She smiled as she read it. Mr. Derwent was behind the invitation, she knew, and Robert reinforced it by one of his hare-brained but hearty epistles, begging her to accept, and promising her a luridly enthralling experience.
She was glad she could tell them that her promise was given to Betsy for the holidays. There would be a strange pleasure, she thought, in seeing her summer playground in the embrace of winter. The starry Thanksgiving snow had vanished by morning; but now, Betsy said, the great rock near the cottage looked like a giant’s wedding-cake.
The weeks wore on, and the evergreen time drew near. On Christmas morning Rosalie wakened in her white room under the eaves of the Salter house. It had been furnished with an air-tight stove in honor of her visit, and Betsy came in early to make a roaring fire.
“Merry Christmas, Betsy!” cried the girl, sitting up.
“It will be, child,” returned Betsy, “with you for a treat.” She kissed her guest. “You look like Aurora,” she added, in irrepressible admiration of the girl’s soft coloring in the white couch. “I know, ’cause I saw her picture in Europe till I knew her as well as anybody in the family album. To think you might have waked up in the Nixon house this mornin’! You could ’a’ run around in automobiles, and danced, and had a real girl’s good time; and here you are, mewed up with two homespun folks like us, in a snow-bank, with the ocean for a front yard, black enough to bite you! I felt guilty when I waked up. Honestly, I did.”
“Well, stop it, Betsy. This is the one place in the world I want to be these holidays. Do you believe me?”
Betsy shook her head. “It seems too good to be true; but your eyes do look as if you meant it. Here’s a big can o’ hot water, dear, and when you come down, I’ll give you some buckwheat cakes as good as you ever tasted.”
Betsy had maligned the landscape. Rosalie looked out on spotless snow, but all the trees visible along the village street were cased in ice. Every twig sparkled as the sun gained dominion over the sullen sea, and shone on the dazzling, mammoth wedding-cake.
The week passed quickly and happily. Mrs. Pogram gave a dinner for the Salters and their guest, after Loomis and his fiancée had returned to Portland. Captain Salter made Rosalie recite to him the verses in praise of happiness, all the time he was marching to the function.