llie's
Christmas stocking, from him and his wife, and which he had forgotten to
give earlier. Nellie was destined to have a fuller stocking than usual
this year, for the squire had remembered her as well as Mr. Ambrose.

John went to bed in his old room at the vicarage protesting that he had
enjoyed the first day of his holiday immensely. As he blew out the light,
he thought suddenly how often in that very room he had gone to bed
dreaming about the lady in black and composing verses to her, till
somehow the Greek terminations would get mixed up with the Latin roots,
the quantities all seemed to change places, and he used to fall asleep
with a delicious half romantic sense of happiness always unfulfilled yet
always present. And now at last it began to be fulfilled in earnest; he
had met the lady in black at last, had spent nearly half a day in her
company and was more persuaded than ever that she was really and truly
his ideal. He did not go to sleep so soon as in the old days, and he was
sorry to go to sleep at all; he wanted to enjoy all his delicious
recollections of that afternoon before he slept and, as he recapitulated
the events which had befallen him and recalled each expression of the
face that had charmed him and every intonation of the charmer's voice, he
felt that he had never been really happy before, that no amount of
success at Cambridge could give him half the delight he had
experienced during one hour in the old Billingsfield church, and that
altogether life anywhere else was not worth living. To-morrow he would
see Mrs. Goddard again, and the next day and the day after that and
then--"bother the future!" ejaculated John, and went to sleep.

He awoke early, roused by the loud clanging of the Christmas bells, and
looking out he saw that the day was fine and cold and bright as Christmas
day should be, and generally is. The hoar frost was frozen into fantastic
shapes upon his little window, the snow was clinging to the yew branches
outside and the robins were hopping and chirping over the thin crust of
frozen snow that just covered the ground. The road was hard and brown as
on the previous day, and the ice in the park would probably bear. Perhaps
Mrs. Goddard would skate in the afternoon between the services, but
then--Juxon would be there. "Never mind Juxon," quoth John to himself,
"it is Christmas day!"

At the vicarage and elsewhere, all over the land, those things were done
which delight the heart of