Freda was sure this question was a feeler, and she answered carelessly,—
'Yes, naturally. He is Mr Jones' brother curate.'
'Now confess, you didn't like those people, and that sort of life? You must have been ennuyée from morning to night.'
'On the contrary, the days were not half long enough.'
'Freda!' exclaimed Mrs Vaughan, 'I get tho tired, and tho doth the colonel, before half the evening ith over.'
'Some one else seems in the same condition,' said Freda. 'Papa is fast asleep.'
'And mamma nearly,' said Mrs Vaughan. 'And I am tho tired. I think Chrithmath dayth are very dull. One dothn't know what to do.'
'That isn't peculiar to Christmas days in your year,' said the colonel, sarcastically; 'but I suppose we had better go to bed. I hope we shall be more amusing to-morrow, Freda. All your old friends, the constant Sir Hugh amongst them, are invited to meet you. Let me light your candle. Remember, I always used to do that, when we had our snug evenings together such an age ago.'
'Yeth, he often talkth of you, Freda, and thayth you were thuch good company.'
Freda heard Colonel Vaughan sigh, and thought, as she said 'good-night,' and hastened upstairs, that she ought to be thankful that the imperturbable and dull Wilhelmina Nugent had been the choice of that discontented and irritable colonel, instead of the quick-tempered, independent Winifred Gwynne.