and their governess and nurse
and Doria's maid, we shall have to find accommodation for fifteen
people."

"Nonsense!" she said. "We can't do it."

"Count up," said I.

I lit a cigar and went out into the winter-stricken garden, and left her
reckoning on her fingers, with knitted brow. When I returned she greeted
me with a radiantly superior smile.

"Who said it couldn't be done? I do wish men had some kind of practical
sense. It's as easy as anything."

She unfolded her scheme. As far as my dazed wits could grasp it, I
understood that I should give up my dressing-room, that the maids should
sleep eight in a bed, that Franklin, our excellent butler, should perch
in a walnut-tree and that planks should be put up in the bath-rooms for
as many more guests as we cared to invite.

"That is excellent," said I, "but do you realise that in this house
party there are only three grown men--three ha'porth of grown men" (I
couldn't forbear allusiveness) "to this intolerable quantity of women
and children?"

"But who is preventing you from asking men, dear? Who are they?"

I mentioned my old friend Vansittart; also poor John Costello's son, who
would most likely be at a loose end at Christmas, and one or two others.

"Well have them, dear," said Barbara.

So four unattached men were added to the party. That made nineteen. When
I thought of their accommodation my brain reeled. In order to retain my
wits I gave up thinking of it, and left the matter to Barbara.

We were going to have a mighty Christmas. The house was filled with
preparations. Susan and I went to the village draper's and bought
beautifully coloured cotton stockings to hang up at her little cousins'
bedposts. We stirred the plum pudding. We planned out everything that we
should like to do, while Barbara, without much reference to us, settled
what was to be done. In that way we divided the labour. Old Jaffery,
back from China, came to us on the twentieth of December, and threw
himself heart and soul into our side of the work. He took up our life
just as though he had left it the day before yesterday--just the same
sun-glazed hairy red giant, noisy, laughter-loving and voracious. Susan
went about clapping her hands the day he arrived and shouting that
Christmas had already begun.

The first thing he did was to clamour for Adrian, the man of fame. But
the three Bolderos were not coming till the twenty-fourth. Adrian was
making one last glorious spurt, so Dor