The owner of the house was old Uncle John. He was a bachelor, and with him lived various members of the family. There was the great Thompson of them all, Cousin Robert, who was now member of Parliament for the Essex Flats; and young John, as a certain enterprising Thompson of the age of forty was usually called; and then there was old Aunt Bess; and among other young branches there was Miss Jane Thompson, who was now engaged to marry Mr. Charles Burnaby Jones. As it happened, no other member of the family had as yet seen Mr. Burnaby Jones, and he, being by nature of a retiring disposition, felt himself to be ill at ease when he came into the breakfast parlor among all the Thompsons. He was known to be a gentleman of good family and ample means, and all the Thompsons had approved of the match; but during that first Christmas breakfast he did not seem to accept his condition jovially. His own Jane sat beside him, but then on the other side sat Mrs. Brown. She assumed an immediate intimacy--as women know how to do on such occasions--being determined from the very first to regard her sister’s husband as a brother; but he still feared her. She was still to him the woman who had come to him in the dead of night with that horrid mixture--and had then left him. “It was so odd that both of you should have been detained on the very same day,” said Jane. “Yes, it was odd,” said Mrs. Brown, with a smile, looking round upon her neighbor. “It was abominably bad weather, you know,” said Brown. “But you were both so determined to come,” said the old gentleman. “When we got the two telegrams at the same moment, we were sure that there had been some agreement between you.” “Not exactly an agreement,” said Mrs. Brown; whereupon Mr. Jones looked as grim as death. “I’m sure there is something more than we understand yet,” said the member of Parliament. [Illustration] Then they all went to church, as a united family ought to do on Christmas-day, and came home to a fine old English early dinner at three o’clock,-a sirloin of beef a foot and a half broad, a turkey as big as an ostrich, a plum-pudding bigger than the turkey, and two or three dozen mince-pies. “That’s a very large bit of beef,” said Mr. Jones, who had not lived much in England latterly. “It won’t look so large,” said the old gentleman, “when all our friends down-stairs have had their say to it.” “A plum pudding on Christmas-day can’t be too big,” he said again, “if the cook will but take time enough over it. I never knew a bit to go to waste yet.” By this time there had been some explanation as to past events between the two sisters. Mrs. Brown had, indeed, told Jane all about it,--how ill her husband had been, how she had been forced to go down and look for the mustard, and then what she had done with the mustard. “I don’t think they are a bit alike, you know, Mary, if you mean that,” said Jane.