Christmas had brought to Abner--Abner, who would be driving a fast trotter to-morrow at the Springs! How everything had changed! How they all had got up in the world, and how far beyond this kind of thing--and yet--yet it would have been rather comfortable to have all been together again here. Would THEY have been more comfortable? No! Yet then he might have had something to do, and been less lonely to-morrow. What of that? He HAD something to do: to look after this immense fortune. What more could a man want, or should he want? It was rather mean in him, able to give his wife and children everything they wanted, to be wanting anything more. He laid down the print gently, after dusting its glass and frame with his silk handkerchief, and slowly left the room. The drum-beat of the rain followed him down the staircase, but he shut it out with his other thoughts, when he again closed the door of his office. He set diligently to work by the declining winter light, until he was interrupted by the entrance of his Chinese waiter to tell him that supper--which was the meal that Mulrady religiously adhered to in place of the late dinner of civilization--was ready in the dining-room. Mulrady mechanically obeyed the summons; but on entering the room the oasis of a few plates in a desert of white table-cloth which awaited him made him hesitate. In its best aspect, the high dark Gothic mahogany ecclesiastical sideboard and chairs of this room, which looked like the appointments of a mortuary chapel, were not exhilarating; and to-day, in the light of the rain-filmed windows and the feeble rays of a lamp half-obscured by the dark shining walls, it was most depressing. "You kin take up supper into my office," said Mulrady, with a sudden inspiration. "I'll eat it there." He ate it there, with his usual healthy appetite, which did not require even the stimulation of company. He had just finished, when his Irish cook--the one female servant of the house--came to ask permission to be absent that evening and the next day. "I suppose the likes of your honor won't be at home on the Christmas Day? And it's me cousins from the old counthry at Rough-and-Ready that are invitin' me." "Why don't you ask them over here?" said Mulrady, with another vague inspiration. "I'll stand treat." "Lord preserve you for a jinerous gintleman! But it's the likes of them and myself that wouldn't be at home here on such a day."