“It is Christmas Eve, you know, little Cis, and we must get some nice flowers to give mother to-morrow morning, mustn’t we?” “Yes, Hal, and I want to find a lot of dear little red rose-buds,—oh! here’s one, and here’s another, I’m so glad!” “Why _red_ ones, Cis?” “’Cos mother likes red ones, I know; she told me about the prickly tree with red berries on it, which she used to gather bunches of at Christmas time when she was a little girl like me,—I expect she gave some to her mother, and I wonder if she pricked her fingers as I do mine—never mind, I am not going to cry, Hal, because it’s for mother. Do the thorns hurt you, Hal?” “Yes, Cis, but I am a boy you know, and boys don’t cry; I am getting white rose-buds, because in mother’s tales about Christmas, there is always a lot of white snow. I wonder why God does not send us any snow here!” “Perhaps He will one day if we are naughty, for it kills all the pretty flowers,” replied Cis. “No, it doesn’t kill them all, Cis, it only covers them up; besides, it’s rare fun to make snow-balls, they say.” “Children, children!” calls a voice from the open door, “it is nearly bed-time.” “Yes, coming, mother dear,” and the two bunches of flowers were quickly hidden beneath the little coat and pinafore, while the children ran round to a side door and gave them into the nurse’s charge to put in water, and in a safe hiding place until the morning. “Put them under our beds, Nursie, no one will see them there,” shouted Hal, as he rushed off with his sister to their mother for the good-night chat. [Illustration: “It is Christmas Eve! and the long soft shadows of a summer night are quickly falling on the garden, fields and meadows.” Page 3.] In the well-known cosy room sat a slender figure in black, in a low wicker chair, and little Cis was already on her lap, her shining head nestled close in, her sweet face pressed to her mother’s, which if older and sadder, was not less sweet. Hal, taking his favourite stool, sat down close to her knee, and giving her hand a hasty boyish kiss, said: “Don’t send us to bed just yet, mother dear, ’tis Christmas Eve, you know.” “Ah, yes! Christmas Eve,” she echoed, and her trembling voice told of the mingled memories that thronged her heart,—memories of past joys and sudden sorrow. Her thoughts flew to that time, “only a year ago,” when there came the hurried summons for her husband to a sick relative in a distant land—the hasty departure on the voyage,—and then the blank of a terrible silence,—and later, the tidings that she should see him no more till “the sea gives up her dead,”—and, laying her hand on Hal’s dark head, she pressed her fatherless little ones closer to her. “Tell us a story, mother dear,” broke in Hal’s voice. “Suppose you tell me one for a change, dear,” she replied.