w if both of them
remained unopened till next week." This last little speech, however,
was not made aloud to Sir Raffle, but by Johnny to himself in the
solitude of his own room.

Very soon after that he went away, Sir Raffle having discovered that
one of the letters in question required his immediate return to the
West End. "I've changed my mind about staying. I shan't stay now. I
should have done if these letters had reached me as they ought."

"Then I suppose I can go?"

"You can do as you like about that," said Sir Raffle.

Eames did do as he liked, and went home, or to his club; and as
he went he resolved that he would put an end, and at once, to the
present trouble of his life. Lily Dale should accept him or reject
him; and, taking either the one or the other alternative, she should
hear a bit of his mind plainly spoken.

CHAPTER XVI

Down at Allington

It was Christmas-time down at Allington, and at three o'clock on
Christmas Eve, just as the darkness of the early winter evening was
coming on, Lily Dale and Grace Crawley were seated together, one
above the other, on the steps leading up to the pulpit in Allington
Church. They had been working all day at the decorations of the
church, and they were now looking round them at the result of their
handiwork. To an eye unused to the gloom the place would have been
nearly dark; but they could see every corner turned by the ivy
sprigs, and every line on which the holly-leaves were shining.
And the greeneries of the winter had not been stuck up in the
old-fashioned, idle way, a bough just fastened up here and a twig
inserted there; but everything had been done with some meaning, with
some thought towards the original architecture of the building. The
Gothic lines had been followed, and all the lower arches which it had
been possible to reach with an ordinary ladder had been turned as
truly with the laurel cuttings as they had been turned originally
with the stone.

"I wouldn't tie another twig," said the elder girl, "for all the
Christmas pudding that was ever boiled."

"It's lucky then that there isn't another twig to tie."

"I don't know about that. I see a score of places where the work has
been scamped. This is the sixth time I have done the church, and I
don't think I'll ever do it again. When we first began it, Bell and
I, you know,--before Bell was married,--Mrs. Boyce, and the Boycian
establishment generally, used to come and help. Or rather