Chapter XXVII.
Christmas on the Other Side
“‘Christmas, 1893.’ Those last two figures are a bit crooked; aren’t they, Dol?” said a tall, soldierly fellow, who was no longer a boy, yet could scarcely in his own country call himself a man.
He read the date critically, having fixed it as the centre-piece in a festive arch of holly and bunting, which spanned the hall of a mansion in Victoria Park, Manchester.
“I believe that’s better,” he added, straightening a tipsy “93,” and bounding from a chair-back on which he was perched, to step quickly backward, with a something in gait and bearing that suggested a cavalry swing.
“‘Christmas, 1893,’” he read musingly again. “Goodness! to think it’s two years since we laid eyes on old Cyrus, and that he has landed on English soil before this, may be here any minute—and Sinclair too. I guess”—these two words were brought out with a smile, as if the speaker was putting himself in touch with the happiness of a by-gone time—“I guess that ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ will look home-like to them.”
And Neal Farrar, just back for a short vacation from Sandhurst Military College, twice gravely saluted the gay bunting with which his Christmas arch was draped, where the Union Jack of old England kissed the American Stars and Stripes.
“I say!” he exclaimed, turning to a tall youth, who had been inspecting his operations, “that Liverpool train must be beastly late, Dol. Those fellows ought to be here before this. The Mater will be in a stew. She ordered dinner at five, as the youngsters dine with us, of course, to-day, and it’s past that now.”
“Hush! will you? I’ll vow that cab is stopping! Yes! By all that’s splendid, there they are!” and Dol Farrar’s joy-whoop rang through the English oaken hall with scarcely less vehemence than it had rung in former days through the dim aisles of the Maine forests.
A sound of spinning cab-wheels abruptly stopping, a noise of men’s feet on the steps outside, and the hall-door was flung wide by two pairs of welcoming hands.