hrilling;
ending, for Ted liked stories that ended well, with his happy adoption
into a kind-hearted family, such as it is to be wished there were more
of to be found in real life! I should have liked to tell you this story,
and some day perhaps I shall do so, but not, I fear, in this little
book, for there are even a great many things about Ted himself which I
shall not have room for.

There were other pleasures besides skating this Christmas time. Among
these there was a very delightful entertainment given by some of Ted's
father's and mother's friends to a very large party, both old and young.
It was a regular Christmas gathering--so large that the great big
old-fashioned ball-room at the "Red Lion" was engaged for the purpose.

Dear me, what a great many scenes this old ball-room had witnessed!
Election contests without end, during three-quarters of a century and
more; balls of the old-world type, when the gentlemen had powdered wigs
and ribbon-tied "queues;" which, no doubt, you irreverent little people
of the nineteenth century would call "pig-tails;" and my Lady Grizzle
from the hall once actually stuck in the doorway, so ponderous was her
head-gear, though by dint of good management her hoop and furbelows
had been got through. And farther back still, in the Roundhead days,
when--so ran the legend--a party of rollicking cavaliers, and a company
commanded by one Captain Holdfast Armstrong, passed two succeeding
nights in the Red Lion's ball-room, neither--so cleverly did the
cautious landlord manage--having the least idea of the other's near
neighbourhood.

But never had the old ball-room seen happier faces or heard merrier
laughter than at this Christmas party; and among the happy faces none
was brighter than our Ted's. He really did enjoy himself, though one of
the youngest of the guests, for Cissy had been pronounced _too_ young,
but had reconciled herself to going to bed at her usual hour, by Ted's
promise to tell her all about it the next day. And besides his boy
friends--Percy, of course, who was home for the holidays, and Rex, and
several others--Ted had another companion this evening whom he was very
fond of. This was a little girl about his own age, named Gertrude, the
daughter of a friend of his father's. I have not told you about her
before, because, I suppose, I have had so many things to tell, that I
have felt rather puzzled how to put them all in nicely, especially as
they are all simple, everyday