“Posset is hot milk poured on ale or sack, having sugar, grated biscuit, and eggs, with other ingredients boiled in it, which goes all to a curd....” The girl’s eyes grew dreamy, as they watched the nipping of the rain beyond the window.... Posset--to sip in front of the fire in solitary warmth and flickering half-lights.... “Posset” one should drink alone, always; wassail in company. Should she make festival out of the day, and light her first fire, after lessons, up in her room? Or else wait a bit longer, tantalize herself with the promise of a yet colder, drearier morning? How the others had ragged her when she asked for five hundredweight of coal as a birthday present from her parents. “_Private_ coal ... to use in my room.... I could clear out the little cupboard under the stairs just outside, and keep it there ...” stammering, wildly eager--they had asked her to name what she most wanted ... why should she ask for a wrist-watch or a new tennis racquet or a book, because these were things they thought she ought to want most? Ursula enjoyed nonchalantly telling people that she hated reading--they were always so shocked: “When I was your age, I was a regular bookworm.” There were only two sorts of books you got as presents--the first kind had a lot of gold and bright colour on the outside, and was the story of the favourite of the school, who was also the leader in all the scrapes, so impulsive and warm-hearted that even the headmistress could not help smiling indulgently at her; or else a classic suitable for her age: “Villette,” or “The Cloister and the Hearth,” or “Adam Bede,” or “Pride and Prejudice,” and Dickens and Scott, of course, bound in calf or suède, with thin leaves and gilt edges. The first kind wasn’t bad when you were Lottie’s age. The second were just bores. For not one of Mr. Maxwell’s children was of that well-known exceptional type who steal unobserved into the study and rummage among the shelves, and one day light by chance on Gibbon or Swinburne, and become absorbed ... and are never the same afterwards. Books help to furnish a room, undeniably; but otherwise--“the Maxwells do not read”.... It never occurred to them. But they gave books as presents. “Are you sure, Ursula, you wouldn’t rather----?” A tentative, slantwise look, first at her mother, then at her father.... “I’d much rather have fires of my own, please.” Yes, she knew she could get warm at the drawing-room fire whenever she wanted to, but that was everybody’s fire; and the schoolroom fire still belonged to Nurse; she dried the babies’ washing on the high wire guard, so that there was always that steamy stuffy smell.... And the kitchen fire was only to cook by, and--and---- “Bedroom fires are a luxury, Ursula--you know that.”