"A happy Christmas to you, Miss Trevor! Excuse me for not coming in before, but I am so anxious to arrange my presents before the others come home from church. I want the easel from that corner, and I want you to promise faithfully that you won't come into the dining-room before you are allowed!" "I can't walk so far without help. You are quite safe so far as I am concerned," said Sylvia regretfully, and Esmeralda looked at her with quick scrutiny. "So bad as that! I didn't know. Is that why you have been crying?" "No--oh no! I am used to that now. I felt a little lonely, that's all. I wanted my father." The beautiful face changed suddenly, the lips tightened, the eyes grew large and strained. There was a ring of pain in the clear voice. "Is he dead?" "No, no, only so far-away. At the other end of the world, in Ceylon!" "You will see him again!" said Esmeralda shortly. She looked at the portrait of a handsome, reckless face which hung on the wall above the sofa, and drew a fluttering sigh. "That was my father. It is nearly two years since he had his accident, and I thought I could never be happy again. If I could write to him, if I could get his letters, and think that some day, it might be in twenty years to come, he would be back among us again, I should feel as if there was nothing else to wish for." She sat down suddenly by the couch with an air of having forgotten all about the errand which had brought her into the room, clasped her hands round her knee, and began a series of disconnected childish memories, while Sylvia gazed spellbound at the beautiful, dreamy face, and wondered how she could ever have thought it cold and unfeeling. "We were always such chums, from the time that I was a mite in pinafores. I remember his first explaining to me what happened when people died--how their bodies were put into the grave, while their souls went straight to heaven; but I didn't understand what a soul was, and I was frightened and cried out, `Well, I won't go one step without my body!' I used to play tricks on him, and he would catch me up and carry me into his room, and say, `Will you rather be poisoned, or buried alive?' and I would prefer the poisoning because it was chocolates out of the corner cupboard. "He used to wake me in the mornings coming battering at my door, and singing, `Come awake thee, awake thee, my merry Swiss lass!' and when we were learning French fables from Miss Minnitt, we used to take arms, Bridgie and I, and walk up and down before him reciting, `Deux compagnons presse d'argent!' It didn't make any difference whether he had the money or not--he always gave it to us.