"Sometimes beautiful things really happen," I said; and then through the open door I saw old Nana standing. A hurried kiss from Bess, and the child was gone. Later on, in the evening, after dinner, I mounted the old newel staircase and made my way to the old nursery up in the roof with its latticed dormer windows. There, to my surprise, I found Bess wide awake. "I have told Miss Bess not to talk no more," said Nana, rather sourly; "but she will run on about Master Harry and his German punishments." My old body's sympathy for once was with Fräulein, for spoiling a vest and a velvet suit can never be otherwise than a crime in any nurse's eyes. I went and sat by my little maid's white dimity hung cot. "I think he will be forgiven," I said. "P'raps he'll turn into a fairy prince," said Bess, and she took my hand, "and then it will all come right." In a few moments I saw that she was getting drowsy, for she looked at me with half-closed eyes--one eye tinnin' and the other carrin' trout, as Shropshire folks say when you are overcome with sleep. Then Bess went on in the sing-song voice that so often immediately precedes sleep with children, "Hals was an ugly duck to-day, but he'll turn into a swan or something nice some day." "Some day," I nodded. "Yes, when Hals' birthday comes." And Bess's eyes closed gently, and she slipped away into the blessed land of dreams. When I went downstairs I found a letter from my friend Constance of the Red House, to tell me that at the last moment she was detained by a visit from a poor old body whose son was ill, and so couldn't come down to tea; but that she trusted on the morrow to find me, what Bess calls, "quite better." [Sidenote: BILLY FIRE-DEW COMES] The following day fresh snow fell. All nature lay covered up with what Burbidge calls "a fine hoodin'." Before my eyes a pure white dazzling plain of snow extended, and even the old stone roof and the ruined church glistened white and wonderful. As soon as I was called, I opened my window and saw my tame robin, who one summer was hatched in a yew hedge, appear on my window-sill. Billy Fire-Dew, Bess has christened him, and Billy Buttons he is known as, by Burbidge and the gardeners. He has a brilliant flame-coloured breast, soft rich brown wings, and large round liquid eyes. For a minute he rested upon the window, then with a joyous chirp he spread his wings and hopped upon a great Spanish chestnut sixteenth-century chest, which stands in the centre of my bedroom. On the chest are figures of gods and goddesses, burnt in by an iron.