After dinner, as usual, Miss Braithwaite repaired to her library fire. The night was cold; a sleet rain was falling, turning to ice as it fell; the fire was welcome, its warmth and its cheer needed.
“Anselm, before you begin to smoke, will you call the garage? I detest telephoning. Tell Leo to put the chains on my car, and not to fail to have it here by half past eleven; I will not drive faster than ten miles an hour to-night. Then you may light your cigar, and draw up to be agreeable to us,” Miss Braithwaite commanded her guest. “Cicely, dear, is it to be for you an order that keeps perpetual silence?”
“I’m afraid no order, of any sort,” said Cis arousing herself. “Fancy me not talking! But we went to confession, you see, and after that I can’t say much for awhile. I’m thinking about Nannie, married to-morrow, and wondering what my birthday resolutions ought to be.”
She spoke softly, sitting close beside Miss Braithwaite, but Anselm Lancaster heard her low, yet resonant voice.
He hung up the telephone receiver, and came back to the hearth. As he slipped into his waiting chair he laid on Cicely’s knee a package; evidently a book.
She untied the cord and disclosed a translation of the Missal, bound in tooled red leather, three ribbons hanging from its pages.
“Oh!” cried Cis rapturously. “Oh, Mr. Lancaster, how fine, how beautiful! Is it—” She checked herself, but, fluttering the leaves, her arrested question was answered. On the fly page was written in the close, small hand of one who wrote and thought much: “Cicely Adair. Her Lord’s birthday and her own. Christmas 1922.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you!” cried Cis. “You can’t know how much I wanted it! Nor how I thank you! Truly, Mr. Lancaster, I’m so grateful I can’t say it. To think of your bothering with me.”
“Oh, but, my dear Miss Adair! I protest! Bothering with you! How dreadful! And not grateful, you know! Aren’t we friends? You must not be grateful to a friend! But I hope you’ll like your Missal; of course you will! Now I’m talking nonsense, too! I wanted you to have it for the Midnight Mass. You told me you’d never been to a midnight Mass! It’s supremely beautiful; the Adeste, and that fourth stanza at midnight: ‘Ergo qui natus die hodierna.’ Will you say one tiny prayer for the Missal-giver?” cried Anselm Lancaster, so boyishly that Cis, as well as Miss Braithwaite looked surprised, and Cis said with the greatest friendliness, out of her own boyish side:
“I’ll say a big one! I’ll put you in with Miss Braithwaite and Nan. I’m going to receive for Nan; to-morrow is her wedding day. And someone who needs it most of all. I’ll put you into my intention, and if I mayn’t be grateful, Mr. Lancaster, I’ll be entirely ungrateful, but I’ll think you’re so good to me that I would be grateful if it weren’t terribly wrong to be anything but ungrateful!”