The Twentieth Window. Midwinter Eve. The Little Girl had spent so many Christmases ill or convalescing in bed, it had become a family tradition to decorate a tree in her room, usually by the long windows which looked out over the parkland. That year, her bed was made neatly in the morning & only slept in at night, and she was well enough to help her Aunt. Together they dressed the little spruce with all their favourites – sweet oranges studded with cloves, scarred & play-worn wooden penguins and foxes & ermines & doves from the nursery chest, a battered old train engine once owned by her father, a dozen bold flags of elven-realms, strings of dried apples from Old Fox's orchards, baubles & pom-poms & festoons of paper flowers, delicate Japanese chōchin from Liberty's, a papier-mâché model of Felix the Cat and a protective fairy queen, dressed in silver brocade & carrying a wand of gilded hazel.

The Tenth Window. Outside was dark & damp & foggy, but Miss Rabbit was having a very pleasant evening by the fire. She had lit the candles on her Christmas tree, and had started to wrap her first presents. She started with her many cousins, for whom she had bought dozens of pretty boxes of rose & violet & lilac creams, abricotines & framboisines, Russian toffees, Kohler's fancy bonbons, milk chocolate mice & Boules Argentines, as cold & silver as the December stars.