that life is not worth living; and to a man fresh from over-sea the association of Christmas with such weather—­to say nothing of the victuals!—­was the acme of satire.  There is no whiteness in the African Christmas, and for the first time in their lives the newcomers sighed for a “green” one!  A “green” one would cool the atmosphere, and a cooler atmosphere would content us.  We would gladly let the turkey and the pudding pass if the Turkish Bath would go too.  Had the shade of Santa Claus, or the flesh and blood of anybody, come loaded with poultry for our “stockings,” we should not have said, thank you.  Our appetites were gone.  They were gone, and all we asked was that they should be restored for Christmas Day—­just as if Claus had indeed made amends for the cruel kindness of the “Clerk!” It was kind of Sir Alfred Milner to arrange a congratulatory flash of compliments (by signal from Modder River) and to wish us all sorts of luck.  One sort would have sufficed:  the kind contained in a record output of rain.  Would it come?  First it would—­and then it would not.  A duststorm intervened by way of compromise; it was a breeze—­hot, choking, blinding, but still a breeze.  We got thunder and lightning, too; but the rain hesitated—­as if it knew there was little left to soak in Kimberley.  It ultimately relented, however, and came down in torrents through the night.

Christmas Day itself!  It had come, cool, delicious; the change, the metamorphosis in the weather, the disappearance of the azure sky was strange and lovely.  Those shifting, hustling clouds, how pleasant they were to look at.  The day was the antithesis of its predecessor—­the mildest we had had for a long, long time.  It was a relief to find that the “hottest day of the year” was a figurative expression used to denote the middle of summer.  Our fears of cremation were entirely dissipated—­as sometimes happens in the case of passengers to the Cape who, sweltering in a broiling sun outside the tropics, marvel how they are to toe the Line.

It thus came to pass that our interest in breakfast was after all considerable.  I shall confine my congratulations to the genius of one resourceful landlady who furnished, in addition to “mealie-pap” allowed by “Law,” some illicit tit-bits of meat, as a surprise!  But she did not cease staggering humanity until a small dish of butter was produced.  Real butter!—­the lady’s character made her word sacred.  It was an astounding phenomenon in itself, but the sharing of it in a season of famine with poor relations like her boarders was the kindest cut of all.  Butter it was; we remembered the taste, and there was the circumstantial evidence of our eyes.  We had once been taken in by dripping; but there was no mistaking the species in the dish on Christmas morning.  There it was in all its luscious sallowness, and the smacking of our lips betokened an appreciation of all that we had lost in the weeks gone by.  Many, alas! missed more than