With the passing of yet another year, however, Alwynne's last scruple as to the sacrosanct privacy of Christmas celebrations vanished utterly. The ideal day, she saw at last, and clearly, should be neither a children's carnival, nor a symposium of relatives. (Alwynne knew of none but Elsbeth, but she dearly loved a phrase.) Christmas should be a time of social intercourse, of peace and goodwill towards men--the human race--neighbours and friends--not merely relations.... One should not shut oneself up.... It would be a sound idea, for instance, to ask some one to dinner.... A friend of Elsbeth's--or there was Clare! It would be very jolly if Clare could come to dinner.... Clare was delightful when she was in holiday mood; she could keep the table in a roar.... A little fun would do Elsbeth good.... Surely Elsbeth would enjoy having Clare to dinner? She found herself, however, experiencing considerable difficulty in opening up the project to her aunt. Elsbeth, to whom the possibility of such a request had long ago presented itself, who could have told you by sheer intuition at what exact moment the idea occurred to her niece, gave her no help. Alwynne had contrived to put her in the position of appearing to approve Clare Hartill. Clare, she felt, had had something to do with that. She knew that it would be unwise to lose the advantage of her apparent tolerance; knew that Clare expected her to lose it by some impulsive expression of mistrust or dislike, and intended to utilise the lapse for her own ends. It would be easy for Clare to pose as the generous victim of unreasoning hostility. But Clare should not, she resolved, have the opportunity. She, Elsbeth, would never be so far lacking in cordiality as to give her any sort of handle. But Clare Hartill should not eat her Christmas dinner with them, vowed Elsbeth, for all that. So for a couple of days, Alwynne, approaching Elsbeth from all possible angles, found no crack in her armour, and somewhat puzzled, but entirely unsuspicious, thought it hard that Elsbeth should be, at times, so curiously unresponsive. She would not have scrupled to ask her aunt outright to invite Clare, but she quite genuinely wished to find out first if Elsbeth would mind, and never guessed that the difficulty she found in opening the matter was the answer to that question. The arrival of the turkey was her opportunity. Sailing into the kitchen in search of raisins (the more maturely dignified Alwynne's deportment, the more likely her detection in some absurd child's habit or predilection), she found Elsbeth raging low-voiced, and the small maid gaping admiration over the brobdingnagian proportions of their Christmas dinner. "Look at it, Alwynne! What am I to do? Twenty pounds! And we shan't get through ten! Really, it's too bad--I wrote so distinctly. It's impossible to return it--to Devonshire! No time. It's the twenty-second already. How shall we ever get through it?"