, let alone white folks; but there ain't no 'countin' for the taste o' _Yankees_." Professor Young tried to explain that he was cooked without the feathers which was put on afterward and an old English custom, but that wouldn't pacify mammy. "Well, all I can say for the old English is that they must have stomachs on 'em like _buzzards_," mammy told them. The Yule log was easier and so they got that, but it isn't to be lit till to-morrow night with ceremony. Julius and Marcella had a long walk through the woods after sarsaparilla vines this afternoon, and talked a good deal about how they would like a house furnished if they were going to furnish one. They never got as far as the kitchen and smokehouse, but they both agreed that they would love better than anything in the world to have a dark green library with dull brass jardinieres. (I had a _terrible_ time with that word.) Julius then spoke up and said _any_ kind of a library that had her in it would be artistic enough for _him_, which I thought was saying a great deal, for artists make out like they can't live without their "atmosphere," meaning battered-up tea-kettles and dirty curtains from Persia. Marcella must have thought he meant something by it, too, for she turned as red as when you have a breaking out. I helped mother and mammy considerable this morning by tasting all the things to see if they were just right, for we are going to have a big dinner to-morrow and invite them all. To-night we all went over to the bungalow to hear Professor Young read about how they used to do Christmas things in England before the Pilgrim Fathers. It sounded awful nice about the waifs singing, "God rest you, merry gentlemen," on the outside of your window, and the servants at dinner bringing in the boar's head, singing too. Professor Young said he thought these old customs ought to be revived, especially in the South, where we had old-timey houses and old family servants. Father laughed and said, well, we _might_ get Mammy Lou to bring in the turkey to-morrow to the tune of "There _wuz_ er moanin' lady, she _lived_ in er moanin' lan'," which was all the tune she knew besides Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, one being about as Christmasy as the other.