I know it is all very nice and easy to carry a girl through ambitious battles in a book, and after a lapse of years, which are left to the imagination, to bring her out, glowing with success, and with her heart's desire realized. It is done in a book this time; but Olive Dering's love and longing for art, her struggles, determination, and final success, are taken from the life of one who still lives, and who is now enjoying the perfect happiness earned by hard labor, in the galleries of the old masters. There had been toil and troubles and trials; discouraging tears and times of despair, in the years through which we have slipped without a pause; but it would do no good to tell them all; it is enough to know that patience, perseverance and will had overcome them, as there is rarely a case where they will not. "Next year this time we'll not be here together," said Kittie, breaking a long pause, such as will often come, when hearts are content with worldless communion. "Why not?" asked Jean. "Mama and Olive being in Italy, is no reason why you should not come and spend Christmas with me." "Bless the baby, to think she will be married then," exclaimed Bea, caressing the brown head with loving hand. "Every one gone from the old home but Jeanie, and she presiding over it, a married lady; to think of it, girls?" "So wags the world," said Kat with a brisk nod. "I think it would be sad to come here and spend Christmas, with Olive and mama gone; but you must all come to Boston, and if my house isn't big enough, I'll have an addition put on." "No, my home is best," put in Kittie with decision. "It's between you all, and is plenty big enough. That is the place." "Yes, indeed," chimed in Pansy, who was now a tall pretty girl of ten, and perfectly devoted to mama. "We want you to come to New York, and spoke about it before we left home; didn't we mama?" "Yes, and we'll wage a brisk war with any one who puts in a claim, so you had better subside at once my dear," answered Kittie with a smile at her twin, which looked like most anything except a war-like preparation. "There's the gate, the boys are coming," was the answer of Mrs. Kat, and sure enough, there arose a clatter of feet on the porch, a smell of cigar smoke in the air, and in came "the boys," with the usual amount of noise, which boys, big or little, invariably make; and then grandma came flitting down stairs, with a smile and a warning "hush;" and there they were all together. Supper was a gloriously gay meal, where every one's health was drank in fragrant coffee, from Grandma Dering, down to Prince, who had been returned to the home of his youth, and was passing his last days in peaceful content, with just enough exercise to keep his old bones from rusting out too fast. And then they talked of those who were gone from the circle: Father Dering, Ernestine, and lastly, dear old Uncle Ridley, who had died that year, and for whom every one had such a warm loving memory.