o spend the day alone with
your brothers and sisters. Better chuck it at once!"

Peg said firmly and with emphasis: "_Heathen!_ Miserable, cold-blooded,
materially-minded _frogs_! Where's your Christmas spirit, I should like
to know? . . . If you have none for yourselves, think of other people.
Think of _me_! I love my Christmas, and I'm not going to give it up for
you or any one else. My very first Christmas at home as a growed-up
lady, and you want to diddle me out of it. . . . Go to! Likewise, avaunt!
Now by my halidom, good sirs, you know not with whom you have to deal.
'Tis my royal pleasure the revels proceed!"

Jack grimaced eloquently at Margaret, who grimaced back.

"With all the pleasure in the world," he said suavely. "Show me a revel,
and I'll revel with the best. I like revels. What I do _not_ like is to
stodge at home eating an indigestible meal, and pretending that I'm full
of glee, when in reality I'm bored to death. If you could suggest a
change. . . ."

Margaret sighed; Tom sniffed; Peg pursed up her lips and thought.
Presently her eyes brightened. "Of course," she remarked tentatively,
"there are the Revells!"

Jack flushed and bit his lips.

"Quite so! There are. Fifty miles away, and not a spare bed in the
house. Lot of good they are to us, to be sure! Were you going to suggest
that we dropped in for a quiet call? Silly nonsense, to talk of a thing
like that."

Jack was quite testy and huffed, for the suggestion touched a tender
point. The Revells were the friends _par excellence_ of the family of
which he was the youthful head. It seemed, indeed, as if the two
households had been specially manufactured so that each should fit the
wants of the other. Jack was very certain that, in any case, Myra Revell
supplied all that _he_ lacked, and the very thought of spending
Christmas Day in her company sent a pang of longing through his heart.
Margaret cherished a romantic admiration for Mrs. Revell, who was still
a girl at heart despite the presence of a grown-up family. Dennis was at
Marlborough with Tom; while Pat or Patricia was Peg's bosom chum.

What could you wish for more? A Christmas spent with the Revells would
be a pure delight; but alas! fifty miles of some of the wildest and
bleakest country in England stretched between the two homes, which,
being on different lines of railway, were inaccessible by the ordinary
route. Moreover, the Revells were, as they themselves cheerfully
declared,