Christmas day dawned in ideal fashion at Pearfield that year. The sun fell on swelling drifts of virgin snow. The little town sparkled like the village in a Christmas card, and just as the inevitable church spire ornaments that souvenir, so the Congregationalist meeting-house stood in a field of glistening white, as Miss Berry trudged up the shoveled path to attend a service of song planned by the Sunday-school as a fitting festivity for the morning. There was a good attendance, and Miss Lovina gave her neighbors, old and young, cheerful greeting as she regarded complacently the holly wreaths which she had yesterday helped to place in the church windows. When the exercises were over she moved slowly down the aisle by the side of Miss Getchell with whom she had promised weeks ago to eat her Christmas dinner. If there was something of the martyr concealed under Lovina’s benevolent countenance as Miss Ann clutched her arm, the latter would not be allowed to suspect it, and together they emerged from the wide-open door; but once on the porch Miss Berry, with an exclamation of surprise, shook herself free, and Miss Getchell’s astonished eyes beheld her friend hasten down the steps towards some one who ascended to meet her. "It was a reg’lar young prince of a feller with grand eyes," Ann said afterward, dramatizing the occurrence to her old homekeeping mother, "and he took off his hat as he come up to Loviny as though she was somebody great." Miss Getchell’s curious ears could not grasp Jack’s low-spoken question:— "Are you going out to dinner anywhere, Aunt Love?" Miss Lovina’s conscience would have done credit to any Puritan of them all, but Jack had said "are" instead of "were," and she considered that in a flash before responding heartily: "Indeed I am not, Mr. Jack. You’re just comin’ home with me and I’m delighted. Wait one second till I speak to one o’ my neighbors." Jack suspected her as she turned back to Miss Getchell, but her evident pleasure in his arrival decided him not to press the question. He turned his back while she hurriedly and emphatically accosted her friend. "I’m sorry it happens so, Ann, but"— "Oh now, don’t say you won’t come, Loviny. Fetch the young man along and welcome." "Hush, don’t say a word. It is Mr. Van Tassel’s son. You remember. I’ll make it up to you sometime,—I mean you’ll make it up to me. You see it can’t be helped. Now don’t coax me, that’s a good girl; I can’t possibly come, and don’t be mad with me, Ann, you see just how it is," and Miss Getchell allowed herself to be twitched into dumbness by Lovina’s anxious grasp upon her arm, and departed on her lonely way in a measure consoled by the consideration of two luscious mince pies which Miss Berry had sent her as a gift the day before.