ens before you!--your charms are
approaching maturity!--with a little encouragement he might be induced
to lay his teeth--two and thirty, mind--at your feet!"

Tou Tou giggles, and asserts that she will "kick them away, if he does."
Bobby mildly but firmly remonstrates, and points out to her the
impropriety and ingratitude of such a line of conduct. But his
arguments, though acute and well put, are not convincing, and the
subject is continued, with ever-increasing warmth, all the way home.

CHAPTER XXIX.

It is Christmas-day--a clean white Christmas, pure and crisp. Wherever
one looks, one's eyes water cruelly. For my part, I am very thankful
that it did not occur to God to make the world always white. I hate
snow's blinding livery. Each tiniest twig on the dry harsh trees is
overladen with snow. It is a wonder that they do not break under it; nor
is there any wind to shake down and disperse it. Tempest is white; the
church is white: the whole world colorless and blinding. I have been in
the habit of looking upon Vick as a white dog; to-day she appears
disastrously dark--dirty brunette. Soap-and-water having entirely failed
to restore her complexion. Bobby kindly proposes to _pipeclay_ her.

We have all been to church, and admired our own decorations. And
through all the prayer and the praise, and the glad Christmas singing,
my soul has greatly hungered for Roger. Yes, even though all the boys
are round me--Bobby on this side, the Brat on that--Algy directly in
front; all behaving nicely, too; for are not they right under father's
eyes? Yes, and, for the matter of that, under the rector's too, as he
towers straight above us, under his ivy-bush--the ivy-bush into which
Bobby was so anxious yesterday to insert some misletoe.

Church is over now, and the short afternoon has also slipped by. We are
at dinner; we are dining early to-night--at half-past six o'clock, and
we are to have a dance for the servants afterward. Any hospitality to my
equals I have steadily and stoutly declined, but it seems a shame to
visit my own loneliness on the heads of the servants, to whom it is
nothing. They have always had a Christmas-dance in Roger's reign, and so
a dance they are to have now. We have religiously eaten our beef and
plum-pudding, and have each made a separate little blue fire of burnt
brandy in our spoon.

It is dessert now, and father has proposed Roger's health. I did not
expect it, and I never was so nearly be