earnestly as she laughed and grew
red and pale answering them, kissing Mrs. Howth's hand when she gave it
to her. When the cart did drive away, she watched them standing there
until she was out of sight, and waved her scrap of a handkerchief; and
when the road turned down the hill, lay down and softly cried to
herself.

Now that they were alone they gathered close about the fire, while the
day without grew gray and colder,--Margaret in her old place by her
father's knee. Some dim instinct had troubled the old man all day; it
did now: whenever Margaret spoke, he listened eagerly, and forgot to
answer sometimes, he was so lost in thought. At last he put his hand on
her head, and whispered, "What ails my little girl?" And then his little
girl sobbed and cried, as she had been ready to do all day, and kissed
his trembling hand, and went and hid on her mother's neck, and left
Stephen to say everything for her. And I think you and I had better come
away. Are not these things written on the fairest page of Stephen
Holmes's remembrance?

It was quite dark before they had done talking,--quite dark; the
wood-fire had charred down into a great bed of crimson; the tea stood
till it grew cold, and no one drank it. The old man got up at last, and
Holmes led him to the library, where he smoked every evening. He held
Maggie, as he called her, in his arms a long time, and wrung Holmes's
hand. "God bless you, Stephen!" he said,--"this is a very happy
Christmas-day to me." And yet, sitting alone, the tears ran over his
wrinkled face as he smoked; and when his pipe went out, he did not know
it, but sat motionless. Mrs. Howth, fairly confounded by the shock, went
upstairs, and stayed there a long time. When she came down, the old
lady's blue eyes were tenderer, if that were possible, and her face very
pale. She went into the library and asked her husband if she didn't
prophesy this two years ago, and he said she did, and after a while
asked her if she remembered the barbecue-night at Judge Clapp's thirty
years ago. She blushed at that, and then went up and kissed him. She had
heard Joel's horse clattering up to the kitchen-door, so concluded she
would go out and scold him. Under the circumstances it would be a
relief.

If Mrs. Howth's nerves had been weak, she might have supposed that
free-born serving-man seized with sudden insanity, from the sight that
met her, going into the kitchen. His dinner, set on the dresser, was
flung contemp