Mrs. Morison came back in about a quarter of an hour. She had a parcel under her shawl, and in her hand was a little bright-coloured ball. “If you please, m’m,” she said, “I’ll make bold to drop that into the stocking that I see you’ve hung outside Master Hugh’s door. And I’m sure I’m sending my good Christmas wishes to the master, if the winds will carry them. And please, ma’am, if you’ll do me a favour, you won’t trouble yourself a bit about kitchen things to-morrow, but just trust to me. All is ready now as far as it can be till it’s fairly put on the fire.” Lucy gratefully promised full confidence. She had fixed her dinner-hour carefully—two hours earlier than she had ever had Christmas dinner. It was to come off at four o’clock, because it would not be nice for dear old Miss Latimer to have to return home late, now there was no Charlie to escort her. It would not have been kind to fix it sooner than four, since Wilfrid Somerset so much disliked being abroad before dusk. Next morning, after the Christmas cards had been admired and arranged gaily on the mantelshelf—after the Christmas stocking had been emptied of all its contents and Hugh had made a right guess as to the giver of the pretty ball—Lucy and Hugh went to morning service. Of course, the familiar hymns, even the fresh smell of the “holly, bay and mistletoe” of which the church was full, all had a pathos for her, as indeed they do for everybody except such as little Hugh, to whose short experience it seems that all Christmas Days will be as this one or even more abundant. Yet Lucy reflected that, looking forward, she could never have foreseen herself so full of cheer and patience and hope. Kneeling in her pew, thinking of all the happy festivals of her married life, her mind went back to those earlier days when she and Florence had looked over one book while they warbled— “Hark, the herald angels sing, Glory to the new-born King, Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled.” Then—as always happens with all healthy, right-minded people, when their nerves are emerging, quiet, after a storm, and their hearts are full of thankfulness for blessings already realised, and for hopes brightening before them—Lucy began to wonder whether she had not been a little severe and unjust to Florence—whether she might not have blamed her for jars due rather to Lucy’s own morbidly irritable condition. She was glad she was to spend Christmas Day in her own house—glad that Miss Latimer and Mr. Somerset and the country boy were to be her guests—but possibly it did seem hard to Florence that she had been set aside. That last speech of hers about being now free to invite other guests might perhaps have been wrung from her by a jar inflicted by Lucy herself. Lucy felt that she would be the happier at her own little festival, if she could feel quite sure that all was right between Florence and herself, and that she had made due amends for aught she had done amiss.