Their principal occupation consisted in making and smoking cigarettes the whole day, and in superintending the work on the brig.
The dark season has a depressing effect upon the spirits of many in the North, especially on those days when there is very little to do.

Thus, during Christmas, and especially on Christmas Eve, my father used to be excessively melancholy.

While gaiety filled the whole house, and the smartly-dressed servants kept Christmas round the kitchen table, which was adorned with treble-branched candlesticks, he generally sat shut up in the office with his own thoughts, and would not be disturbed by any one.
This Christmas Eve, however, he was in the parlour for a while, on Senor Martinez's account; but he was silent and dejected the whole time, as if he were only longing for his solitary office, to which, moreover, he retired directly after supper..