ng! and coming on to blow. It will be a night! I like it. That
feels like Christmas."

"Then there'll be no party?" said Matilda, rather more disappointed
than she wanted to shew.

"Party?" said Norton, "what about the party? It won't snow in _here_.
Pink. What are you thinking of? The party'll be all the merrier. I tell
you, it feels like Christmas."

"But will they come, through all the storm?"

"They'd come, if the hailstones were as big as eggs," said Norton. "You
never saw one of grandmother's Christmas trees, Pink; and they never
did anywhere else. No fear but they'll come, every one of them. You go
along and get dressed."

Matilda ran upstairs, glancing out of the hall window as she passed
with a thrill of delight and mystery. The air was darkening already
with the falling snow, and the wind swept it past the house in a white
mass; by contrast the evening splendours seemed greater than ever. She
dressed in a trembling excitement of pleasure, as far as her own part
of the preparation went; then Mrs. Laval's maid came in to finish her
toilette, and Mrs. Laval came to superintend it. Matilda had only to
stand still and be curled and robed and sashed and slippered; till the
work was done, the maid went, and Mrs. Laval took the child in her arms
and asked if she was happy?

"_Very_ happy," Matilda said.

"It does not take much to make you happy, love."

"Why, mamma!" said Matilda looking down at her white ruffles and then
at her adopted mother, "I have so much that I don't know what to do!"

Mrs. Laval smiled and sighed, and kissed her again.

"And yet Christmas night is only beginning," she said. But the wind and
the hail dashed at the windows as if answering her that it had indeed
begun outside. Mrs. Laval went away to her own dressing, and Matilda
stood a moment at the window listening. It was long after dark now; but
she could hear the whistle of the sleet as the wind bore it past, and
the rush of ice and snow against the window-panes, and even through the
close-fining sash she could feel a little gush of keen air. And for one
moment Matilda's thoughts darted to Sarah, at her crossing and in her
cellar home all that day and night. The contrast was as sharp as that
little gush of icy air. Was it right? Matilda thought. Was it right,
that her dainty white dress should be so pretty on her and the
Christmas party so fine, when Sarah and others like her were in cold
and wet and rags? It was too disagreeable