Christmas passed quietly enough. We consumed a tremendous amount of cognac and mastik, and anything else going, regardless of price, and for a few hours we quite took charge of things. There was a concert of sorts with a few banjo items and a farce at the end which was more ridiculous than funny, but it served as well. On Christmas Eve we eluded the postas, and about midnight, while trying to correct my bearings for the house, for I had somehow got downhill, I saw a figure of him we call the Admiral (a naval paymaster), who evidently having wearied of trying to discipline his legs had given it up and was crawling vigorously on all fours in the dark. The sight of this white figure crawling mysteriously along in the darkness, believing himself unobserved, made me shout with laughter. The Admiral put on a huge spurt when he heard it! But the feature of Christmas was the children's party we gave by special leave of the kaimakam. For days we had been cooking tartlets and cakes and macaroons. They knew it was on, and before breakfast a big crowd of children and mothers had accumulated near our alley-way. We took our long table and spread upon it "our events," as we called them, including apples and special quantities of milk and nuts. The poor little wretches are half-starved. For weeks previously we had given them bits of bread, so that each one of us had an "adopted" nipper. But besides our little pals--mostly Greek, but some Turks--dozens of youngsters from far and wide had turned up, some in their mothers' arms. Sam Mayo, an ex-sergeant-major, took charge and formed them into column of route, mothers and all. He did splendidly. There was much crying and yelling, but he got them in order and then made them file past. I don't think we had laughed so much for many months. Each one of us soon found himself administering milk to a monthling in one arm with half a dozen brats into one's pockets or wrestling with one's legs at the same time. Once there was a stampede set up by a "Young Turk Party" (boys of eight and upwards), and we each had to grab all the mites by a leg or an arm and hold them up out of harm's way. One or two got a bit squashed as it was. The supreme joke was when Sam was proudly showing us how to coax a tiny infant to eat a macaroon; it got so enthusiastic as to bite a half inch of his thumb nearly off. "The little devil nipped like a mongoose," yelled Sam, upsetting his second youngster into the sweet rock that stuck _en bloc_ to its head. We enjoyed ourselves as much as they. The postas, with one or two exceptions, helped us. The poor little wretches ate and drank as if they hadn't for a week at least. Then we had a scramble among the larger children for the nuts and surplus, and when the fights had subsided gave them some piastre notes. Altogether it was a great show and made us very happy.