It was certainly a curious mingling of grandeur and poverty, this life in the half-ruined Castle, with its magnificent tapestries and carvings, its evidences of bygone splendour, and, alas! present-day parsimony. The little house at Passy could have been put down inside the great entrance hall, but it was a trim little habitation, where on a minute scale all the refinements and niceties of life were observed, and income and expenditure were so well balanced that there was always a margin to the good; but the Misses O'Shaughnessy, who bore themselves as queens in the neighbourhood, and were treated with truly loyal deference, owned hardly a decent gown between them, and were seriously exercised about spending an extra half-crown on a Christmas dinner! "It's the trifles that mount up! I am a miser about pennies, but I can spend pounds with the best!" Bridgie explained; and Mademoiselle smiled meaningly, for had not the order just gone forth that the Castle was to be "illumined" once more for the arrival of the son and heir? On Christmas Eve the rain fell in torrents, and, after a morning spent in preparations of one sort and another, the workers felt the need of a little amusing recreation. This did not seem easy to achieve, in this lonely habitation set in the midst of a rain-swept plain, but Bridgie's fertile brain came to the rescue, and proposed a scheme which kept the young people busy for the rest of the afternoon. "I vote we have a fancy-dress dinner to-night!" she cried, at the conclusion of lunch. "Not an ordinary affair, but like the one the Pegrams enjoyed so much when they were spending the winter in Grindelwald. `A sheet and pillow-case party,' they called it, for that is all you have out of which to make your dress. I will open the linen- box and give you each a pair of sheets, and a pillow-case for head-gear, and you must arrange them in your own rooms, and not let anyone see you until the gong rings. It really will be quite pretty--all the white figures against the flags and holly, and we shall feel more festive than in our ordinary clothes. I think it will be great fun, don't you?" Great fun indeed! The O'Shaughnessy family was always ready for any excitement, and particularly so at Christmas-time, a season when we all feel that we _ought_ to be festive, and are injured in our minds if there is nothing to make us so. Esmeralda fell at once to pleating her table-napkin into one shape after another, Mademoiselle smiled over a happy inspiration, whereupon wily Pat put on his most angelic look and asked-- "Will you dress me, Mademoiselle? A man's no good at this sort of thing. You can't fasten sheets with screws, and I'm no hand at fancy stitching. I've an idea I'd look rather well as--" He whispered a few words in her ear, and Mademoiselle threw up her hands, and laughed, and nodded in emphatic assent.