“Look! look!” she cried, “we have got the very dearest little Christmas tree that ever was seen. And Madame Lechertier has promised to come to tea to-morrow afternoon, and we are going out presently to buy the candles for it.” “Unheard-of extravagance,” he said, looking at the little fir tree upon which Sigrid was fastening the candle-holders. “Only a shilling,” she said apologetically. “And this year we really couldn’t do without one. But you have brought some good news—I can see it in your face. Oh, tell me, Frithiof—tell me quickly just what happened.” “Well, Darnell has made a full confession for one thing,” he replied. “So the last vestige of the cloud has disappeared. You can’t think how nice the other men were when they heard about it. Old Foster gave me such a hand-shake that my arm aches still.” “And Mr. Boniface?” “You can fancy just what he would be as far as kindness and all that goes. But you will never guess what he has done. How would you like to count our savings toward the debt-fund by hundreds instead of by units?” “What do you mean?” she cried. “I mean that he has offered me the junior partnership,” said Frithiof, watching her face with keen delight, and rewarded for all he had been through by her rapture of happiness and her glad surprise. As for Swanhild, in the reaction after the long strain of secret anxiety which had tried her so much all the autumn, she was like a wild thing; she laughed and sang, danced and chattered, and would certainly never have eaten any supper had she not set her heart on going out to buy Christmas presents at a certain shop in Buckingham Palace Road, which she was sure would still be open. “For it is just the sort of shop for people like us,” she explained, “people who are busy all day and can only do their shopping in the evening.” So presently they locked up the rooms and all three went out together on the merriest shopping expedition that ever was known. There was a feeling of Yule-tide in the very air, and the contentment and relief in their own hearts seemed to be reflected on every one with whom they came in contact. The shops seemed more enticing than usual, the presents more fascinating, the servers more obliging and ready to enter into the spirit of the thing. Swanhild, with five shillings of her own earning to lay out on Christmas gifts, was in the seventh heaven of happiness; Sigrid, with her own secret now once more a joy and not a care, moved like one in a happy dream; while Frithiof, free from the miserable cloud of suspicion, freed, moreover, by all that he had lived through from the hopelessness of the struggle, was the most perfectly happy of all. Sometimes he forced himself to remember that it was through these very streets that he had wandered in utter misery when he first came to London; and recollecting from what depths Sigrid had saved him, he thought of her with a new and strange reverence—there was nothing he would not have done for her.