Dolores had a card from her aunt and each of her cousins, besides one of the parcel Uncle Reginald had brought. She did not think enough of the very bad drawing and smeared painting of the ambitious attempts she received, to feel at all disconcerted at having no reciprocity to offer. The only cards she had sent were to Constance Hacket, to Fraulein, and to Maude Sefton--the last with a sore sense of the long interval since she had heard. However, there was a card from Maude, but it was a very poor one, looking very much like a last year’s possession, and the letter was not much better, being chiefly an apology for having been too busy to write. Maude was going to lectures with Nona Styles--Nona was such a darling girl--and breaking off because she was wanted to rehearse Cinderella with this same darling Nona. It made Dolores’s heart go down farther, though there was a beautiful and unexpected card from Mrs. Sefton, one from her former servant, Caroline, also from Fraulein, and three or four from old friends of her mother, who had remembered the solitary girl. In truth, she had more beautiful ones than anybody else, but she kept these in their envelopes, and showed herself so much averse to free fingering and admiration of them that Lady Merrifield had to call off Valetta, remind her that her cousin had a right to her own cards, and hear in return that Dolores was so cross. ‘Dolly,’ said Uncle Reginald, in a low voice, since he was permitted to look over the cards with her, ‘I think I have found out part of your troubles.’ She looked at him in alarm. He put his finger on a card bearing the words, ‘Goodwill to men.’ ‘Umph,’ said she. ‘I don’t want everything of mine messed and spoilt.’ And as his eye fell on Fergus’s cards, he felt there was reason in what she said. Aunt Lily had taken her for a quarter of an hour that morning, trying to infuse the real thought underlying the joy that makes it Christmas, not only yule-tide. But it all fell flat--it was all lessons to her--imposed on her on a day that she had not been used to see made what she called ‘goody.’ Last year her father had shut himself up after church, and she had spent the evening in noisy mirth with the Seftons. CHAPTER XIII. -- AN EGYPTIAN SPHYNX Aunt Adeline was afraid of winter journeys as well as of the tumultuous festivities of Silverton; so at twelve o’clock. Colonel Mohun drove the pony-carriage to meet the little trim Brownie who stepped out of the station, the porter carrying behind her a huge thing, long, and swathed in brown paper. ‘It is quite light; it won’t hurt,’ she said, ‘It must go with us. Put your legs across it, Regie. That’s right.’ ‘Then what becomes of yours?’ ‘Mine can go anywhere,’ said Miss Mohun, crumpling herself up in some mysterious manner under the fur rug, while they drove off, her luggage sticking far off on either side of the splashboard. ‘What, in the name of wonder, are you smuggling in there?’