“Who rides?” I repeated, puzzled.
“Yes,” Nichola said; “this is a night when all folk stay home. The whole world sits by the fire on Christmas night. An’ yet the sleigh-bells ring like mad. It is not holy.”
Pelleas and I had never thought of that. But there may be something in it. Who indeed, when all the world keeps hearth-holiday, who is it that rides abroad on Christmas night behind the bells?
“Good spirits, perhaps, Nichola,” Pelleas said, smiling.
“I do not doubt it,” Nichola declared gravely; “that is not holy either—to doubt.”
“No,” we said, “to doubt good spirits is never holy.”
On this we heard the summons at our door, and Nichola went off to answer it. And in came all our guests at once from dinner at the Chartres’; and at Nichola’s bidding they hastened straight to the drawing-room and cried their Christmas greetings to Pelleas and me, who stood serving the steaming punch before the fireplace.
They were all there: Madame Sally in black velvet and a diamond or two; Polly Cleatam with—as I live!—a new dimple; and Wilfred and Horace acting as if Christmas were the only day on the business calendar; Miss Willie Lillieblade, taking a Christmas capsule from the head of her white staff; Avis and Lawrence, always dangerously likely to be found conferring in quiet corners; and Enid and David and the baby—we had insisted on the baby and he had arrived, in a cocoon of Valenciennes. And when the glasses had been handed round, Pelleas slipped across the hall to the library and reappeared among us with Eunice and Hobart.
“Dear, dear friends,” Pelleas said, “dear friends....”
But one look in the faces of those three was enough. And I, an incarnate confirmation, stood on the hearth-rug nodding with all my might.