The following day a lively call from Doreen and her _fiancé_ on horseback cheered her considerably and helped her still better to hide everything from the rest; and the day after there was a little teasing and good-humoured raillery about a parcel from South Africa which had been forwarded from England. It contained a beautiful white ostrich-feather boa, and there was a delightful letter with it, begging her to accept it as a Christmas token, all of which told its own tale of constancy and steady persistence on the part of the lonely Englishman exiled there, and still dreaming of her when he had time to dream at all. Jack made most of such an opportunity and gave her little peace, and Paddy took it in excellent part, because she was glad of anything that would help to blind them to a certain circumstance nearer home. In the evening they had one of their wild “scrimmage” parties, for the sake of old times, and to every one’s astonishment, Lawrence arrived with the Mourne Lodge party. He had, of course, heard the news, and professed to have accepted his invitation for the express purpose of congratulating the happy pair. This certainly was open to doubt, though the genuineness of his congratulations was equally certainly not so. Paddy fought shy of him from the first moment, and as she was naturally the ringleader of the scrimmage party, whereas he played Bridge in the study, it was perfectly easy to avoid an encounter. Only, as it happened, for that evening at least, Fortune was on Lawrence’s side. The scrimmage party were playing a game in which one of their number had to go out of the room, and it chanced to be Paddy’s turn just when Lawrence, being “dummy,” strolled into the hall for a smoke. Before she knew of his presence, he had walked up to her and said: “Paddy, do you know you are sitting under the mistletoe?” Paddy gave a start, blushed in a way that made her inwardly furious, and moved to the other end of the oak chest upon which she had been seated. “You needn’t be so haughty,” he laughed. “You know perfectly well I’ve kissed you lots of times, only unfortunately it was when I didn’t want to. I remember once the master scolding me because I made such a point of kissing Eileen, and ignoring you. I argued that you were such an ugly little brute, and invented the fable that you hated kissing.” “It was no fable.” “Wasn’t it?” humorously. “Nature never gave a mouth like that to a woman who hated kissing. Some day I’ll remind you of that, Paddy.” “I loathed you,” she remarked, refusing to be drawn. “You were the most objectionable, bad-tempered, conceited little beast that ever wore a silly little top hat and Eton suit.” He laughed with a relish. “That’s better!” approvingly. “It’s impossible not to think there is something the matter with you, when you are not dealing out bombs of some sort. Why were you looking so woebegone when I came from the study, out here all alone in the hall?” “I was not looking woebegone.”