“No, it was not a failure! I’m not disappointed a bit. I was silly, and expected too much, but the one who came—oh, Gervase, she was the very incarnation of homelessness. If she will let me help her, I shall be quite, quite satisfied?”
Chapter Thirteen.
Letters.
Christmas approached. Cynthia drove from one big shop to another, accompanied by mother or governess, and selected costly remembrances for her friends, Betty Trevor among the rest, for Mrs Alliot had at last been induced to call on the doctor’s wife, and so formally sanction the girls’ friendship. Nan Vanburgh crossed out every day as it passed on the calendar, and danced for joy at the thought of going “home” for the festival.
“It’s rather rough on me. I flattered myself that I was sufficient for your happiness,” her husband told her, “and—”
“So you are, you darling!” Nan assured him gushingly. “I don’t want anyone else in the world but just you, and father, and mother, and Jim, and the girls, and Kitty, and Ned, and your old uncle, and Maud’s baby—and—”
“And Cynthia Alliot, and this newly-discovered family at Number 14, and twenty governesses rolled into one as exemplified by Miss Beveridge, and a few score of friends scattered up and down the country! What it is to have married a little soul with a big heart!” cried Gervase, shrugging his shoulders with an air of martyrdom, though, as a matter of fact, he was well satisfied with his place in his wife’s affection, and loved her all the more for remaining faithful to old claims.
As for Betty Trevor, she shivered up in her attic bedroom, putting in last stitches to the presents which had been manufactured at the cost of much trouble and self-denial. The table-centre for mother had cost only one and threepence, but looked every bit as nice as those displayed in the shop-windows for six and nine. The shield of white wadded satin seemed an ideal protector for a dress shirt, and if father did not use it as such when he went out in the evening, it would be his fault, not hers! The blotters for Miles and Jack, the work and shoe bags for the girls, to say nothing of endless odds and ends for cousins and aunts, made quite a brave show when she laid them all out on the bed preparatory to wrapping them up in paper. Jill was invited to the private view, her own present being discreetly hidden away for the occasion, and expressed an admiration tempered by pity.