ates and damask
napkins. Le Force, walking beside this waiter, served each guest with a
plate, a napkin and a slice of each cake.

Behind Jerry came Jake, bearing another large tray laden with cut-glass
goblets filled to the brim with snowy, frothy eggnog, or amber apple
toddy, or golden lemon punch. And beside this waiter walked Mr. Force,
serving each guest with the special nectar he or she preferred.

When these good things had been disposed of, although it was but half-past
ten, carriages were ordered, and all the county neighbors took leave and
went home, for these were simple days "before the war"--or "befo' de wo,"
as the negroes more truly, if less grammatically, put it. And the people
wished to get home and go to bed, that they might rise on Christmas
morning in time to attend church in the forenoon.

Within an hour after their departure the household at Mondreer had retired
to rest.

CHAPTER XXXIX

A DECISIVE INTERVIEW

Sunrise on Christmas morning found all the family of Mondreer assembled in
the drawing room, which had been already restored to order by the
servants, and where no vestige of the previous night's festivity remained,
except the beautiful evergreen decorations.

"Who are for church this morning?" inquired Mr. Force, looking around upon
his assembled household.

"I think we all are, except, perhaps, Odalite, who may naturally shrink
from the ordeal of appearing there so soon," replied Mrs. Force, in a tone
so very subdued that it was scarcely redeemed from being that breach of
good breeding, a whisper in company.

But Odalite, who stood next to her mother, heard the words, and replied:

"I must not shrink from going to church, mamma. If people choose to stare
at me, to see how I bear what they suppose to be a heavy disappointment
and a deep mortification, they will do so from a kindly interest, I am
sure, and they will be pleased to find that, though I may be 'perplexed,'
I am 'not in despair.' Besides, mamma, the longer I stay away from church,
the more I shall be stared at when I go."

"You are right, my dear," said Mr. Force, who immediately went out to give
orders that all the carriages in the stables--that is to say, the family
coach, the break and the buggy--should be got ready and brought around to
take the family to All Faith Church.

There were other duties to be done before they broke their fast. On this
day, the servants, not only of the house, but of the plantatio