Now the letter would soon have to be despatched, and as Lucy sat down to her desk on Christmas Eve, she felt that she could safely tell the whole story of Pollie’s departure, and of the blessing which filled her vacant place. Mrs. Morison had been in the kitchen nearly two months, and every day she gave greater satisfaction. She had thrown herself with great zest into the idea of the Christmas party, and Lucy began to think that under this cook’s skilled fingers her festive dishes would probably achieve perfections at which she and poor Pollie had never aimed. As she sat writing to Charlie concerning the domestic good fortune which had befallen her, she felt her heart grow very soft towards this middle-aged woman who had once had a home of her own, but who was now so contentedly and worthily serving others. What life of her own had she? She had paid no visit since she had entered Lucy’s service; she had had no visitor. Yes, Lucy remembered she had had one—a middle-aged woman, who had called on her when she had been in her situation for a month. She had volunteered to say that this person was the wife of her cousin, the plumber at Willesden. Lucy had asked whether she had offered her a cup of tea. No, Mrs. Morison said; her cousin would not expect that; and Lucy had rejoined that she hoped she would show this little hospitality on future occasions. Lucy remembered now that Mrs. Morison had not seemed brightened by this visit, nay, that for a day or two afterwards she had even seemed a little depressed. It occurred to Lucy that perhaps this cousin had come possibly seeking a little loan, or perhaps pressing for the repayment of some trifling debt. Lucy knew that one or two of Pollie’s relatives had not been inclined to spare her hard earnings, and that Charlie and she had intervened to protect the girl from the weak soft-heartedness which can be so easily wrought upon by the loafing or the greedy. What Christmas in any real sense would there be for this woman in the kitchen, whose presence there yet made a social Christmas possible for the rest of the household? If she had any old friends they must be in the North, beyond the reach of anything but the struggling, slow letters of the uneducated. Lucy wondered whether there was anybody to whom Mrs. Morison would like to send some “gift from London in kind remembrance.” She had taken quite a pathetic interest in certain trifling gifts which Lucy had despatched that afternoon. “Eh, it’s bonnie!” she had said, adding with a little sigh, “It’s a gran’ thing to gie pleasure to folk.”