"Ask mother, ask the boys, ask Barbara," cry I, in great excitement, "whether I ever _could_ wrap up any thing neatly, if I wished it ever so much? Always, _always_, I have to blurt it out! _I_ hint!" "Hint! no!" he repeats, in a tone of vexed bitterness. "Well, no! no one could accuse you of _hinting_! Yours is honest, open cut and thrust!" "If it is," retort I, bluntly, still speaking with a good deal of heat, "it is your own fault! I have no wish to quarrel, being such near neighbors, and--and--altogether--of course I had rather be on good terms than bad ones! When you _let_ me--when you leave me alone--I _almost_--sometimes I _quite_ like you. I am speaking seriously! I _do_." "You do not say so?" again turning his head aside, and speaking with the objectionable intonation of irony. "At home," pursue I, still chafing under the insult to my amiability, "I never was reckoned quarrelsome--_never_! Of course I was not like Barbara--there are not many like her--but I did very well. Ask _any one_ of them--it does not matter which--they will all tell you the same--whether I did not!" "You were a household angel, in fact?" "I was nothing of the kind," cry I, very angry, and yet laughing: the laughter caused by the antagonism of the epithet with the many recollected blows and honest sounding cuffs that I have, on and off, exchanged with Bobby. A pause. The sun has quite gone now: sulky and feeble, he has shrunk to his cold bed in the west, and the victor-mist creeps, crawls, and soaks on unopposed. "Good-night!" cry I, suddenly. "I am going!" and I am as good as my word. With the triple agility of health, youth, and indignation, I scurry away through the melancholy grass, and the heaped and fallen leaves, home. CHAPTER XXVIII. Ding-dong bell! ding-dong bell! The Christmas bells are ringing. Christmas has come--Christmas as it appears on a Christmas card, white and hard, and beset with puffed-out, ruffled robins. Only Nature is wise enough not to express the ironical wish that we may have a "merry one." For myself, I have but small opinion of Christmas as a time of jollity. Solemn--_blessed_, if you will--but no, not jovial. At no time do the dead so clamor to be remembered. Even those that went a long time ago, the regret for whose departure has settled down to a tender, almost pleasant pain; whom at other times we go nigh to forget; even they cry out loud, "Think of us!" When all the family is gathered, when the fire burns quick and clear, and the church-bells ring out grave and sweet, neither will _they_ be left out. But, on the other hand, to one who has paid his bills, and in whose family Death's cannon have as yet made no breaches, I do not see why it may not be a season of moderate, placid content.