Christmas has come and gone. The little girls left us a fortnight before, and the flat felt very quiet without them, but I busied myself arranging for the fray. The tree was a huge success; so was the dinner next day. Nevertheless, I shed tears on my pillow when I went to bed, for if a solitary woman is ever justified in feeling "lone and lorn," it is certainly at the season when everybody who possesses a family rushes to it as a matter of course. It was very gratifying to have made other people happy, but I had a hungry longing to be made happy myself. By an unfortunate coincidence, neither Kathie's greeting, nor Charmion's, nor Delphine's, arrived until the twenty-seventh, and Aunt Eliza's turkey never arrived at all, having presumably lost its label, and been eaten by the postman as treasure trove. The one and only parcel from a distance came from--Mr Maplestone! He had called the week before, and asked permission to send evergreens from the "Hall". He said it was so difficult to get holly with berries on it in town, and all children loved red berries. Presumably his trees grew crackers as well as berries, for about a dozen boxes of the most gorgeous varieties were enclosed in the crate. There was no letter, but just a card with "For the children," written in a corner. On Boxing Day I made Winifred and Marion write letters of thanks--a weary process from which they emerged splattered with tears and ink. "Why are you laughing, Miss Harding?" they inquired resentfully. I did not tell them that I was chuckling at my own cleverness in avoiding a personal acknowledgment. I did not know that the Squire had ever seen my writing, but he might have done. No risks should be run. Delphine and her husband are settled at Davos, and he is beginning to improve. She writes sweet little letters, and I'm sure this illness has arrived at a providential moment. The shock of realising that her Jacky's life was in danger was like a lightning flash lighting up a dark landscape. In its blaze she saw revealed the true value of things, and the sloping path on which her feet were set. I don't expect her to grow up all at once, settle down to all work and no play, and behave as though she were forty instead of twenty-two; I don't expect the Vicar to give up being absent-minded and exacting; but I do honestly believe that it will do him good to have his shock, and that he is just enough to realise his own share of the blame. Then they will kiss and begin again, and things will go better, because there will be understanding to leaven love.