“I hate seeing the windows shuttered and the lamps lit, my dear,” she said. “It makes me feel that I am being put in a box, and I’m too near my latter end to waste my time now over boxes. But if you get a bit of a walk while they’re shutting up, the box seems pleasant enough when you get back to it. And I’ll be ready for my tea, too.” Such Esquimaux practices, of course, made no appeal to Violet’s mother. She brought down from her room her Patience cards, and an altar-frontal which she was embroidering for Winchester Cathedral, and hoped to have ready by Easter. Of the two, for immediate employment, she settled on the altar-frontal, as she had a vague idea that she and Violet must have a great deal to say to each other, and it was impossible to talk while you were playing Patience, or, rather, it was impossible to play Patience if you talked. She had grown a shade greyer, a shade more ladylike, a shade more inaccessible. But she always did everything slowly. “Dennis will be quite a big boy,” she observed. “I have not seen him since last year at this time.” “Yes, he’s grown a great deal,” said Violet.... Could it be possible that Colin was not coming for Christmas? “And Colin is well?” asked Mrs. Stanier. “I hope so. He has been away for the last fortnight, and the wretch has never even said when he will be coming back.” “It is a pity that he should miss Dennis’s holidays,” said Mrs. Stanier. Violet had no sympathetic contribution to give to this sentiment, and her mother moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. They got dry and a little cracked in this very cold weather. “I have brought a wreath for your father’s grave,” she said. “I made it entirely from flowers in my greenhouse. My gardener is very clever at getting me plenty of flowers throughout the winter.” Violet rummaged her mind for some ardent rejoinder. “That is always nice,” she said. “Flowers are a guarantee that spring will come. But the poor things will wither very quickly when you put them out in this icy air.” “Yes, dear. But I should feel very remiss and hard if I did not always put a wreath on your father’s grave whenever I come to Stanier. I daresay it will not be for many more years that I shall do so.” Violet laughed. “Dear Mother, what nonsense,” she said. “Why, there’s my grandmother who was married before you were born: she plays her whist still, and walks in to dinner.” “Her mind I suppose is now completely gone?” said Mrs. Stanier. “She did not recognize me at all last time I was here. And occasionally she mentioned your father as if he was with me still.” The arrival of tea interrupted this lugubrious interchange of thought, followed by Dennis, triumphantly clashing a pair of skates, which were screwed on to boots, the leather of which was perished and wrinkled like withered funguses.