'Is there anything I can put straight?'

'No, thank you, Uncle Regie.'

'There's something amiss!' said the good-natured, puzzled uncle. 'What is it? I should have thought you would have got on with these young folks like--like a house on fire.'

'That's all you know about it,' thought Dolly. What she said was, 'One never does.'

'I don't understand that generalization,' answered her uncle; then, as she did not answer, he added, 'I am sure your Aunt Lily is very anxious to make you happy. Have you anything to complain of?'

'No,' said Dolores, 'I don't complain of anything.'

She was thinking of Valetta's notion that she wanted to 'make up stories of them,' and therefore she said it in a manner which conveyed that she had a good deal to complain of, if she would, though really she would have been a good deal puzzled to produce a grievance that a man like Uncle Reginald would understand, though she had plenty for sympathy like Constance's.

However, it was not to be expected that a private conference should last long in that house, and Mysie appeared at that moment, looking for her cousin, to say that 'Mamma was ready for her.' Dolores went off with more alacrity than usual, and Uncle Reginald beckoned up his other niece, and observed: 'I say, Mysie, what's the matter with Dolly?'

'She is always like that, uncle,' answered Mysie.

'Don't you hit it off with her, then?'

'I can't, uncle,' said Mysie, looking up, with a sudden wink now and then to stop her tears. 'I thought we should have been such friends; but she won't let me. I didn't mean to be stupid and disagreeable, like the girls in 'Ashenden Schoolroom,' but she doesn't care for anybody but Miss Constance and Maude Sefton.'

'I hope you are all very kind to her,' said Uncle Reginald, rather wistfully.

'We try,' said Mysie, who was not going to betray Wilfred and Valetta, and could honestly say so of herself and Gillian.

And there again came an interruption, in the shape of Gillian. 'Mysie, mamma says we may finish up our sacred illuminated cards, for it will be Sunday work.'

'Oh, jolly!' cried Mysie, jumping up. 'And will you give me one rub of your real good carmine Gilly-flower, dear.'

'And of my ultramarine, too,' responded Gillian, wherewith the two sisters disappeared, radiant with goodwill and grat.i.tude; while poor Uncle Reginald, who had intended to devote this wet Sunday afternoon to writing to his brother that Dolores was perfectly happy and thriving in Lily's care, and like a sister to his other favourite, Mysie, remained disappointed and perplexed, wondering whether the poor little maiden were homesick, or whether no children could be depended on for kindness when out of sight, and deciding that he should defer his letter till he had seen a little more, and talked to his sister Jane, who could see through a milestone any day.

It was understood that mamma preferred home-made cards to bought ones, so there was always a great manufacture of them in the weeks previous to Christmas, the comparative failures being exchanged among the younger members.

The presents were always reserved for Valetta's birthday and the tree, and this rendered the circulation of the cards doubly interesting. In the immediate family alone, there were thirteen times thirteen, besides those coming from, and going to outsiders, so that it was as well that a good many should be of domestic manufacture, either with pencil and brush, or of tiny leaves carefully dried and gummed. And mamma had kept an alb.u.m, with names and dates, into which all these home efforts were inserted, and nothing else! This year's series began with a little chestnut curl of Primrose's hair, fastened down on a card by Gillian, and rose to a beautiful drawing of a blue Indian Lotus lily, with a gorgeous dragon-fly on it, sent by Alethea. The Indian party had sent a card for every one--the girls, beautiful drawings of birds, insects, and scenery; the brother, a bundle of rice-paper figured with costumes, and papa, some clever pen-and-ink outlines of odd figures, which his daughters beguiled from him in his leisure moments!

As to the home circle, it is enough to say that their performances were highly satisfactory to the makers, and were rewarded by mamma's kisses, and the text or verse she had secretly illuminated for each. She had no time to do more, and the series were infinitely prized and laid up as treasures. There were plenty of ornamental cards from without to be admired: the Brighton and Beechcroft aunts; the Stokesley cousins, and whole mult.i.tudes of friends pouring them in as usual; so that the entire review seemed to occupy all those free moments of the Christmas Day, when the young folks were neither at church, nor at meals, nor singing carols themselves, nor hearing the choir sing in the hall, nor looking over photograph books and hearing old family stories. This last occupation was received in the family as the regular evening pleasure, ending in all singing, 'When shepherds watch their flocks by night.'

