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Show -227- In bed, he fell asleep easily and slept soundly the first part of the night. Toxard morning he dreamed that he had writ-ten the next chapter of his book, and it xas brilliant. When he awoke, he could not remember what had been so xronderful about it. He lay axake, trying to recall events of the dream, but they had submerged into unconsciousness. Beside him, but not touching him in their oversize bed, his wife breathed heavily but quietly. His thoughts turned toward Christmas. With the trouble pending at the University, this could not be their usual carefree holiday season. Their best times had come when the children xrere young, and the years he remembered best had been the difficult ones. When he xas in graduate school in the Midxrest, they had been too poor to afford an elaborate Christmas, so had decided to buy only gifts that could be worn out or discarded in the few months they xrould have before moving back to Utah. The children had been too young to notice, and they seemed as pleased xrith what they received for presents on Christmas morning as they later did when the gifts were more extravagant. The Christmas he remembered best of all xas the one that came a few months after Pearl Harbor, just as the xar xas beginning. His younger daughter had insisted that she xanted as her present "a doll'.in a swimg." With all the shortages in their toxm, no such thing could be found. Even the dolls, because of the rubber shortage, xrere cheap and flimsy, constructed of cloth or paper mache. They tried to shift her |