een let since
I can remember. I never even heard it described. Papa does not seem to
care to speak of it."

"No, dear," said aunty. "The happiest part of his life began there, and
you know how all the light seemed to go out of his life when your mother
died. It was there he--Captain's master--got to know her, the 'Mary' of
my little adventure. You understand it all now? He was a great deal in
the neighbourhood--at the little town I called East Hornham--the summer
we first came to Alderwood. And there they were married; and there, in
the peaceful old church-yard, your dear mother is buried."

The children listened with sobered little faces. "Poor papa!" they said.

"But some day," said grandmother, "some day I hope, when you three are
older, that Alderwood will again be a happy home for your father. It is
what your mother would have wished, I know."

"Well then, you and aunty must come to live with us there. You must.
Promise now, grandmother dear," said Molly.

Grandmother smiled, but shook her head gently.

"Grandmother will be a _very_ old woman by then, my darling," she said,
"and perhaps----"

Molly pressed her little fat hand over grandmother's mouth.

"I know what you're going to say, but you're _not_ to say it," she said.
"And _every_ night, grandmother dear, I ask in my prayers for you to live
to be a hundred."

Grandmother smiled again.

"Do you, my darling?" she said. "But remember, whatever we _ask_, God
knows best what to _answer_."

CHAPTER XIV.

HOW THIS BOOK CAME TO BE WRITTEN.

"Ring out ye merry, merry bells,
Your loudest, sweetest chime;
Tell all the world, both rich and poor,
'Tis happy Christmas time."

"Grandmother," said Ralph, at breakfast on what Molly called "the morning
of Christmas Eve," "I was going to ask you, only the story last night put
it out of my head, if I might ask Prosper to spend to-morrow with us. His
uncle and aunt are going away somewhere, and he will be quite alone.
Besides he and I have made a plan about taking the shawl to the old woman
quite early in the morning. You don't know _how_ pleased he was when I
told him you had got it for her, grandmother--just as pleased as if he
had bought it for her with his own money."

"Then he is a really unselfish boy," said grandmother. "Certainly you may
ask him. I had thought of it too, but somehow it went out of my head.
And, as well as the shawl, I shall have something to send to P