Lavinia’s Christmas Day has been worked through too, though in a different fashion. Mrs. Prince may cast her eyes upon the Campions’ seat in church without any fear of a shock to her nerves, for it is as empty as it has been for the last five months. Sir George is too much tired by his journey for his niece to leave him; yet in the afternoon--an afternoon furnished with the apposite Christmas brightness which had been so lacking yesterday--he insists upon being dressed, and leaning on Lavinia’s arm walks, with less of tottering in his gait than she had feared, to the churchyard, to see the new cross, about which he has been restlessly talking, asking, wondering, through half the night. “I should personally have preferred granite, but as usual I was overruled!” he says fretfully; then divining and remorseful for her distress, adds, “But it is not amiss.” Both are silent for a little space, reading the inscription, which, by long debating over, amending, altering, has grown so familiar to both. “It was his own choice to lie out here!” says Sir George, presently. “It would have seemed more natural that he should be buried with the rest of us--with his mother; but he always was rather a sport among us!” Lavinia assents with a little heart-full nod. “It is dull of me,” pursues the old man, while a puzzled look comes into his dim eyes; “but I can’t recall how we learnt his wishes! He could not have _told_ us.” “We found them written on a sheet of note-paper just inside the middle drawer of his writing-table,” replies Lavinia, with the gentle ready distinctness of one who, with perfect patience, has given the same explanation many times before. “Ah, yes! that was it, of course. He was always fond of scribbling, poor fellow!”--with a look of relief at the recovered explanation. A moment later, in a low key of compunction, “And I used to get so out of patience with him, and ask whether he was writing a sonnet to his own eyebrow! What right had I to sneer at him because he was not cut on the same pattern as myself?” “He did not mind, dear,” very softly, with a pressure against her side of the wasted arm leaning on hers. Another silence, while about the steady peace of the church tower the jackdaws fly and call in cheerful harshness, and from behind the bravery of his little orange-tawny breast a robin throws out his living gladness across the Christmas-decked graves. “Two brave boys!” says Sir George after a pause; but now there is a note of triumphant pride in the father’s voice. “I always knew that I had _one_! but I little thought the day would come when I should be able to say that there is not a pin to pick between them! not a pin to pick between them!” CHAPTER XXV