Chapter Fourteen.
“Some say, that ever ’gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad.
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike.
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm;
So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.”
Shakespeare.
It was Christmas Eve. It was going to be an old old-fashioned Christmas, too, there was no mistake about that. And to-night the snow lay fully two feet deep on the lawn in front of Rowan Tree Villa. The sky was overspread with masses of darkest cloud that were being continually driven onward on the wings of a fierce north wind, seldom permitting even one solitary star to peep out. The storm roared through the leafless elm trees, and shrieked and moaned among the giant poplars. It was indeed a wild and wintry night.
Ah! but it didn’t prevent my old and faithful Ben from making his appearance, though what with his long white beard, his snow-clad coat, and his round, rosy, laughing face, when I went myself to open the hall door to him, I really took him for King Christmas himself.
But half an hour afterwards, when the crimson curtains were closely drawn, when the table was laden with good cheer, the two great Newfoundlands sleeping on the ample hearthrug, old Polly asleep on her perch, the cat singing on the footstool, and the kettle on the hob, with Ben at one side of the fire, his pipe in full blast, and myself at the other, you would have admitted we looked just as snug and jolly as there was any occasion to be.
“Well, Nie, lad,” said Ben, “this is what I call the quintessence of comfort. Heave round with a yarn.”
“Just the thing,” said I; “but what shall it be?”