There was an extraordinary demand for messages next day; even the lamplighter and the dustman longed to hear what I had to say. Some of them even sent books in which to record the messages, and that did it. “Mr. Jones’s book--and is there any message, please?” I forgot what I had said to Ruth about forgiving Mr. Jones if he omitted to bring the sausages and the stuffing. His record for the past year was blacker than any recording angel would have put up with. I tore James’s fountain-pen from his pocket and wrote: “_When Jones’s villain asks to-day A Christmas message, thou shalt say, ‘Here is a shilling in my name.’ Unfortunately it never came!_” On Christmas Eve parcels began to arrive. Some were from people to whom, I remembered with a pang, nothing had been sent. The hopeless muddle of my scratched list had resulted in some names passing through my head without any definite settlement. But there was still time. “Come to the book-shop, quick!” I said to James. We took a taxi and rattled to the book-shop; but there--as the most unreasoning person I know often says--“I lost my reason.” James gave it the first flick by saying three times, “Won’t they have read that?” I was so irritated over the whole thing that I said, unless he could manage to hurry up the Day of Judgment before to-morrow, I couldn’t possibly tell, after which he, very properly, refused to help me. The counter was full of books of a kind I never read, and detest to look at: but I suppose some one reads them or they would not be there. “Reminiscences of a Conchologist,” “Historic Moments with the Queens of Saxony” (this might be amusing, but it wasn’t, because public characters have a way of keeping their best historic moments out of the press), “Leaves from my Asparagus Bed,” by a lady gardener, “Ad Nauseam” (this was bound in mauve leather, cost eighteen pence and was of a suitable size for packing, but I knew I could not write a letter with it that would carry conviction). James was fidgeting about the shop all this time. “Do please find something for Caroline,” I said to him. “Just wait till I get this for the vicar,” he answered, hunting in his pocket. I asked what it was and he held it up. “But you can’t have that!” I said, “I want it. It is the very thing for Caroline; and the vicar won’t read it. Here! this is much better for him.” I took up a book with a beautiful picture on the cover. A masked bishop digging up a corpse from the hearthstone, under the very nose of an expiring cook. “The vicar is such a darling,” I said, “you must give him something nice. He loves excitement, and told me himself that the lending libraries are so stupid; they send him nothing but shop, and he does not know what to ask for.”