Dolores had a card from her aunt and each of her cousins, besides one of the parcel Uncle Reginald had brought. She did not think enough of the very bad drawing and smeared painting of the ambitious attempts she received, to feel at all disconcerted at having no reciprocity to offer.

The only cards she had sent were to Constance Hacket, to Fraulein, and to Maude Sefton--the last with a sore sense of the long interval since she had heard.

However, there was a card from Maude, but it was a very poor one, looking very much like a last year's possession, and the letter was not much better, being chiefly an apology for having been too busy to write.

Maude was going to lectures with Nona Styles--Nona was such a darling girl--and breaking off because she was wanted to rehea.r.s.e Cinderella with this same darling Nona.

It made Dolores's heart go down farther, though there was a beautiful and unexpected card from Mrs. Sefton, one from her former servant, Caroline, also from Fraulein, and three or four from old friends of her mother, who had remembered the solitary girl. In truth, she had more beautiful ones than anybody else, but she kept these in their envelopes, and showed herself so much averse to free fingering and admiration of them that Lady Merrifield had to call off Valetta, remind her that her cousin had a right to her own cards, and hear in return that Dolores was so cross.

'Dolly,' said Uncle Reginald, in a low voice, since he was permitted to look over the cards with her, 'I think I have found out part of your troubles.'

She looked at him in alarm.

He put his finger on a card bearing the words, 'Goodwill to men.'

'Umph,' said she. 'I don't want everything of mine messed and spoilt.'

And as his eye fell on Fergus's cards, he felt there was reason in what she said.

Aunt Lily had taken her for a quarter of an hour that morning, trying to infuse the real thought underlying the joy that makes it Christmas, not only yule-tide. But it all fell flat--it was all lessons to her--imposed on her on a day that she had not been used to see made what she called 'goody.' Last year her father had shut himself up after church, and she had spent the evening in noisy mirth with the Seftons.

CHAPTER XIII. -- AN EGYPTIAN SPHYNX

Aunt Adeline was afraid of winter journeys as well as of the tumultuous festivities of Silverton; so at twelve o'clock. Colonel Mohun drove the pony-carriage to meet the little trim Brownie who stepped out of the station, the porter carrying behind her a huge thing, long, and swathed in brown paper. 'It is quite light; it won't hurt,' she said, 'It must go with us. Put your legs across it, Regie. That's right.'

'Then what becomes of yours?'

'Mine can go anywhere,' said Miss Mohun, crumpling herself up in some mysterious manner under the fur rug, while they drove off, her luggage sticking far off on either side of the splashboard.

'What, in the name of wonder, are you smuggling in there?'

'If you must know, it is the body of a mummy over whose dissection you will have to a.s.sist.'

'Ah! Rotherwood is coming.'

'Rotherwood!'

'And his little girl. Just like him. Lily gets a note this morning from London, telling her to telegraph if she can't have them by the 5.20 train. I've just been ordering a fly. It seems that Lady Rotherwood, going to meet Ivinghoe at the station, coming from school, found he had measles coming out! So they packed off his sister to Beechcroft without having seen him, and thence Rotherwood took her to London.'

'And is having a fine frolic with her, no doubt; but he might as well have given Lily more notice, considering that a marquess or two makes more difference to her household than it does to his.'

'Oh! she is glad enough, only in some trepidation as to how Mrs.

Halfpenny may receive the unspecified maid that the child may bring.'

'How jolly we shall be! I wish Ada had come.'

'I tried to drag her out, but it gets harder and harder to shake her up.

You must come back with me and see her.'

'I say, Jane, have you seen Maurice's child lately?'

'Not very. She wouldn't come with the others last week.'

'What do you think about her? I thought leaving her with Lily would have been the making of her. Indeed, I told Maurice there could not be a better brought up set anywhere than the Merrifields, and that Lily would mother her like one of her own; and now I find her moping about, looking regularly down in the mouth. I got hold of her one day and tried to find out what was the matter, but she only said she would not complain. Can they bully her?'

'I'll tell you what, Maurice, Lily is a great deal too kind to her. She has a kind of temper that won't let them make friends with her.'