This charming story is from a memoir by Kate Douglas Wiggin about her chance encounter with Charles Dickens when she was a little girl in Maine. (She would grow up to write, among other things, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.) I first came across it in a now-vanished Evanston bookshop long ago and it never fails to lift my spirits. All best wishes of the season to John Mastodon and friends.
@patrickleary There's an account in the 7 Feb 1912 NYT,, "Dickens Diners Hear How Child Won Him," but the Garden of Memory account is much more fulsome.