Father Christmas advanced a timid step across the floor. Then he paused, as if in sudden fear.
“Is this floor mined?” he said.
“No, no,” said Time soothingly. And to me he added in a murmured whisper, “He’s afraid. He was blown up in a mine in No Man’s Land between the trenches at Christmas-time in 1914. It broke his nerve.”
“May I put my toys on that machine gun?” asked Father Christmas timidly. “It will help to keep them dry.”
“It is not a machine gun,” said Time gently. “See, it is only a pile of books upon the sofa.” And to me he whispered, “They turned a machine gun on him in the streets of Warsaw. He thinks he sees them everywhere since then.”
“It’s all right, Father Christmas,” I said, speaking as cheerily as I could, while I rose and stirred the fire into a blaze. “There are no machine guns here and there are no mines. This is but the house of a poor writer.”
“Ah,” said Father Christmas, lowering his tattered hat still further and attempting something of a humble bow, “a writer? Are you Hans Andersen, perhaps?”
“Not quite,” I answered.
“But a great writer, I do not doubt,” said
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