CHAPTER XI
CHRISTMAS DAY IN SLUMPANUGGER
Christmas Day in India was just like tobogganing in June. You all sat round and smiled, and pretended you were doing it and enjoying it real fine, though all the time you knew quite well it was a farce. Faith, as the little boy defined it, is the power that makes you believe things you know aren't true. It needs a lot of faith to make believe it's a real Christmas out in India.
Just imagine trying to celebrate Christmas on a perfect summer's day in June. Doesn't the imagination of the stay-at-home reel at it straight away? It was a glorious day, that twenty-fifth of December I spent in Slumpanugger. But it wasn't Christmas Day. It was all just exquisite when you let yourself forget how inappropriate it all was. From dawn till sunset the sun shone gloriously in a cloudless blue sky, and it was warm like an English summer's day.
We had a fire, it is true, but as Berengaria said, it was much more to look at than to sit by. That fire certainly made things look much more appro-
