ongue were quick, the heart seemed even quicker to forgive an enemy, or
pardon an offence.

By the time that Mademoiselle retired to bed that night the last remnant
of strangeness had vanished, and she felt like a lifelong friend and
confidante. She had seen the menu for the Christmas dinner, and had
helped to manufacture jellies and creams, while Pixie perched upon the
dresser, industriously scraping basins of their sweet, lemony, creamy
leavings, with the aid of a teaspoon and an occasional surreptitious
finger when her sisters were looking in an opposite direction. She
suggested and achieved such marvels in the way of garnishing that Molly
was greatly impressed, being a very plain cook in more ways than one,
and solemnly asked for advice upon the killing of turkeys, when
Mademoiselle had to acknowledge ignorance, and lost caste forthwith.
Then Esmeralda invited her to a display of evening dresses in her
bedroom, and wished to know which she should wear--the black silk with
the net top, or the net top over a white skirt, or the black silk with
no top at all, and Bridgie plaintively appealed to her for the casting
vote on the great question of crackers or no crackers!

It was certainly a curious mingling of grandeur and poverty, this life
in the half-ruined Castle, with its magnificent tapestries and carvings,
its evidences of bygone splendour, and, alas! present-day parsimony.
The little house at Passy could have been put down inside the great
entrance hall, but it was a trim little habitation, where on a minute
scale all the refinements and niceties of life were observed, and income
and expenditure were so well balanced that there was always a margin to
the good; but the Misses O'Shaughnessy, who bore themselves as queens in
the neighbourhood, and were treated with truly loyal deference, owned
hardly a decent gown between them, and were seriously exercised about
spending an extra half-crown on a Christmas dinner!

"It's the trifles that mount up! I am a miser about pennies, but I can
spend pounds with the best!" Bridgie explained; and Mademoiselle smiled
meaningly, for had not the order just gone forth that the Castle was to
be "illumined" once more for the arrival of the son and heir?

On Christmas Eve the rain fell in torrents, and, after a morning spent
in preparations of one sort and another, the workers felt the need of a
little amusing recreation. This did not seem easy to achieve, in this
lonely habita