And it won't go. It can't be done
--not in these awful days."
"A Christmas Story?"
"Yes. You see, Father Time," I explained, glad with a
foolish little vanity of my trade to be able to tell him
something that I thought enlightening, "all the Christmas
stuff--stories and jokes and pictures--is all done, you
know, in October."
I thought it would have surprised him, but I was mistaken.
"Dear me," he said, "not till October! What a rush! How
well I remember in Ancient Egypt--as I think you call
it--seeing them getting out their Christmas things, all
cut in hieroglyphics, always two or three years ahead."
"Two or three years!" I exclaimed.
"Pooh," said Time, "that was nothing. Why in Babylon they
used to get their Christmas jokes ready--all baked in
clay--a whole Solar eclipse ahead of Christmas. They
said, I think, that the public preferred them so."
"Egypt?" I said. "Babylon? But surely, Father Time, there
was no Christmas in those days. I thought--"
"My dear boy," he interrupted gravely, "don't you know
that there has always been Christmas?"
I was silent. Father Time had moved across the room and
stood beside the fireplace, leaning on the mantelpiece.
The little wreaths of smoke from the fading fire seemed
to mingle with his shadowy outline.
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