They were to put up at an hotel for the first few days, so as to take their time in looking for a villa. Two servants were to go with them--the colonel’s valet and handy-man, who was an old soldier, and could turn his hand to anything in house, or stable, or garden; and the baby’s nurse, a somewhat masterful person of seven and twenty, from the Fatherland, surnamed Grunhaupt, but known in the family by her less formidable domestic diminutive Löttchen. Other hirelings would be obtained at San Remo, but these two were indispensable--Holford, the soldier-servant, to bear all burdens, and Löttchen to take charge of the baby, to whom life was supposed to be impossible in any other care. It was Christmas Eve--the mildest Christmas that had been known for a long time, even in this sheltered corner of the coast. Allegra had been busy all the morning, helping in the church decorations, and co-operating with Mr. Colfox in various arrangements for the comfort of the old and sick and feeble, among the cottages scattered over the length and breadth of a large parish. She had walked a good many miles, and she had stood for an hour in the church, toiling at the decoration of the font, which had been assigned to her, and which she covered with ferns, arbutus, and berberis foliage, in all their varieties of colour, from darkest bronze to vivid crimson, starred with the whiteness of Christmas roses; while the Miss Crowthers lavished the riches of the Glenaveril hothouses upon the pulpit, keeping themselves studiously aloof from Miss Leland. Not a jot cared Allegra for their aloofness. She disliked their father, and she knew that her brother detested him, without having any clear idea of the cause. She was so thoroughly loyal to Martin that she would have deemed it treason to like any one whom he disliked; so had the daughters of Glenaveril been the most companionable young women in Cornwall she would have considered it her duty to hold them at arm’s length. Glenaveril and all its belongings were taboo. She was very tired when she went home at four o’clock, just on the edge of dusk here--pitch dark, no doubt, in London and other great cities, where the poor, pinched faces were flitting to and fro in the fitful glare of the butcher’s gas, intent on finding a Christmas joint to fit the slenderest resources. Here, in this quiet valley, the reflected sun-glow still brightened sky, sea, land, and river, and the lamps had not yet been lighted in hall or drawing-room at the Angler’s Nest.