aptain
Breton, confidently. "It would take more than a silver bullet to find
its way to my heart while you are besieging heaven's doors in the
tumultuous fashion that only women can attain. I bear a charmed life as
long as you remember your petitions."

Annis answered with a look, and Cicely, nestling by her mother's chair,
watched her sister with wide, serious eyes. To the child standing on the
threshold of womanhood the presence of love carries with it an
intoxicating flavor of mystery. It is something that fills her alike
with envy and a vague resentment, with wonder and an indefinable desire.
Its commonest expression is a perverse antipathy to one of the lovers,
with an irrational increase of affection for the other; and in this case
Captain Breton came in for his full share of Cicely's smothered anger
and disdain. He, meanwhile, in happy unconsciousness, chancing to meet
the brown eyes lifted dreamily to his own, and noting the upward curve
of the short, sweet lip, thought within himself that this elfish little
Cicely was growing almost as pretty as her sister--a judgment which
proves conclusively the blindness of love; for Annis, though fair and
comely to look upon, came no nearer to her young sister's beauty than
does the pink-tipped daisy to the half-opened rosebud uncurling slowly
in the sun. At present, the girl, seeing that she was watched, turned
away her head pettishly and eyed the leaping flames.

"Annis said to-night there was but one thing lacking to her Christmas
cheer," she remarked, after a pause, and with the too evident intention
of saying something vexatious.

"And that was I!" interposed the cavalier, with the ready assurance of a
lover.

"It was not you at all," returned Cicely, "but the mistletoe. We
gathered the other greens ourselves, but there was no mistletoe to be
found within or without the gates of London."

"By a happy chance we can proceed as though we had it," said Captain
Breton, contentedly, while Annis crimsoned like a rose. "It is a welcome
little plant, and carries a merry message; but if it be banished in
these saintly days, we obstinate sinners must kiss without its
sanction."

"But the maid who is not kissed on Christmas-night beneath the mistletoe
will never be a wife during the coming year," persisted Cicely, who had
laid down her line of attack and was not to be driven therefrom.

"Now, will you wager your ring or your new ear-drop on that, little
sister?" said the