The Three Merry Friends of Ettingswimple: A Christmas Story

By Grace E. Robinson

In a town not so long ago or far away, three gentlemen decide to throw a Christmas party. It will be a festival to remember as new friends are made, adventures and troubles are overcome, and much food and frivolity ensues. Join the three merry friends in their hamlet of Ettingswimple for a jolly good time!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grace Robinson
• Release date: Dec 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9780998815947

Book preview

For Nancy and Cindie, my own personal Gilthorp and Thimbleweed

Once upon a time there were three great friends. And very great friends they were indeed—they all were to each other the sort of fellow you would want to have beside you in a sword-fight, or offering you his assistance for hours on end to help you after you dropped your favorite ring down a grate.

These three friends, their names were: Gilthorp Stokely Windermeeds II, Thimbleweed Von Dimbleweed, Esquire, and Guido Algernon Smythe, Earl of Flambé. They were all fine chaps, at least to one another. Gilthorp was a strapping specimen of a man, tall, broad-shouldered, dark and exotic, and nearly deaf as a post. Thimbleweed was the oldest of the three—or, at least, he looked that way—a short, gnomish sort of gentleman with enough bushy gray hair to lose a small child in. And Guido was small of frame and bald of head, with a narrow face and bony hands, and despite his engaging smile he looked rather like a rat.

They all lived in very fine houses—all being of fine lineage, and all having inherited great titles and wealth. These fine gentlemen’s fine houses were all situated in the fine city of Ettingswimple, in some indeterminate time-period before you were born.

This tale begins in the month of December, when most folks’ thoughts are turning towards Christmas—and our gentlemen are no different.

Chapter 1: In Which Thimbleweed Decides to Throw a Most Superlative Christmas Party

One bright sunny winter morning Thimbleweed Von Dimbleweed, Esquire, looked out his library window. The sun was shining, the snow on the streets was clean and white (having just fallen that previous night), and a merchant was making his slow way down the street with a wagon laden with evergreen boughs.

By twiggers, Christmas is almost upon us! Thimbleweed exclaimed to no one in particular. And no one in particular heard him, except for his faithful pet dragon who was asleep on the hearth.

The dragon, when asleep, looked a bit like a Great Dane, though she was an odd purple-ish-brown color, which no Great Dane ever was. The purple-ish-brown were scales, of course, not fur; and her head and snoot resembled that of