“Certainly not,” Lucy answered cordially. “She is off to buy something,” she thought to herself, and added aloud, “I’m afraid you are rather late for most of the shops.”
“Some of them keep open late on Christmas Eve,” said Mrs. Morison; “not the shops you’ll know, m’m, but quiet little places where working people go.”
Mrs. Morison came back in about a quarter of an hour. She had a parcel under her shawl, and in her hand was a little bright-coloured ball.
“If you please, m’m,” she said, “I’ll make bold to drop that into the stocking that I see you’ve hung outside Master Hugh’s door. And I’m sure I’m sending my good Christmas wishes to the master, if the winds will carry them. And please, ma’am, if you’ll do me a favour, you won’t trouble yourself a bit about kitchen things to-morrow, but just trust to me. All is ready now as far as it can be till it’s fairly put on the fire.”
Lucy gratefully promised full confidence. She had fixed her dinner-hour carefully—two hours earlier than she had ever had Christmas dinner. It was to come off at four o’clock, because it would not be nice for dear old Miss Latimer to have to return home late, now there was no Charlie to escort her. It would not have been kind to fix it sooner than four, since Wilfrid Somerset so much disliked being abroad before dusk.
Next morning, after the Christmas cards had been admired and arranged gaily on the mantelshelf—after the Christmas stocking had been emptied of all its contents and Hugh had made a right guess as to the giver of the pretty ball—Lucy and Hugh went to morning service. Of course, the familiar hymns, even the fresh smell of the “holly, bay and mistletoe” of which the church was full, all had a pathos for her, as indeed they do for everybody except such as little Hugh, to whose short experience it seems that all Christmas Days will be as this one or even more abundant. Yet Lucy reflected that, looking forward, she could never have foreseen herself so full of cheer and patience and hope.
Kneeling in her pew, thinking of all the happy festivals of her married life, her mind went back to those earlier days when she and Florence had looked over one book while they warbled—
“Hark, the herald angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King,
Peace on earth and mercy mild,