Christmas-Day passed merrily, and some of the days immediately succeeding to it. On New-Year's Day they were invited to an entertainment at Sir Philip Stane's; Major and Mrs. Raynor, Charles and Alice; a later invitation having come in for Frank and his wife. William Stane was a frequent visitor at Eagles' Nest whenever he was sojourning at his father's; and, though he had not yet spoken, few could doubt that the chief object to draw him there was Alice Raynor. Yes. Sunshine and merry-making, profusion and reckless expenditure reigned within the doors of Eagles' Nest; but little except poverty, distress and dissatisfaction existed beyond its gates. Mrs. Atkinson had ever been liberal in her care of the estate; the land had been enriched and thoroughly well kept; the small tenants and labourers were cared for. One thing she had not done so thoroughly as she might: and that was, improving the dwellings of the labourers. Repairs she had made from time to time; but the places were really beyond repair. Each tenement wanted one of two things: to be thoroughly renewed and to have an additional sleeping-room added; or else to be entirely rebuilt. During the last year of Mrs. Atkinson's life, she seemed to awaken suddenly to the necessity of doing something. Perhaps with the approach of death--which will often open our eyes to many things they remained closed to before--she saw the supineness she had been guilty of. Street the lawyer was hastily summoned to Eagles' Nest: he was ordered to procure plans and estimates for new dwellings. A long row of cottages, some thirty in number, was hastily begun. Whilst the builders were commencing their work, Mrs. Atkinson died. With nearly her last breath she charged Mr. Street to see that the new houses were completed, and that the old ones were also repaired and made healthy. Mr. Street could only hand over the charge to the inheritor of the estate, Major Raynor. The reader may remember that the major spoke of it to Edina. The lawyer could not do more than that, or carry out Mrs. Atkinson's wishes in any other way. And the major did nothing. His will might have been good enough to carry out the changes, but he had not the means. So much money was required for his own wants and those of his family, that he had none to spare for other people. The ready-money he came into had chiefly gone in paying back-debts: until these debts stared him in the face in black and white, he had not thought that he owed a tithe of them. It is a very common experience. So the new dwellings were summarily stopped, and remained as they were--so many skeletons: and the tumbledown cottages, wanting space, drainage, whitewash, and everything else that could render them decent and healthy, grew worse day by day, and became an eyesore to spectators and the talk of the neighbourhood.