another man follow the bold example was impossible.

In the end, Mrs. Wedmore found a partner in the coachman, who was a
portly and solemn person, with no talents in the way of dancing or of
conversation. Doreen danced with the butler, who, between nervousness
and gloom, found it impossible to conceal his opinion that master was
making a fool of himself; and the rest of the company being quite as ill
matched, "Sir Roger" was performed with little grace and less
liveliness, while the Yule Log, after emitting a great deal of smoke,
sputtered out into blackness, to everybody's relief.

The end of it was, however, a little better than the beginning. As the
dancers warmed to their work, their latent enthusiasm for the exercise
was awakened; and "Sir Roger" was kept up until the fingers of the
organist, who had been engaged to play for them on a piano placed in a
corner of one of the passages, ached with the cold and with the hard
work.

When the dance was over and the party had broken up, Doreen, who had
done her best to keep up the spirits of the rest, broke down. Max met
her on her way to her room, and saw that the tears were very near her
eyes.

"What's the matter now?" said he, crossly. "You seemed all right
downstairs. I thought you and Lindsay seemed to be getting on very well
together."

"Did you? Well, you were wrong," said she, briefly, as she shut herself
into the room.

CHAPTER XVI.

A MESSAGE FROM THE WHARF.

Christmas was over, and The Beeches had subsided into its normal state
of prosperous tranquility. Max had had a fresh situation discovered for
him, and he was now wasting his time on a stool in a merchant's office,
as he had wasted it in other offices many times before. His father's
chronic state of exasperation with his laziness was growing acute, and
he had informed Max that unless he chose to stick to his work this time
he would have to be shipped off to the Cape. No entreaties on the part
of Mrs. Wedmore or the girls were of any avail against this fixed
resolution on Mr. Wedmore's part, or against the inflexible laziness of
Max himself. He detested office work, and he confessed that if he was
not to be allowed to lead the country life he loved, he would prefer
enlistment in the Cape Mounted Police to drudgery in a dark corner of a
city office.

It was on a foggy evening in January that Max, for the first time in
three weeks (an unprecedented interval), knocked at the door of Dudley
H