When Ralph no longer played at the same theatre, and their meetings became less frequent, the little girl flagged and lost heart. She had good impulses but she was easily led, and her friendship with Ralph had filled her with a sense of dissatisfaction with her own life, and the lives that most nearly touched her own. Her busy little brain began to form eager plans for the future, and at last fate put in her way a chance which revived her drooping spirits, and lighted up her blue eyes with hope. Her good news arrived on Christmas day, otherwise the festival would have been cheerless enough, for the old Professor had slept in his invalid chair the whole of the morning, and Ivy, sitting in solitary state beside the fire, had eaten a sober little Christmas dinner consisting of a slice of cold meat and a mince-pie kindly given to her by the landlady. Then having tidied the bare little room, and stuck a solitary piece of holly in the window that people might see she was “keeping Christmas” properly, she returned to her place on the hearthrug, and tried to become interested in a penny novelette which should have been exciting, but somehow failed to touch her. “Stupid thing!” she exclaimed presently, throwing the book to the further end of the room with a little petulant gesture. “I can’t even cry when the heroine dies. What is the good of a book if you can’t cry over it?” Just then there came a tap at the door, and in walked Ralph with his cheerful face, and in his hands was a great bunch of ivy and mistletoe. “A happy Christmas to you,” he said, taking her cold little hand in his. “How’s the Professor? Not worse I hope?” “He is no worse,” said Ivy, “but he has been asleep all day, and it’s dreadfully dull. Where did you get such lovely evergreens?” “Walked out into the country this morning, right away beyond Hampstead. As for the mistletoe, that’s a particular present from Dan Doolan, and I’ve just had to kiss seven small Doolans beneath it before they would let me out of the house. Now your turn has come.” Ivy laughed and protested, but was thrilled through and through by the kiss, though it was just as matter-of-fact as that which he had bestowed on Tim Doolan, aged three. Her little, pale face lighted up radiantly, but unobservant Ralph saw nothing of that, he was bestowing all his energies on the decoration of the dreary, little room, and crowning with ivy the portraits of sundry great actors and actresses. “Do you think Mrs. Siddons ever looked as stiff and forbidding as this?” he said, glancing round with a smile, as Ivy held him a laurel branch to put above the frame. “Yes,” she replied, saucily. “She must have looked like that when she said in awful tones, ‘Will it wash?’ to the poor frightened shopman who was serving her.” “Ah, perhaps. Well, Ivy, there is no fear that you will ever strike terror into any one’s heart.”