"Rainy and rough sets the day—
There's a heart beating for somebody;
I must be up and away,
Somebody's anxious for somebody."
Swain.
Mr. Ingram had once compared the English climate to unregenerated womanhood, and had declaimed on this subject in his own whimsical fashion at Cleveland Terrace, much to the delight of his young friend the humourist.
"It is womanhood pure and simple, and unadulterated by civilisation," he continued, blandly, as he twisted his Mephistophelian moustache. "It is the savage mother, and no mistake, with all her crude grand humours. Sometimes she is benevolent, fairly brimming over with the milk of loving kindness. She has her sportive moods, when she bubbles over with smiles and mirth—a May day, for example—when she walks through the land as meekly as a garlanded lamb."
"Hear, hear!" observed Noel, sotto voce; but Mollie, who was deeply impressed, frowned him down.
Mr. Ingram paused, as though for well-deserved applause. He felt himself becoming eloquent, so he took up his parable again.
"But the savage mother knows how to sulk and frown, and her tear-storms and icy moods are terribly trying. There is no coquetry about her then; it is the storm and stress of a great passion." And with this grand peroration Mr. Ingram gave his moustache a final twist, and, as Noel phrased it, brought down the house.
Waveney thought of Monsieur Blackie's parable—for of course it had been duly retailed to her in Mollie's weekly budget—when the weather changed disastrously before Christmas. The Frost King no longer touched the earth with his white fingers; the wintry sunshine had faded from the landscape; the skies were grey and threatening, and the raw cold made one's flesh creep. "Hardly Christmas weather," Althea observed, regretfully, as she looked out from the library window at the blackened grass and sodden, uninviting paths. Only under the wide verandah of the Porch House a crowd of birds were feeding. Waveney was, as usual, watching them.
"I am afraid it will rain before evening," returned Doreen. "The barometer is going down fast. I do so dislike a wet Christmas." And to this Althea cordially agreed.
But no amount of impending rain could damp Waveney's pleasurable expectations, for she had a delightful programme before her. That year Christmas day fell on Saturday, and as Althea and Doreen always dined with Mrs. Mainwaring, Althea proposed driving her to Cleveland Terrace.