"Of course, no more I have. Well, listen: we're all to be grannie's guests this Christmas, not at her house in London, but somewhere at the seaside. Grannie will take lodgings for us, and we are to be as jolly and merry as ever we please. She has invited me, of course, and you too, Cecil, and the four boys, and Kate, and she thinks the seaside will do us good, even if it is cold weather; and now all we have to decide on is what part of the coast we will visit, and how many rooms we will require, for grannie, who is very rich, will pay everything, so that the horrid money part needn't trouble any of us. Now, Cecil, aren't you glad—aren't you delighted?"
"But it seems too much to take," said Cecil.
"Too much! Oh, if you're going to begin that nonsense, I'll never speak to you again! Don't waste words over it, Cecil, for you will have to yield in the end, and you may as well do it with a good grace."
"It will certainly be a good relief to Mr. Danvers," said Cecil.
"Yes, of course; and, poor man, his feelings ought to be a little considered. Of course you will accept, Cecil; say 'yes,' this minute."
"I don't see how I am to refuse, Molly. It is quite the most perfect idea I ever heard of in all my life."
"Yes, isn't it? Won't grannie have a jolly Christmas, even though she is all by herself. Why, her heart will be just bubbling over with contentment."
"But she would not like it to bubble," said Cecil. "Oh, she is the dearest old lady in the world! But Molly, darling, I very nearly lost my reason trying to stay quiet enough that day, when she told me that she had left me five hundreds pounds in her will."
"Well," said Molly, "I am too happy for anything. We'll tell Kate after dinner, and then you and I, Cecil, must arrange all about the lodgings. We need deny ourselves nothing, for grannie will want us to have a real good time."
The girls had a consultation after dinner, or rather, Molly harangued and arranged, and Kate and Cecil sat by and listened, with sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks. Much of Kate's old high spirits returned to her for this auspicious occasion. It turned out that she knew a great deal more about the seaside than either of the other girls, her home in Ireland being within a mile of the coast. She suggested an unfashionable seaside resort; she further added that the sea was grandest in winter, when the great storms came, and the waves were sometimes, figuratively speaking, mountains high. She described with great vividness a storm which she and her grandfather had witnessed on the broad Atlantic, how the great rollers came dashing and breaking in, and the clouds of spray wetted your face, even though you stood many yards back from the raging sea. Then she described a vessel on the rocks, and the lowering of the lifeboat, and the rescuing of the drowning people, and the man and the little girl whom she and her grandfather took home that night; the terrible grief of the man, whose wife had been drowned in the shipwreck, and the feel of the little child's arms round Kate's neck as she lay huddled up in her bed.