'When anybody gets in the spirit of change, though,' said Prudentia,'you never know how far it will go. He may think one end of the house suitable for a hospital; or build an addition for a refuge.'
'Prue, you do talk nonsense,' said her sister. 'Hazel wouldn't like that; and Dane wouldn't like what she wouldn't like.'
'Wouldn't he?' Mrs. Coles responded, with a little, most disagreeable laugh.
'Hazel will be able to regulate all that,' said Dr. Maryland. 'I don't think Dane would do what she would disapprove of. Ha, here they are!'
The jingle of the sleigh bells was heard passing the windows; and for a minute all the party were silent. And the Christmas wind moaned in the chimney, as much as to say, 'I have seen many a Christmas here; you are all new comers, compared to me.' And Wych Hazel sat trying to manage herself, with her heart on the jump. She had been breathless and speechless during the late pleasant little discussion of her affairs, but now for the moment even Mrs. Coles was forgotten. The next thing was a message from Mrs. Bywank; could Miss Wych step to the housekeeper's room for a moment? And in the housekeeper's room Hazel found only one person, and that one was not Mrs. Bywank.
He met her eagerly, and at the same time with the manner of reverential tenderness she was accustomed to have from him lately; as if he remembered how alone she was, and that he must be mother and lover and all in one. And she did her best to give him a smile; but he got it most in the low-toned intonation, after all, with which she answered his question, how she was?
'You did not get the Christmas gift I had intended for you,' he went on; and if his eye had a sparkle of joy in it, his face and manner were as grave and quiet as consideration for her could have suggested. 'I have been disappointed, much to my mortification. The carriage has not come. I had ordered a pony chaise to be here, which I thought you would like. The pony is on the stable.'
She glanced up at him and down, with quick changes in her face, but somehow words would not come. His words touched too many things,and things would not bear touching, to-night. And she could not say a common "thank you"; she could not talk of the trouble he had taken; and pleasure was rather hull down at present, with some leagues of uncertain weather between. No use!
'How could you find time?' she said timidly. But again the voice supplemented the words; and Rollo probably did not feel himself unthanked, for he went on with no want of content in his voice.
'I have left all happy in the Hollow. Every house has a Christmas dinner; and your sugarplums are making life sweet to the souls of young and old. Charteris men and all; every house has comfort in it to-night. I wish you could have seen a few of the faces that came to thank me. You know, I sent off the parcels to the several houses; so for a while I worked on free enough; but when the thing began to get wind, men, women and children came collecting about me, looking on with great eyes of wonder, and some eyes of tears, and muttered wordsI can tell you, I wished them all away!'