Considerable patience was requisite before all the choices were made, and the balance cast between cards and presents, and Miss Mohun got her quartette past all the shop windows, to the seaside villa, shut in by tamarisks, which Aunt Adeline believed to be the only place that suited her health. Mamma and Miss Hacket had already arrived, and filled the little vestibule with parcels and boxes.
Then the early dinner! The aunts had anticipated their Christmas turkey for that goodly company to help them eat it, but afterwards there was only time for a mince pie all round; for more than half the work remained to be done by all except mamma, who would stay and rest with Aunt Ada, having finished all that could not be deputed.
However, first she had a conference in private with Aunt Jane, who undertook therein to come to Silverton for Valetta’s birthday, and add astonishment and mystery sufficient to satisfy such of the public as were weary of Christmas-trees. She added, however, ‘You will think I am always at you. Lily, but did you know that Flinders is living at Darminster?’
‘No; but it is five and twenty miles off, and he has never troubled us.’
‘Don’t be too secure. He is in connection with that low paper—the Politician—which methinks, is the place where those remarkable poems of Miss Constance’s have appeared.’
‘Is it not the way of poetry of that calibre to see the light in county papers?’
‘This seems to me of a lower calibre than is likely to get in without private interest.’
‘But to my certain knowledge the child has neither written to, nor heard of the man all this time.’
‘You don’t know what goes on with her bosom friend.’
‘I am certain Miss Hacket would connive at nothing underhand. Besides, I have never seen any thing sly or deceitful in poor Dolores. She will not make friends with us, that is all, and that may be our fault.’