unbent into difficult suavity, at the opposite
end of the dinner-table to me, to hearing the well-known old sound of
Tou Tou's shrieks of mixed anguish and delight, as Bobby rushes after
her in headlong pursuit, down the late so silent passages; and to
looking complacently from one to another of the holiday faces round the
table, where Barbara and I have sat, during the last noiseless month, in
stillest dialogue or preoccupied silence.

I _love_ noise. You may think that I have odd taste; but I _love_
Bobby's stentor laugh, and Tou Tou's ear-piercing yells. I even forget
to think whether their mirth passes the appointed bounds I had set it. I
have mislaid my receipt of cold repression. My heart goes out to them.

I have been a little disturbed as to how to dispose of father during the
day, but he mercifully takes that trouble off my hands. Providence has
brought good out of evil, congenial occupation out of the hat-box. He
has spent all the few daylight-hours in telegraphing for it to every
station on the line; in telling several home-truths to the porters at
our own station, which--it being Christmas-time, and they consequently
all more or less tipsy--they have taken with a bland playfulness that he
has found a little trying; and, lastly, in writing a long letter to the
_Times_. And I, meanwhile, being easy in my mind on his score, knowing
that he is happy, am at leisure to be happy myself. In company with my
brother, I have spent all the little day in decorating the church,
making it into a cheerful, green Christmas bower. We always did it at
home.

The dusk has come now--the quick-hurrying, December dusk, and we have
all but finished. We have had to beg for a few candles, in order to put
our finishing touches here and there about the sombre church. They
flame, throwing little jets of light on the glossy laurel-leaves that
make collars round the pillars' stout necks; on the fresh moss-beds,
vividly green, in the windows; on the dull, round holly-berries. In the
glow, the ivy twines in cunning garlands round the rough-sculptured
font, and the oak lectern; and, above God's altar, a great white cross
of hot-house flowers blooms delicately, telling of summer, and matching
the words of old good news beneath it, that brought, as some say,
summer, or, at least, the hope of summer, to the world.

Yes, we have nearly done. The Brat stands on the top of a step-ladder,
dexterously posing the last wintry garland; and all we o