"Then what on earth's the use of holding out any longer," he said. "It is sheer stupidity. I suppose the Parisians think that, as they can't fight, they will at least show that they can starve. What is the weather like? I felt very cold last night though I had plenty of blankets on." "It is terribly cold," she said. "The snow is deep on the ground--it is one of the coldest winters that has been for years." "What is the day of the month?" "The 26th." "Then yesterday was Christmas Day." "Yes," she said, "not a merry Christmas this year to any of us--no roast beef, no plum-pudding, no mince-pies--and yet, Cuthbert, I had every reason to be thankful, for what a much more unhappy Christmas it might have been to me." He nodded. "I know what you mean. Yes, you would have missed me, child, cut off as we are from the world here. I am, as it were, the sole representative of your family. Of course, you have not heard from them." She shook her head. "I don't suppose they trouble much about me," she said, a little bitterly, "I am a sort of disappointment, you know. Of course I have been away now for nearly two years, except for the fortnight I was over there, and even before that I scarcely seemed to belong to them. I did not care for the things that they thought a great deal of, and they had no interest in the things I cared for. Somehow I don't think I have got on well with them ever since I went up to Girton. I see now it was entirely my own fault. It does not do for a girl to have tastes differing from those of her family." "I felt that, Mary. I felt it very much. I have told myself ever since the day of dear old father's death that I have been a brute, and I wish with all my heart I had put aside my own whims and gone in for a country life. It is all very well to say I did not like it, but I ought to have made myself like it; or if I could not do that, I ought to have made a pretence of liking it, and to have stuck to him as long as I lived. I hadn't even the excuse of having any high purpose before me." "We all make mistakes in our lives, Cuthbert," the girl said, quietly, "and it is of no use bemoaning them--at any rate you have done your best to retrieve yours, and I mean to do my best to retrieve mine. I have quite made up my mind that when this is over I shall go to London and be regularly trained as a hospital nurse, and then join a nursing sisterhood." "What! and give up woman in general?" Cuthbert said, with a faint laugh. "Will you abandon your down-trodden sisters? Impossible, Mary." "It is quite possible," she said, in a business-like manner.