father has been quite distracted with concern for you , and at christmas , when you were not there , after we had eaten the goose and the pudding , father took out the port and he toasted absent friends , and mother sobbed like a babe , so of course i cried too , and then father began to blow his nose into his best handkerchief and grandmother and grandfather hempstock insisted upon pulling the christmas crackers and reading the jolly mottoes and somehow that only made matters worse , and , to put it bluntly , tristran , you quite spoiled our christmas . ''