As he did so he heard a loud noise, as of harsh, rattling winds in the next room, and he knew that Sir Raffle had come back from the Treasury. There was a creaking of boots, and a knocking of chairs, and a ringing of bells, and then a loud angry voice,--a voice that was very harsh, and on this occasion very angry. Why had not his twelve-o'clock letters been sent up to him to the West End? Why not?

Mr. Eames knew all about it. Why did Mr. Eames know all about it? Why had not Mr. Eames sent them up? Where was Mr. Eames? Let Mr. Eames be sent to him. All which Mr. Eames heard standing with the cigar in his mouth and his back to the fire. "Somebody has been bullying old Buffle, I suppose. After all he has been at the Treasury to-day,"

said Eames to himself. But he did not stir till the messenger had been to him, nor even then, at once. "All right, Rafferty," he said; "I'll go in just now." Then he took half-a-dozen more whiffs from the cigar, threw the remainder into the fire, and opened the door which communicated between his room and Sir Raffle's.

The great man was standing with two unopened epistles in his hand.

"Eames," said he, "here are letters--" Then he stopped himself, and began upon another subject. "Did I not give express orders that I would have no smoking in the office?"

"I think Mr. Kissing said something about it, sir."

"Mr. Kissing! It was not Mr. Kissing at all. It was I. I gave the order myself."

"You'll find it began with Mr. Kissing."

"It did not begin with Mr. Kissing; it began and ended with me. What are you going to do, sir?" John Eames had stepped towards the bell, and his hand was already on the bell-pull.

"I was going to ring for the papers, sir."

"And who told you to ring for the papers? I don't want the papers.

The papers won't show anything. I suppose my word may be taken without the papers. Since you're so fond of Mr. Kissing--"

"I'm not fond of Mr. Kissing at all."

"You'll have to go back to him, and let somebody come here who will not be too independent to obey my orders. Here are two most important letters have been lying here all day, instead of being sent up to me at the Treasury."

"Of course they have been lying there. I thought you were at the club."

"I told you I should go to the Treasury. I have been there all the morning with the chancellor,"--when Sir Raffle spoke officially of the chancellor he was not supposed to mean the Lord Chancellor--"and here I find letters which I particularly wanted lying upon my desk now. I must put an end to this kind of thing. I must, indeed. If you like the outer office better say so at once, and you can go."

"I'll think about it, Sir Raffle."

"Think about it! What do you mean by thinking about it? But I can't talk about that now. I'm very busy, and shall be here till past seven. I suppose you can stay?"

"All night, if you wish it, sir."

"Very well. That will do for the present.--I wouldn't have had these letters delayed for twenty pounds."

"I don't suppose it would have mattered one straw if both of them remained unopened till next week." This last little speech, however, was not made aloud to Sir Raffle, but by Johnny to himself in the solitude of his own room.

Very soon after that he went away, Sir Raffle having discovered that one of the letters in question required his immediate return to the West End. "I've changed my mind about staying. I shan't stay now. I should have done if these letters had reached me as they ought."

"Then I suppose I can go?"

"You can do as you like about that," said Sir Raffle.

Eames did do as he liked, and went home, or to his club; and as he went he resolved that he would put an end, and at once, to the present trouble of his life. Lily Dale should accept him or reject him; and, taking either the one or the other alternative, she should hear a bit of his mind plainly spoken.

CHAPTER XVI.

DOWN AT ALLINGTON.

It was Christmas-time down at Allington, and at three o'clock on Christmas Eve, just as the darkness of the early winter evening was coming on, Lily Dale and Grace Crawley were seated together, one above the other, on the steps leading up to the pulpit in Allington Church. They had been working all day at the decorations of the church, and they were now looking round them at the result of their handiwork. To an eye unused to the gloom the place would have been nearly dark; but they could see every corner turned by the ivy sprigs, and every line on which the holly-leaves were shining.

And the greeneries of the winter had not been stuck up in the old-fashioned, idle way, a bough just fastened up here and a twig inserted there; but everything had been done with some meaning, with some thought towards the original architecture of the building. The Gothic lines had been followed, and all the lower arches which it had been possible to reach with an ordinary ladder had been turned as truly with the laurel cuttings as they had been turned originally with the stone.

"I wouldn't tie another twig," said the elder girl, "for all the Christmas pudding that was ever boiled."

"It's lucky then that there isn't another twig to tie."

"I don't know about that. I see a score of places where the work has been scamped. This is the sixth time I have done the church, and I don't think I'll ever do it again. When we first began it, Bell and I, you know,--before Bell was married,--Mrs. Boyce, and the Boycian establishment generally, used to come and help. Or rather we used to help her. Now she hardly ever looks after it at all."

"She is older, I suppose."

"She's a little older, and a deal idler. How idle people do get!

Look at him. Since he has had a curate he hardly ever stirs round the parish. And he is getting so fat that-- H--sh! Here she is herself,--come to give her judgment upon us." Then a stout lady, the wife of the vicar, walked slowly up the aisle. "Well, girls," she said, "you have worked hard, and I am sure Mr. Boyce will be very much obliged to you."

"Mr. Boyce, indeed!" said Lily Dale. "We shall expect the whole parish to rise from their seats and thank us. Why didn't Jane and Bessy come and help us?"

"They were so tired when they came in from the coal club. Besides, they don't care for this kind of thing,--not as you do."

"Jane is utilitarian to the backbone, I know," said Lily, "and Bessy doesn't like getting up ladders."

"As for ladders," said Mrs. Boyce, defending her daughter, "I am not quite sure that Bessy isn't right. You don't mean to say that you did all those in the capitals yourself?"

"Every twig, with Hopkins to hold the ladder and cut the sticks; and as Hopkins is just a hundred and one years old, we could have done it pretty nearly as well alone."

"I do not think that," said Grace.

"He has been grumbling all the time," said Lily, "and swears he never will have the laurels so robbed again. Five or six years ago he used to declare that death would certainly save him from the pain of such another desecration before the next Christmas; but he has given up that foolish notion now, and talks as though he meant to protect the Allington shrubs at any rate to the end of this century."

"I am sure we gave our share from the parsonage," said Mrs. Boyce, who never understood a joke.

"All the best came from the parsonage, as of course they ought," said Lily. "But Hopkins had to make up the deficiency. And as my uncle told him to take the haycart for them instead of the hand-barrow, he is broken-hearted."

"I am sure he was very good-natured," said Grace.

"Nevertheless he is broken-hearted; and I am very good-natured too, and I am broken-backed. Who is going to preach to-morrow morning, Mrs. Boyce?"

"Mr. Swanton will preach in the morning."

"Tell him not to be long, because of the children's pudding. Tell Mr.

Boyce if he is long, we won't any of us come next Sunday."

"My dear, how can you say such wicked things! I shall not tell him anything of the kind."

"That's not wicked, Mrs. Boyce. If I were to say I had eaten so much lunch that I didn't want any dinner, you'd understand that. If Mr.

Swanton will preach for three-quarters of an hour--"