Kitty uncovered one eye; Mr. Paul must be dreaming.
"I can't have it, you see."
"Who said so? Sally and I have been planning all the morning how we shall order out all my waggons, and go round and fetch your guests—only you must not have the tree too late, or else we might lose our way in taking them home again."
Kitty's joy could only find expressions in incoherent exclamations of delight.
"It's wonderfully kind of you," said the rector, who appeared at that moment, and gradually gathered from Kitty what Paul proposed to do.
"It seems a pity the thing should be put off," Paul answered a little awkwardly.
Perhaps no act of the squire's won such universal approbation as the spirited manner in which he carried through Miss Kitty's tree.
"You would not have thought as he was one to care about the little ones," said Mrs. Macdonald to Sally.
"And I don't think, honestly, that he is," Sally answered—"with the exception of Kitty Curzon; his devotion to her is something quite astonishing."
The tree had been, happily, trimmed the day before, and nothing therefore remained but for the guests to appear. One or two had to be fetched in a boat, and the cottage in the field had a special voyage to itself. There was a little child there that was a particular friend of Kitty's.