neyardiners, or play the guitar, or something, and they
crush the red grapes and dance and laugh in the sun--you know jolly well
they do."

"This toffee's about done," said Oswald suddenly. "H.O., shut your silly
mouth and get a cupful of cold water." And then, what with dropping a
little of the toffee into the water to see if it was ready, and pouring
some on a plate that wasn't buttered and not being able to get it off
again when it was cold without breaking the plate, and the warm row
there was about its being one of the best dinner-service ones, the wild
romances of Noel's poetical intellect went out of our heads altogether;
and it was not till later, and when deep in the waters of affliction,
that they were brought back to us.

Next day H.O. said to Dora, "I want to speak to you all by yourself and
me." So they went into the secret staircase that creaks and hasn't been
secret now for countless years; and after that Dora did some white
sewing she wouldn't let us look at, and H.O. helped her.

[Illustration: DORA DID SOME WHITE SEWING.]

"It's another wedding present, you may depend," Dicky said--"a beastly
surprise, I shouldn't wonder." And no more was said. The rest of us were
busy skating on the moat, for it was now freezing hard. Dora never did
care for skating; she says it hurts her feet.

And now Christmas and Boxing Day passed like a radiating dream, and it
was the wedding-day. We all had to go to the bride's mother's house
before the wedding, so as to go to church with the wedding party. The
girls had always wanted to be somebody's bridesmaids, and now they
were--in white cloth coats like coachmen, with lots of little capes, and
white beaver bonnets. They didn't look so bad, though rather as if they
were in a Christmas card; and their dresses were white silk like
pocket-handkerchiefs under the long coats. And their shoes had real
silver buckles our great Indian uncle gave them. H.O. went back just as
the waggonette was starting, and came out with a big brown-paper parcel.
We thought it was the secret surprise present Dora had been making, and,
indeed, when I asked her she nodded. We little recked what it really
was, or how our young brother was going to shove himself forward once
again. He _will_ do it. Nothing you say is of any lasting use.

There were a great many people at the wedding--quite crowds. There was
lots to eat and drink, and though it was all cold, it did not matter,
because there were bla