"If you have any local shopping to do, I'm sure you would be wise to go down to-day," Miss Hamilton suggested, firmly. "Besides, Mrs. Worfolk won't want to arrive at the last minute." "No, indeed, I shan't, Miss," said the housekeeper. "Well, I mean to say, I don't think we ever shall arrive, not if we wait much longer. We shall require a performing elephant to carry all these parcels, as it is." "My idea was to go down in the last train on Christmas Eve," John argued. "I like the old-fashioned style, don't you know?" "Yes, old-fashioned's the word," Mrs. Worfolk exclaimed. "Why, who's to get the house ready if we all go trooping down on Christmas Eve? And if I go, sir, you must come with me. You know how quick Mrs. Curtis always is to snap any one up. If I had my own way, I wouldn't go within a thousand miles of the country; that's a sure thing." John began to be afraid that his housekeeper was going back on her word, and he surrendered to the notion of leaving town that afternoon. "I say, what is this parcel like a long drain-pipe?" he asked in a final effort to detain Miss Hamilton, who was preparing to make her farewells and leave him to his packing. "Ah, it would take some finding out," Mrs. Worfolk interposed. "I've never seen so many shapes and sizes of parcels in all my life." "They must have made a mistake," said John. "I don't remember buying anything so tubular as this." He pulled away some of the paper wrapping to see what was inside. "Ah, of course! They're two or three boxes of Elvas plums I ordered. But please don't go, Miss Hamilton," he protested. "I am relying upon you to get the tickets to Waterloo." In spite of a strenuous scene at the station, in the course of which John's attempts to propitiate Mrs. Worfolk led to one of the porters referring to her as his mother, they managed to catch the five o'clock train to Wrottesford. After earnestly assuring his secretary that he should be perfectly ready to begin work again on Joan of Arc the day after her arrival and begging her on no account to let herself be deterred from traveling on the morning of Boxing Day, John sank back into the pleasant dreams that haunt a warm first-class smoking compartment when it's raining hard outside in the darkness of a December night. "We shall have a green Christmas this year," observed one of his fellow travelers. "Very green," John assented with enthusiasm, only realizing as he spoke that the superlative must sound absurd to any one who was unaware of his thoughts and hiding his embarrassment in the _Westminster Gazette_, which in the circumstances was the best newspaper he could have chosen.