"You wait, that's all! I'll soak your bed tonight--I'll drown it. I don't want to clean your dirty boots, I'm not a shoe-black." The breakfast was a failure. To begin with, it was inordinately late. It seemed that a bath was not obtainable. I had been promised some hot water, but as I waited and waited and none arrived, I proceeded to break the ice in my jug--it was a bitterly cold morning, nice "old-fashioned" weather--and to wash in the half-frozen contents. As I am not accustomed to perform my ablutions in partially dissolved ice, I fear that the process did not improve my temper. It was past eleven when I got down, feeling not exactly in a "Christmassy" frame of mind. Everything, and everyone, seemed at sixes and sevens. It was after noon when breakfast appeared. The principal dish consisted of eggs and bacon; but as the bacon was fried to cinders, and the eggs all broken, it was not so popular as it might have been, Madge was moved to melancholy. "Something will have to be done! We can't go on like this! We must have someone in to help us!" Bessie was sarcastic. "You might give Eliza another trial. She told you, if you didn't like the way she burned the bacon, to burn it yourself, and as you've followed her advice, she might be able to give you other useful hints on similar lines." Rupert indulged himself in the same vein. "Then there's Eliza's brother. He threatened to knock your blooming head off for saying Eliza was dishonest, just because she collared everything she laid her hands on; he might turn out a useful sort of creature to have about the place." "It's all very well for you to laugh, but it's beyond a jest. I don't know how we're going to cook the dinner." "Can I be of any assistance?" I inquired. "First of all, what is there to cook?" It seemed that there were a good many things to cook. A turkey, a goose, beef, plum pudding, mince pies, custard, sardines--it seemed that Molly, the third girl, as she phrased it, could "live on sardines," and esteemed no dinner a decent dinner at which they did not appear--together with a list of etceteras half as long as my arm. "One thing is clear; you can't cook all those things to-day." "We can't cook anything." This was Rupert. He was tilting his chair back, and had his face turned towards the ceiling. "Why not?" "Because there's no coal." "No coal?" "There's about half a scuttle full of dust. If you can make it burn you'll be clever." What Rupert said was correct. Madge confessed, with crimson cheeks, that she had meant, over and over again, to order some coal, but had continually forgotten it, until finally Christmas Day had found them with an empty cellar. There was plenty of wood, but it was not so dry as it might have been, and anyhow, the grate was not constructed to burn wood.