"Not much question of that," admitted Peter, smiling. He gave her one of his clear-sighted glances, under which she shrank a little though she did not show it. It made her say, rather defiantly:

"Of course you think, as you always did, that I 'm the most useless creature living, and that my ideals are about as insignificant as the amount of actual work I do."

Their eyes met, hers black and sparkling, his gray and steady and cool.

He studied her for an instant, with a quality in his intent scrutiny before which her eyes went down. She was used to admiration in men's observation of her, and though that element could hardly be lacking in Peter's, since he was human, and she a more than ordinarily charming young woman, there was also in his regard that appearance of taking her measure, which, quite unconsciously, he could never help exercising when brought into contact with men or women. But his words, when they came, were gentle.

"If you don't mind my saying so, I think you 're capable of things so well worth while that your life might be a wonderful thing to you. You could, if you cared to, do what you pleased with almost anybody. You have the art, the magnetism--whatever it may be--of the born leader.

The only trouble is--you don't much mind--do you?--which way you lead."

This from Peter Bell! For a minute Olive was left speechless. Yet it was impossible to resent his frank putting of the case, for it conveyed something which gave her a distinct pleasure.

"I 'm not sure whether I ought to be angry with you or not," she said, after a minute.

"Please don't be."

"When did you take up the profession of preacher?"

"To the queen?" suggested Peter, with an odd smile. "But you 're at liberty to order my head off at any minute, you know. Or to preach back--which would be worse."

In spite of this pa.s.sage-at-arms, they were both laughing when the others came up with the announcement that it was time to go back to the house. But Peter's keen speech sank in; Olive did not forget it soon.

And somehow, she was more than ever sure that Peter himself was well worth cultivating.

"I never was so excited over a Christmas tree as over this one,"

confided Nancy to Shirley, as the two dressed for the evening. The Christmas dinner had taken place, after the country fashion, in the middle of the afternoon. It was now six o'clock, and the evening was before them. No supper was in order, after the tremendous banquet at three o'clock; but Jane had provided certain light refreshments of the decorative sort; salad and sandwiches, gay-coloured ices and bonbons, cakes and a great bowl of fruit punch, all of which waited in a cool spot ready for the serving by the young people themselves. Cook and Norah had been sent into town, for a celebration of their own with friends.

"Oh, oh! What a pretty frock!" cried Nancy, as her friend shook out a soft silken fabric of pale gray, lighted up here and there with small sprigs of scarlet flowers, with belt and long streamers of scarlet velvet to match.

"Do you like it? It's my one French gown, and an inexpensive one, too, but it looks festal, and I thought I 'd christen it to-night. Will you wear the one I have for you? I meant to put it on the tree, but it occurred to me you might like to wear it and keep me company," and Shirley pulled a long box from under the valance of the high 'four-poster' bed.

"You are the dearest thing that ever lived!" cried Nancy, going down on her knees before the box, and lifting out the frock of pale blue veiling, with its tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs of flowered ribbon, a girlish creation of the sort to please young eyes.

It was a very happy pair of maids who descended the staircase together.

They were happy, however, in two quite different ways. Nancy's cup was overflowing in the delight of her pretty finery; but it was a joy of another sort which made Shirley's heart beat high. Under the folds of gray with the scarlet flowers a small envelope lay hidden, over the contents of which the girl had spent an anxious hour.

There has not been room to tell of it in this brief chronicle, but for the last month Shirley had been having consultations with Murray over an important subject--the matter of an investment she wished to make. She owned not a small amount of property, in stocks and bonds, an inheritance from her grandfather, the management of which had been put into her hands by her father as a matter of education. Within a few weeks a chance for profitable investment of a portion of this holding had appealed to her, and after a spirited argument with her brother, she had received his sanction in the course she was eager to adopt.

The legal part of the transaction had been completed two days before Christmas, and since then Shirley had been greatly occupied in spare moments with the composition of something which might seem to have small connection with so prosaic a subject as the transfer of certain legal doc.u.ments from one pair of hands to another. She was not yet satisfied with the result of her endeavours, being no poet, but the best burlesque production of which she had been capable had been carefully copied on her typewriter, and was now reposing where its presence considerably quickened the heart-beats under the scarlet flowers.

At a moment when she was alone in the room Shirley slipped round behind the tree, and extracting the envelope from its agitating position, quickly, although with fingers which mixed themselves up a little, tied it in an obscure place beneath a bough, where a gay golden ball nearly hid it from view.

"Come out! Come out!" commanded Rufus, as, arriving upon the scene, he spied her. "Absolutely not a feather's weight more allowed on that tree.

There never was a tree so bowed down with care as that one. Nor another small boy so impatient to begin as this one. I caught sight of my name on that package six feet long under there, and I 've been delirious with suspense ever since."

"As soon as Santa Claus arrives," promised Jane, who had agreed with Shirley that no accompaniment of the traditional Christmas should be lacking, although there were no small children present to be edified by the sight of the patron saint. Older people, as she well knew, frequently enjoy a return to childish means of entertainment, and when Santa Claus, in full rig, walked into the room, she was not surprised to see the looks of greatest pleasure upon the faces of Grandfather and Grandmother Bell.

Peter made a capital Santa Claus, treating them all as children, and making speeches as he presented the gifts which brought forth peals of merriment. The gifts themselves were many and varied, from the mittens knit by Grandmother Bell's skilful fingers, to the silken scarfs and fans and foreign photographs which were the contributions of the travelled Townsends.

