[Illustration: THE GIRL’S OWN PAPER VOL. XX.—NO. 1019.] JULY 8, 1899. [PRICE ONE PENNY.] [Illustration: “‘A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU.’” (_See page 643._)] _All rights reserved._] SHEILA’S COUSIN EFFIE. A STORY FOR GIRLS. BY EVELYN EVERETT-GREEN, Author of “Greyfriars,” “Half-a-dozen Sisters,” etc. CHAPTER XIV. CHRISTMAS TIME. “A merry Christmas, Miss Cossart! Why, you don’t mean to say you are not coming to church! I thought you’d be sure to make a fresh start on Christmas Day!” “Oh, I’m a regular heathen! I haven’t been to church twice the whole year! I can’t stand stuffy places, and I expect the scent of the flowers will make it twice as bad as usual to-day.” “Well, you’re coming anyway, Miss Cholmondeley? Shall we start? It’ll be hot walking, and I hate that omnibus, and the carros are so slow. Come along. Miss Cossart will tell them that we’ve started.” Sheila hung back a moment; she had an instinct that her aunt would be vexed, but she never knew how to refuse Ronald’s suggestions, made in a half masterful, half-pleading way. He took her prayer-book and walked off beside her, whilst Effie looked after them with a rather stormy light in her eyes. “Does she really never come to church?” asked Ronald, as they took their way along the sunny road together. “She has only been once or twice since I have known her,” answered Sheila. “She thinks the air might bring on asthma.” Ronald was silent for a few minutes, swinging his stick. His face was rather graver than its wont. “Somehow I don’t like to see people staying away from church like that. I know it isn’t fashionable to say such things, but I have a feeling that church is the place to help us to get the better of our infirmities, bodily and spiritual. My brother Guy will struggle out to church when he goes nowhere else, and I’m sure he is never the worse for it. I don’t like to hear a girl call herself a heathen in that flippant way. She must remember she won’t be judged by the standard of the heathens!” It was so unusual for Ronald to speak seriously that Sheila was quite surprised, yet somehow it seemed to draw them closer together. That was how Oscar sometimes talked, and upon this Christmas morning her thoughts were very much with Oscar. It was the first Christmas they had ever spent apart, and Sheila was a little bit homesick in consequence. “I should hate not to go to church on Christmas morning,” she said. “It seems to bring us near to everybody all round the world. It is so hard to realise that it is Christmas here. A few days ago when it rained so, and the snow came on the mountains, one could fancy, perhaps, that it might be winter somewhere; but with this glorious sunshine! It seems almost ridiculous!” “Do you like Christmas out here, Miss Sheila?” asked Ronald, who often called her that, and sometimes “Miss Baby,” “or would you rather be at home?”