By Russell Stockton.
HOW it did snow, to be sure! The flakes, and very small ones they were, came down in slanting drives or bewildering spirals, to be taken up again from the earth in fierce gusts and whisked along in blinding drifts.
John, the austere-looking butler, was putting the finishing touches on a tempting spread in the dining-room of the Grantham mansion. There was a salad and a dish of nuts; there was a generous plate of cake and a heaping pile of gorgeous red apples; but it would never do not to have something hot on such a cold night as this, so, alongside of a silver chafing dish was a fine English cheese and two eggs, which of course meant rarebits, and a tea urn with six dainty and varied tea cups and saucers, which of course meant girls.
The antique hall clock blinked like an old man at the dancing flames in the great fire-place and slowly sounded eight o’clock. Almost at once there came the merry jingle of sleigh bells, then a few shrill shrieks, a ring, and then a fierce stamping of small feet on the veranda.
Almost before John’s dignity could carry him to the hall door, Miss Maud Grantham ran swiftly down the stairs, followed, partly on the stairs, but mainly on the bannisters, by little Bobbie Grantham. Four rosy and very pretty faces came in with the snow gust at the door; there was much embracing and such a chattering, Maud failed to get a word in edgeways, and so resorted to the exorcism of holding aloft the yellow sheet of paper she held in her hand so that every eye could see it. The effect was instantaneous: a hush fell on the quartet at the sight of that dreadful messenger—a telegram.
“Now don’t be afraid, girls! It’s nothing very terrible,” and she handed the sheet to Sadie Stillwell, who read aloud:
“Hudson, N. Y., Nov. 28, 1891.