We had to give up our pleasant work early that afternoon, as we had engaged to help at a children’s party given by a kindly English doctor in the neighbouring village. He had hired a large room at the hotel, and invited about forty children to a sumptuous tea; and, though wintering abroad for health’s sake, and with doubtless many an anxious thought for wife and little ones at home, he most unselfishly catered upon this evening for the amusement of “other folks’ children.” The long table was covered with dainties such as little folks love, while assiduous waiters handed round cups of delicious-looking coffee and chocolate. Tea over, there was an adjournment to another room in which all kinds of merry romps were carried on for an hour or two, a general distribution of presents took place, a hearty cheer was raised for the kind doctor, and the young flock trooped gaily home. Christmas Eve we spent in really hard work over our decorations. The dining-room was made festive with mottoes in pine sprays and trophies of orange-boughs laden with fruit, while the drawing-room was adorned with maidenhair fern, lycopodium moss, arbutus-berries, and the much-prized holly before mentioned. Then, about six p.m. we started to spend the evening with some charming neighbours. The host was German, his wife English, and their two children spoke both languages with equal facility, adding thereto no mean proficiency in Italian. An Italian marquis and his younger brother, a married sister of our hostess, with her husband and little girl, a German composer, with our own quartet, made up the party. We were at once ushered into the room in which the Christmas tree had been placed; for the children, at least, were on the tiptoe of excitement as to their gifts; and thence, after due distribution thereof, we adjourned to the dining-room for high tea. The table was a picture, with its bowls of crimson or pale-pink china roses. Each couvert had its own bouquet of heliotrope, fern, and camellia; while the profusion of handsome silver and of ancient Nuremberg glass combined still further to set off the tasteful appearance of the whole. What with the many German dishes, and the chatter of the German tongue all around me, I seemed to be transferred bodily from the shores of the Mediterranean to the dear and well-remembered Fatherland—an illusion which was not dispelled until an hour or so later on, when we found ourselves walking homewards under the brilliant, starlit sky of the south. On this particular night, too, the stars were shining with a radiancy which in England would betoken a hard frost; only that in this case the stars themselves looked so much larger, and in many instances shone with such intensity as to make themselves the centre of a distinct halo.