“Frightful waste of time, I call it,” said Daphne, when the door was shut. “Because they never will agree, and they don’t seem to get any further by talking. Why don’t they toss up or something, to see who’s right? Or draw lots. Long one, revise it all, middle one, revise it as father and his lot want, short one, let it alone, like the Church Times and Canon Jackson want.”
“Don’t be silly, dear,” said her mother, absently.
“Some day,” added Eddy, “you may be old enough to understand these difficult things, dear. Till then, try and be seen and not heard.”
“Anyhow,” said Daphne, “I go out.... I believe this is rather a footling game, really. It doesn’t amuse one more than a week. I’d rather play bridge, or hide and seek.”
Christmas passed, as Christmas will pass, only give it time. They kept it at the deanery much as they keep it at other deaneries, and, indeed, in very many homes not deaneries. They did up parcels and ran short of brown paper, and bought more string and many more stamps, and sent off cards and cards, and received cards and cards and cards, and hurried to send off more cards to make up the difference (but some only arrived on Christmas Day, a mean trick, and had to wait to be returned till the new year), and took round parcels, and at last rested, and Christmas Day dawned. It was a bright frosty day, with ice, etcetera, and the Olivers went skating in the afternoon with the Bellairs, round and round oranges. Eddy taught Molly a new trick, or step, or whatever those who skate call what they learn, and Daphne and the Bellairs boys flew about hand-in-hand, graceful and charming to watch. In the night it snowed, and next day they all tobogganed.
“I haven’t seen Molly looking so well for weeks,” said Molly’s mother to her father, though indeed Molly usually looked well.
“Healthy weather,” said Colonel Bellairs, “and healthy exercise. I like to see all those children playing together.”
His wife liked it too, and beamed on them all at tea, which the Olivers often came in to after the healthy exercise.
Meanwhile Arnold Denison and Jane Dawn and Eileen Le Moine all wrote to say they would come on the thirty-first, which they proceeded to do. They came by three different trains, and Eddy spent the afternoon meeting them, instead of skating with the Bellairs. First Arnold came, from Cambridge, and twenty minutes later Jane, from Oxford, without her bag, which she had mislaid at Rugby. Meanwhile Eddy got a long telegram from Eileen to the effect that she had missed her train and was coming by the next. He took Jane and Arnold home to tea.
Daphne was still skating. The Dean and his wife were always charming to guests. The Dean talked Cambridge to Arnold. He had been up with Professor Denison, and many other people, and had always kept in touch with Cambridge, as he remarked. Sometimes, while a canon of Ely, he had preached the University Sermon. He did not wholly approve of the social and theological, or non-theological, outlook of Professor Denison and his family; but still, the Denisons were able and interesting and respect-worthy people, if cranky. Arnold the Dean suspected of being very cranky indeed; not the friend he would have chosen for Eddy in the improbable hypothesis of his having had the selection of Eddy’s friends. Certainly not the person he would have chosen for Eddy to share rooms with, as was now their plan. But nothing of this appeared in his courteous, if not very effusive, manner to his guest.