Mrs. Grant’s letter seemed, on the face of it, both as cheerful and as brief as usual. She “supposed Lucy had heard nothing lately, as she knew she would have let her know if she had.” “Sailing vessels are often out of their reckoning for weeks and weeks,” she added. She dropped a word of congratulation that Lucy’s own welcoming day was assuredly near at hand now, and of half-comic self-condolence that hers was so much farther off. “In my case, too, one suspense is no sooner over than another begins,” she wrote. “But that’s the lot of the sailor’s wife, and I know it was all in my bargain when I took the captain.” There certainly seemed nothing in that letter to alarm Lucy, and she marvelled at a strange uneasiness which she felt stirring within her. Was she intuitively aware of some anxiety on the part of Mrs. Grant, which she had studiously kept out of her words? Lucy wrote a prompt reply, saying that she had heard nothing yet, but was daily looking for tidings. She tried to make her letter cheerful, and wondered whether Mrs. Grant, in her turn, would read anything between the lines. Lucy scarcely liked to think of the approaching Christmas Day. If Charlie had returned, it would be a day of supreme joy; if timely sea news came in, it would be one of gladdest thanksgiving. But if——! There Lucy paused, and turned aside as from a great mist advancing to enfold her. Yet she must make her little plans to be fit for the fulfilment of her hope. Not to do so, would seem like creating an omen of prolonged separation and anxiety. So she and Miss Latimer sent out a Christmas bidding to Mr. Somerset, Lucy saying with pathetic playfulness that under the circumstances she scarcely knew whether she ought to issue her invitations in her own name only or with Charlie’s joined thereto. “For he may be among us on that day yet,” she added. Writing down her hope seemed to make it more tangible. Mr. Somerset called in reply to Lucy’s invitation. He told her that in accepting it, he was accepting a real kindness. Without it, this Christmas might have been very lonely and desolate for him. His old landlord lay at the point of death, and consequently the whole household was saddened and absorbed. “How much sadness there is in the world!” sighed Lucy. “And how terrible it is that there is a sort of consolation in realising that one is not the only burdened and anxious soul. It seems a selfish and cruel feeling to find comfort in that thought!” Mr. Somerset looked up brightly. “Yes, it seems so,” he said. “I used to think so, and probably it is so in the spirit in which the idea may sometimes be suggested and received. Yet I have learned to understand that it does not have a selfish and cruel origin. I think I have discovered what the idea springs from, and how it is that such a thought may really soothe and strengthen. After all, what is the very depth of woe—its unendurable sting?” Lucy mused.