“Oh, ride on the back of the train, of course!” she cried, “and home through the garden, just like we did as children. Oh, Jack, I’ve had to be so grown-up for two years. I absolutely refuse to be grown-up this Christmas holiday—we will—we _must_ be children.” “Anything you like,” he cried, with the utmost readiness. “Come along,” as the train moved. “Send up Miss Paddy’s portmanteau. Good-by, Lawrence!” and they sprang on to the step of the guard’s van and rode the short distance of railway to the Parsonage garden, leaving Lawrence to go home in the most unenviable frame of mind imaginable, which he later vented upon the household generally in his cold and cutting fashion, regardless of the fact that he was damping every one’s Christmas. But what cared Jack and Paddy?—least of all Paddy—for whom a joy seemed to have dropped straight from, the skies. What a noise there was, to be sure! and how Jack and Paddy _would_ talk at once, and make it impossible for any single sentence to be coherent. At last, in desperation, Paddy picked up the little table-bell and rang it lustily. “If I can’t be heard, you shan’t, Jack,” she said, and, the moment he opened his mouth, started ringing it again. Jack immediately flew round the table to get the bell, and behold! if the two little ladies weren’t collecting the breakables again, and casting agonising glances at the cups and saucers and plates on the breakfast-table—just for all the world as if two long years of separation had not rolled by since the last scrimmage, and these two mad things were not a day older. If Paddy had not been in such a state of eager excitement, she must certainly have noticed sooner than she did an air of portent that still prevailed, as of some momentous event not yet revealed. As it was, they all went to the little church as usual, Jack and the aunties sitting one side, and the Adairs on the other side, for the sake of old times; and came home again, and had their Christmas dinner, before Paddy got an inkling that further news was in the air. Up to then the whole conversation nearly had run upon Jack’s adventures in the Argentine, and she had plied him with such an endless string of questions that there had really not been much opportunity for any other subject. After dinner, however, they collected round a big log fire for a cozy afternoon, and a few minutes later a letter and parcel arrived by hand for Paddy. Both were from Doreen Blake, the parcel containing a handsome Christmas present, and the letter a piece of news that made her give a little exclamation of pleased surprise. “Only fancy!” she cried. “Doreen Blake is engaged. What fun! How I wonder what he is like!” The others looked up with interest.