......

THE WEATHER TODAY WAS very spring-like. It was as though winter had turned a corner. It must have provided some kind of inspiration to my yard man. About mid-afternoon he tramped through the kitchen and opened the match drawer. (Uh, it's a fact, Reader Dear, we do have a drawer entirely devoted to matches, appearing every bit as though we two are pyromaniacs! [In spite of the fact that every once in a great while I become so pull-out-my-hair frustrated by the excruciatingly problematic difficulties of living in an antique house, and utter such rash statements as "I'd like to burn the whole place to the ground!" you can be assured, Reader Dear, it's not something I'd ever do! And, as for the yard man, he's a lover of building bonfires, and indoor fires, too, but his fingers don't get twitchy at the thought of an indoor fire anywhere other than the spot allocated for it].)

So, as I was saying, he opened the match drawer. Most naturally, he took out a pack of matches. And a few minutes later our long-dead Christmas tree was nothing but ashes.

......