Coats were pulled off; mufflers were unwound; pretty hands were helping; strong hands were lifting and carrying; every room was bright with a great fire; tea was refused, and dinner welcomed. After dinner came the unpacking of great boxes; and in the midst of the resultant pleasure, the proposal came to be made--none but Christina knew how--that the inhabitants of the cottage should be invited to dinner on Christmas-eve. It was carried at once, and the next afternoon a formal invitation was sent. At the cottage it caused conference, no discussion. The lady of the New House had not called with her girls, it was true; but then neither had the lady of the castle--for that was the clanspeople's name for the whole ridge on which the cottage stood--called on the new-comers! If there was offence, it was mutual! The unceremonious invitation MIGHT indicate that it was not thought necessary to treat them as persons who knew the ways of society; on the other hand, if it meant that they were ready to throw aside formalities and behave heartily, it would be wrong not to meet them half-way! They resolved therefore to make a counter-proposal; and if the invitation came of neighbourliness, and not of imagined patronage, they would certainly meet it in a friendly spirit! Answer was returned, sealed with no mere crest but with a coat of arms, to the effect that it had been the custom since time forgotten for the chief to welcome his people and friends without distinction on Christmas-eve, and the custom could not be broken; but if the ladies and gentlemen of the New House would favour them with their company on the occasion, to dine and dance, the chief and his family would gratefully accept any later offer of hospitality Mr. and Mrs. Peregrine Palmer might do them, the honour to send. This reply gave occasion to a good deal of talk at the New House, not entirely of a sort which the friends of the chief would have enjoyed hearing. Frequent were the bursts of laughter from the men at the assumption of the title of CHIEF by a man with no more land than he could just manage to live upon. The village they said, and said truly, in which the greater number of HIS PEOPLE lived, was not his at all--not a foot of the ground on which it stood, not a stone or sod of which it was built--but belonged to a certain Canadian, who was about to turn all his territory around and adjacent into a deer forest! They could not see that, if there had ever been anything genuine in the patriarchal relation, the mere loss of the clan-property could no more cause the chieftainship to cease, than could the loss of the silver-hilted Andrew Ferrara, handed down from father to son for so many generations.