"Skees!" cried Rufus, going into contortions of ecstasy over Murray's present, and clumping up and down the room on the unwieldy articles.

"Won't I get out to-morrow night on that hill back of the pond!"

"Such beautiful lace I never saw," said Mrs. Joseph Bell to Mrs.

Townsend, her fingers caressing the exquisite tracery of the pattern lying in her lap, which had come to her "with the love of Eleanor Forrest Townsend."

"I thought it looked like you," returned Mrs. Townsend, who was looking very much pleased herself over a handkerchief wrought by Nancy's clever art. The others were busy over their gifts; it was a pandemonium of exclamations and congratulations, expressions of grat.i.tude and observations of wonder and delight. Shirley, her lap full of parcels, tissue-paper, ribbons, and cards of presentation, talking and exclaiming with the rest, was yet keeping her eye on Santa Claus, as he stripped the tree. She was watching for the moment when he should find that envelope. When it came, she meant to be out of the room and away.

Meanwhile Santa Claus dropped a fresh package into her lap. She recognised the saint's own handwriting on the wrapper--a bolder, firmer hand than one would have expected from a gentleman with so long and snowy a beard. She opened it with strong antic.i.p.ation, and found within a set of note-books of special style and quality, evidently made to order, for the binding was of a beautiful texture of leather, and the paper within of the best known to trade--the thin India, used only for fine work. Her name, delicately stenciled on the covers, completed a gift which appealed to the girl with a sense of the thought and care put into its make-up. She looked up, to find Santa Claus's eyes watching her from behind the tree, his lips smiling beneath the white beard, for her surprise and pleasure were plainly to be read upon her face. She nodded at him, colouring rosily--a picture, in her gray and scarlet frock, as she sat upon the floor surrounded by her gifts, the sight of which was quite sufficient to reward any giver.

Almost everything was off the tree. "h.e.l.lo, here 's something I nearly missed!" murmured Santa Claus, catching sight of the corner of the white envelope beneath the golden ball. Shirley looked up quickly, saw him struggling with the red ribbon which tied the envelope in place, and rose to her feet, letting a lapful of miscellaneous articles slide to the floor.

Everybody was busy, and only Mrs. Bell noticed, and said, gently, "Look out, dear, you 're dropping things." But Shirley was gone, through the crowd of people and packages, to the door, and had closed it softly behind her.

Peter had already had a gift from Shirley, a little thing. She was not the girl to present any man with a keepsake more valuable than the small book of modern verse which had in it certain stirring lines that she knew would be a stimulus to him. So when he saw his own name in typewriting upon the envelope, he opened it without much consideration, thinking it a joke of Ross's or Rufus's. But a second envelope was fitted inside the first, and it was labeled, "Please don't read this in public."

His curiosity was awakened now, and slipping the communication into his pocket, he summarily finished his duties by distributing the few remaining parcels without comment, and then walked away out of the room.

It had occurred to him that that note-paper was of a sort that he had seen once or twice before, when Shirley had had occasion to send him a note of invitation.

Outside in the hall, which was dimly lighted by an oil side-lamp screwed to the wall, Peter opened his inner envelope. Still in typewritten characters was a set of rhymes, cast in a popular fashion used by makers of humorous doggerel. His eye ran over them hurriedly, with a low e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of astonishment and incredulity at the end; then he read them again more intently, looking as if he could not believe the evidence of his eyes, They ran thus:

A farm owned by people named Bell Was a place where a Thorn would fain dwell.

So he bought up a mortgage, Intending to war wage On the property-owners named Bell.

Now one of the Bells, christened Peter, Thought life would be fuller and sweeter If the farm could be shorn Of this sharp-p.r.i.c.king Thorn, For he feared a foreclosure, did Peter.

A designing young person called Townsend Was seeking investment (cash down), and She purchased the mortgage.

She never will war wage, She'll never foreclose, will S. Townsend.

Peter had noticed, if n.o.body else had, when Shirley went out of the room. He now understood her sudden disappearance. He made a quick trip through the lower part of the house, paper in hand, his questioning gaze penetrating every corner. She was not in the sitting-room, or the dining-room, or the kitchen--at least he thought she was not, although he even looked into the wood-shed. As he was returning through the kitchen, an expression of determination on his face not wholly obscured by his patriarchal beard, whose hitherto uncomfortable presence he had quite forgotten, a slight movement of the pantry door caught his eye.

He seized the door-k.n.o.b. It would not turn for a moment; then it slipped slowly round, for his fingers were stronger than hers.

The two confronted each other--the white-bearded gentleman, with the figure of an athlete and the eyes of an excited youth, and the slim girl in the gray silk, with cheeks like her scarlet ribbons.

"What does this mean?" demanded Santa Claus. He put forth one vigorous arm and drew the runaway out from the closet by her resisting hand.

"Just what it says, I should think," answered Shirley, bravely, although trembling. Had she offended him? Through the whole transaction that had been the one burden of her anxiety. "It doesn't say it very clearly, but she never tried writing limericks before. They 're not so easy as you might think."

"She! Who?"

"'S. Townsend.'"

"Do you mean to say you 've actually bought that mortgage?":

"Murray did the business. I didn't see Mr. Thorn."

"But you own the mortgage?"

"Yes."

"Thorn did n't want to sell it."