the day for the blessing
of reporting a united family had no reference to Bertie's return.

Arrangements had been promptly made for packing the youth off to a
distant corner of Rhodesia, whence return would be a difficult matter;
the journey to this uninviting destination was imminent, in fact a more
careful and willing traveller would have already begun to think about his
packing. Hence Bertie was in no mood to share in the festive spirit
which displayed itself around him, and resentment smouldered within him
at the eager, self-absorbed discussion of social plans for the coming
months which he heard on all sides. Beyond depressing his uncle and the
family circle generally by singing "Say au revoir, and not good-bye," he
had taken no part in the evening's conviviality.

Eleven o'clock had struck some half-hour ago, and the elder Steffinks
began to throw out suggestions leading up to that process which they
called retiring for the night.

"Come, Teddie, it's time you were in your little bed, you know," said
Luke Steffink to his thirteen-year-old son.

"That's where we all ought to be," said Mrs. Steffink.

"There wouldn't be room," said Bertie.

The remark was considered to border on the scandalous; everybody ate
raisins and almonds with the nervous industry of sheep feeding during
threatening weather.

"In Russia," said Horace Bordenby, who was staying in the house as a
Christmas guest, "I've read that the peasants believe that if you go into
a cow-house or stable at midnight on Christmas Eve you will hear the
animals talk. They're supposed to have the gift of speech at that one
moment of the year."

"Oh, _do_ let's _all_ go down to the cow-house and listen to what they've
got to say!" exclaimed Beryl, to whom anything was thrilling and amusing
if you did it in a troop.

Mrs. Steffink made a laughing protest, but gave a virtual consent by
saying, "We must all wrap up well, then." The idea seemed a
scatterbrained one to her, and almost heathenish, but if afforded an
opportunity for "throwing the young people together," and as such she
welcomed it. Mr. Horace Bordenby was a young man with quite substantial
prospects, and he had danced with Beryl at a local subscription ball a
sufficient number of times to warrant the authorised inquiry on the part
of the neighbours whether "there was anything in it." Though Mrs.
Steffink would not have put it in so many words, she shared the idea of
the Russian peasantry