So every night, when she laid off her girl's frock, she looked at her blue doublet and breeches that hung in the wardrobe, and fingered them, and said to herself:-- "Six days more--" or five, or four, as it might be--"and 'twill be Christmas, and godmother doth not forbid, and I shall wear my boy's dress once again." The days before Christmas went fast in that great, busy garrison house of Walsover, and they went fast indeed for Merrylips. So much she had to tell and hear! So many friends she had to greet again! She found old Roger that had been butler at Larkland. He was carrying a halberd once more in the Walsover garrison, and he was as eager as any young man of them all to fight the rebels. She found Stephen Plasket, who came limping in, the day before Christmas. And a long story he had to tell of the adventures he had met with in making his escape through the Roundhead country! Best of all, for Rupert's sake, she found Claus Hinkel, who had been one of those that had lived through the assault of Monksfield. Claus took it all as a matter of course that Rupert was at last restored to his kinsfolk. Ja, wohl, 'twas bound to happen some day, he told her. And now, in time, Rupert would be a captain like his father before him, and he, Claus, would ride in his troop. "For that I can do, gracious fräulein," the dull-witted fellow said. "My lord, your high-born father, would have made me a corporal, and more, perchance. But I said 'No! no!' Here I am well placed, and can do my part. But if I were set higher, I should be but what you call a laughing-stock." Many and many another of the old Monksfield garrison were missing, besides Lieutenant Digby. But Lieutenant Crashaw, and Captain Norris, and Captain Brooke, with his arm in a sling, and Nick Slanning, who limped with a newly healed wound, were all at Walsover. Merrylips talked with them, but she was shy, almost as if they were new acquaintances. And they themselves seemed somehow shy of her. Once Slanning started to tousle her hair, as he had used to do, and craved her pardon for it. Captain Brooke and Captain Norris were too busy to speak with a little girl. And since she was no longer a little boy, she could not run about the courts and stables at their heels. So she found herself passing many hours with her mother and her godmother and her sisters. She did not like Pug, for Pug said that Dick Fowell was a wicked rebel, and would not speak a word to him. But she liked tall, pretty Puss. For Puss was always asking questions about Dick, and often and often she spoke with him. Indeed, Dick seemed to spend more time with Puss than with Longkin, for whose sake it was that he said that he was staying to keep Christmas at Walsover.