Ding-dong bell! ding-dong bell! The Christmas bells are ringing.

Christmas has come--Christmas as it appears on a Christmas card, white and hard, and beset with puffed-out, ruffled robins. Only Nature is wise enough not to express the ironical wish that we may have a "merry one."

For myself, I have but small opinion of Christmas as a time of jollity.

Solemn--_blessed_, if you will--but no, not jovial. At no time do the dead so clamor to be remembered. Even those that went a long time ago, the regret for whose departure has settled down to a tender, almost pleasant pain; whom at other times we go nigh to forget; even they cry out loud, "Think of us!"

When all the family is gathered, when the fire burns quick and clear, and the church-bells ring out grave and sweet, neither will _they_ be left out. But, on the other hand, to one who has paid his bills, and in whose family Death's cannon have as yet made no breaches, I do not see why it may not be a season of moderate, placid content.

Festivity! jollity! _never!_ I have paid my bills, and there are no gaps among my people. Sometimes I tremble when I think how many we are; one of us must go soon. But, as yet, when I count us over, none lacks.

Father, mother, Algy, Bobby, the Brat, Tou Tou. Slightly as I have spoken of them to myself, and conscientiously as I have promised myself to derive no pleasure from their society, and even to treat them with distant coolness, if they are, any of them, and Bobby especially--it is he that I most mistrust--more joyfully disposed than I think fitting, yet my heart has been growing ever warmer and warmer at the thought of them, as Christmas-time draws nigh; and now, as I kiss their firm, cold, healthy cheeks--(I declare that Bobby's cheeks are as hard as marbles), I know how I have lied to myself.

Father is not in quite so good a humor as I could have wished, his man having lost his hat-box _en route_, and consequently his nose is rather more aquiline than I think desirable.

"Do not be alarmed!" says Bobby, in a patronizing aside, introducing me, as if I were a stranger, to father's peculiarities; "a little infirmity of temper, but the _heart_ is in the right place."

"Bobby," say I, anxiously, in a whisper, "has he--has he brought the _bag_?"

Bobby shakes his head.

"I _knew_ he would not," cry I, rather crestfallen. Then, with sudden exasperation: "I wish I had not given it to him; he always _hated_ it. I wish I had given it to Roger instead."

"Never you mind!" cries Bobby, while his round eyes twinkle mischievously; "I dare say he has got one by now, a nice one, all beads and wampums, that the old Begum has made him."

I laugh, but I also sigh. What a long time it seems since I was jealous of Bobby's Begum! We are a little behind father, whispering with our heads together, while he, in his raspingest voice, is giving his delinquent a month's warning. That tone! it still makes me feel sneaky.

"Bobby," say I, putting my arm through his substantial one, and speaking in a low tone of misgiving, "how is he? how has he been?"

"We have been a little fractious," replies Bobby, leniently--"a little disposed to quarrel with our bread-and-b.u.t.ter; but, as you may remember, my dear, from _your_ experience of our humble roof, Christmas never was our happiest time."

"No, never," reply I, pensively.

The storm is rising: at least father's voice is. It appears that the valet is not only to go, but to go without a character.

"Never you mind," repeats Bobby, rea.s.suringly, seeing me blench a little at these disused amenities, pressing the hand that rests on his arm against his stout side; "it is nothing to _you_! bless your heart, you are the apple of his eye."

"Am I?" reply I, laughing. "It has newly come to me, if I am."

"And I am his 'good, brave Bobby!'--his 'gallant boy!'--do you know why?"

"No."

"Because I am going to Hong-Kong, and he hears that they are keeping two nice roomy graves open all the time there!"

"You are _not_?" (in a tone of keen anxiety and pain); then, with a sudden change of tone to a nervous and constrained amenity: "Yes, it _is_ a nice-sized room, is not it? My only fault with it is, that the windows are so high up that one cannot see out of them when one is sitting down."

For father, having demolished his body-servant, and reduced mother to her usual niche-state, now turns to me, and, in his genialest, happiest society-manner, compliments me on my big house.

That is a whole day ago. Since then, I have grown used to seeing father's austere face, unbent into difficult suavity, at the opposite end of the dinner-table to me, to hearing the well-known old sound of Tou Tou's shrieks of mixed anguish and delight, as Bobby rushes after her in headlong pursuit, down the late so silent pa.s.sages; and to looking complacently from one to another of the holiday faces round the table, where Barbara and I have sat, during the last noiseless month, in stillest dialogue or preoccupied silence.

I _love_ noise. You may think that I have odd taste; but I _love_ Bobby's stentor laugh, and Tou Tou's ear-piercing yells. I even forget to think whether their mirth pa.s.ses the appointed bounds I had set it. I have mislaid my receipt of cold repression. My heart goes out to them.

