,
'Put me up, Dane, I 'ull be put up.'

'I beg your pardon, miss,' said the nurse, who stood in the doorway,
'but Master Harold would come, and my lady isn't up, and--'

'Never mind, let him in,' said Freda, sitting up in bed, and opening her
arms to receive the rosy, wilful, handsome child, who did not know how
he had supplanted her.

'A merry Kismas!' he repeated, returning Freda's kisses by pulling off
her night-cap, and letting down her long hair before she knew what he
was about. 'Now, I'll dive 'ou to Tewey.'

'Master Harold! don't, sir!' said the nurse.

But Master Harold was jumping on the pillow behind his sister, making
reins of her hair and horses of her head in no very gentle fashion.

'I sha'n't give you what I brought you from London if you pull my hair,'
said Freda, catching the bare, firm, sturdy leg of the small tyrant who
called her sister.

'Is it soldiers?' asked the child, suddenly tumbling down before her.

She caught the little fellow in her arms, and told him that if he would
go away whilst she dressed he should have the present. After some demur
he consented, having first informed Freda that ''ittle Minnie, and
Winnie, and Dot, and baby' were all coming to dinner.

'A family party!' groaned Freda, when the child was carried away by its
nurse, 'myself the only rightful member of the family, and probably the
only one who will feel as if she doesn't belong to it.'

Freda got up and looked out upon the fine park and the hills beyond. She
sighed involuntarily.

'Why should I sigh,' she said. 'I am happier than when it was my
home,--happier, and, I hope, more useful. My father doesn't want
me,'--here she paused. Perhaps that father really did want her, for she,
at least, loved him, and his wife did not; and she was beginning to be
conscious, daily more and more conscious, of the exceeding preciousness
of love.

Breakfast passed, with the same effort to feel at home on her part, and
attempt to keep up a conversation on that of Lady Mary, as had the
dinner of the previous day.

Harold made a diversion by bursting into the room to ask for his
soldiers. He, at least, was quite natural, and entirely spoilt.

Immediately after breakfast they drove to church. It was delightful to
Freda to see the good vicar in the reading-desk, and his wife in the pew
beneath. She felt at home again for the first time. For the first time,
also, she really listened to the worthy man's somewhat dry sermon, and