a
timid knock at the study door.

"Come in," growled the soldier in his deepest voice, and a little girl's
face, wreathed in tumbling brown hair, poked itself hesitatingly through
the opening.

The Colonel did not like being disturbed at this hour, and everybody in
the house knew it; but the spell of Christmas holidays was still somehow
in the air, and the customary order was not yet fully re-established.
Moreover, when he saw who the intruder was, his growl modified itself
into a sort of common sternness that yet was not cleverly enough
simulated to deceive the really intuitive little person who now stood
inside the room.

"Well, Nixie, child, what do you want now?"

"Please, father, will you--we wondered if----"

A chorus of whispers issued from the other side of the door:

"Go on, silly!"

"Out with it!"

"You promised you would, Nixie."

"... if you would come and play Rabbits with us?" came the words in a
desperate rush, with laughter not far behind.

The big man with the fierce white moustaches glared over the top of his
glasses at the intruders as if amazed beyond belief at the audacity of
the request.

"Rabbits!" he exclaimed, as though the mere word ought to have caused an
instant explosion. "Rabbits!"

"Oh, _please_ do."

"Rabbits at this time of night!" he repeated. "I never heard of such a
thing. Why, all good rabbits are asleep in their holes by now. And you
ought to be in yours too by rights, I'm sure."

"We don't sleep in holes, father," said the owner of the brown hair, who
was acting as leader.

"And there's still a nour before bedtime, _really_," added a voice in
the rear.

The big man slowly put his glasses down and looked at his watch. He
looked very savage, but of course it was all pretence, and the children
knew it. "If he was _really_ cross he'd pretend to be nice," they
whispered to each other, with merciless perception.

"Well--" he began. But he who hesitates, with children, is lost. The
door flung open wide, and the troop poured into the room in a medley of
long black legs, flying hair and outstretched hands. They surrounded the
table, swarmed upon his big knees, shut his stupid old book, tried on
his glasses, kissed him, and fell to discussing the game breathlessly
all at once, as though it had already begun.

This, of course, ended the battle, and the big man had to play the part
of the Monster Rabbit in a wonderful game of his own invention. But
when, at length, it