I have been a little disturbed as to how to dispose of father during the day, but he mercifully takes that trouble off my hands. Providence has brought good out of evil, congenial occupation out of the hat-box. He has spent all the few daylight-hours in telegraphing for it to every station on the line; in telling several home-truths to the porters at our own station, which--it being Christmas-time, and they consequently all more or less tipsy--they have taken with a bland playfulness that he has found a little trying; and, lastly, in writing a long letter to the _Times_. And I, meanwhile, being easy in my mind on his score, knowing that he is happy, am at leisure to be happy myself. In company with my brother, I have spent all the little day in decorating the church, making it into a cheerful, green Christmas bower. We always did it at home.

The dusk has come now--the quick-hurrying, December dusk, and we have all but finished. We have had to beg for a few candles, in order to put our finishing touches here and there about the sombre church. They flame, throwing little jets of light on the glossy laurel-leaves that make collars round the pillars' stout necks; on the fresh moss-beds, vividly green, in the windows; on the dull, round holly-berries. In the glow, the ivy twines in cunning garlands round the rough-sculptured font, and the oak lectern; and, above G.o.d's altar, a great white cross of hot-house flowers blooms delicately, telling of summer, and matching the words of old good news beneath it, that brought, as some say, summer, or, at least, the hope of summer, to the world.

Yes, we have nearly done. The Brat stands on the top of a step-ladder, dexterously posing the last wintry garland; and all we others are resting a moment--we and our coadjutors. For we have _two_ coadjutors.

Mr. Musgrave, of course. Now, at this moment, through the gray light, and across the candles, I can see him leaning against the font, while Barbara kneels with bent head at his feet, completing the ornamentation of the pedestal. I always knew that things would come right if we waited long enough, and _coming_ right they are--_coming_, not _come_, for still, he has not spoken. I have consulted each and all of my family, father excepted, as to the average length of time allotted to _unspoken_ courtship, and each has a.s.signed a different period; the _longest_, however, has been already far exceeded by Frank. Tou Tou, indeed, adduces a gloomy case of a young man, who spent two years and a half in dumb longing, and broke a blood-vessel and died at the end of them; but this is so discouraging an anecdote, that we all poo-poohed it as unauthentic.

"Perhaps he does not mean to speak at all!" says the Brat, starting a new and hazardous idea; "perhaps he means to take it for granted!"

"Walk out with her, some fine morning," says Algy, laughing, "and say, like Wemmick, 'Hallo! here's a church! let's have a wedding!'"

"It would be a good thing," retorts the Brat, gravely, "if there were a printed form for such occasions; it would be a great relief to people."

This talk did not happen in the church, but at an evening _seance_ overnight. Our second coadjutor is Mrs. Huntley.

"I am afraid I am not very efficient," she says, with a pathetic smile.

"I can't _stand_ very long, but, if I might be allowed to sit down now and then, I might perhaps be some little help."

And sat down she has, accordingly, ever since, on the top pulpit-step.

It seems that Algy cannot stand very long, either; for he has taken possession of the step next below the top one, and there he abides.

Thank Heaven! they are getting dark now! If _legitimate_ lovers, whose cooing is desirable and approved, are a sickly and sickening spectacle, surely the sight of illegitimate lovers would make the blood boil in the veins of Moses, Miriam, or Job.

Bobby, Tou Tou, and I, having no one to hang over us, or gawk amorously up at us, are sitting in a row in our pew. Bobby has garlanded Tou Tou preposterously with laurel, to give us an idea, as he says, of how he himself will look by-and-by, after some future Trafalgar. Now, he is whispering to me--a whisper accompanied by one of those powerful and painful nudges, with which he emphasizes his conversation on his listener's ribs.

"Look at him!" indicating his elder brother, and speaking with a tone of disgust and disparagement; "did you ever see such a _beast_ as he looks?"

"Not often!" reply I, readily, with that fine intolerance which one never sees in full bloom after youth is past.

"I say, Nancy!" with a second and rather lesser nudge, "if ever you see any symptoms of--of _that_--" (nodding toward the pulpit) "in me--"

"If--" repeat I, scornfully, "of course I shall!"

"Well, that is as it may be, but if you _do_, mind what I tell you--do not say any thing to anybody, but--_put an end to me_! it does not matter _how_; smother me with bolsters; run your bodkin up to its hilt in me--"

"Even if I _did_," interrupt I, laughing, "I should never reach any vital part--you are _much_ too fat!"

"I should not be so fat then," returns he, gravely, amiably overlooking the personality of my observation; "love would have pulled me down!"

The Brat has nearly finished. He is nimbly descending the ladder, with a long, guttering dip in his right hand.

"The other two--" begins Bobby, thoughtfully, turning his eyes from pulpit to font.

"I do not mind _them_ half so much," interrupt I, indulgently; "they are not half so disgusting."

"Has he done it yet?" (lowering his cheerful loud voice to an important whisper).

I shake my head.