“Remember what I wrote you this morning: ‘The night she’ll hae but three’? I thought I was going to be the one left out, and there it was poor Marion Crandall, all the time!”
CHAPTER XIII
CHRISTMAS
“ISN’T it pretty, Tia?” Jacquette demanded with just as fresh and eager a note as if she had not asked the question a hundred times before.
“The prettiest one I ever saw,” Aunt Sula agreed, entirely forgetting that she had ever answered it until that minute.
“Very handsome, very handsome,” Mr. Granville pronounced. Then, leaving the enthusiastic couple in the doorway, he walked toward the glittering Christmas tree which loomed at the other end of the brightly lighted room. “What’s this queer-shaped bundle down here under the branches, girls?” he asked, touching it with his cane.
“Grandpa Granville, you’re as bad as a little boy!” Jacquette cried out, darting forward and drawing him away. “What right have you to pry into that package, I’d like to know, sir?”
“Oh, ho!” he laughed guiltily, casting a furtive backward glance. “We might open that one, now, Jacquette, and have it over with.”
“No, indeed! Not till everyone is here. The very idea!” she exclaimed. “You must come right in the other room, and draw the curtains. That’s the only way to keep you out of mischief. Doesn’t Tia look beautiful in that creamy gown, Grandpa? Isn’t her dark hair lovely with it, and don’t you think it’s pretty, waved that way? I’m the hair-dresser.”
Mr. Granville’s eyes rested first on his smiling daughter, then on the tall girl at her side, whose snowy muslin gown was scarcely whiter than the pretty neck and arms it bared. Around Jacquette’s throat was a necklace of pearls which had belonged to her mother, and, though she wore no other ornament, she seemed aglow with colour, for her lips were scarlet, her cheeks were roses, her eyes had the sparkle of jewels and her beautiful hair glittered like gold under sunlight.