int; you
will find colors enough in your own house and heart.

As for Christmas-day, neither you nor I need try to do justice to that
theme: how the old schoolmaster went about, bustling, his thin face
quite hot with enthusiasm, and muttering, "God bless my soul!"--hardly
recovered from the sudden delight of finding his old pupil waiting for
him when he went down in the morning; how he insisted on being led by
him, and nobody else, all day, and before half an hour had confided,
under solemn pledges of secrecy, the great project of the book about
Bertrand de Born; how even easy Mrs. Howth found her hospitable
Virginian blood in a glow at the unexpected breakfast-guest,--settling
into more confident pleasure as dinner came on, for which success was
surer; how cold it was, outside; how Joel piled on great fires, and went
off on some mysterious errand, having "other chores to do than idling
and duddering"; how the day rose into a climax of perfection at
dinner-time, to Mrs. Howth's mind,--the turkey being done to a delicious
brown, the plum-pudding quivering like luscious jelly (a Christian
dinner to-day, if we starve the rest of the year!). Even Dr. Knowles,
who brought a great bouquet out for the schoolmaster, was in an unwonted
good-humor; and Mr. Holmes, of whom she stood a little in dread, enjoyed
it all with such zest, and was so attentive to them all, but Margaret.
They hardly spoke to each other all day; it quite fretted the old lady;
indeed, she gave the girl a good scolding about it out in the pantry,
until she was ready to cry. She had looked that way all day, however.

Knowles was hurt deep enough when he saw Holmes, and suspected the
worst, under all his good-humor. It was a bitter disappointment to give
up the girl; for, beside the great work, he loved her in an uncouth
fashion, and hated Holmes. He met her alone in the morning; but when he
saw how pale she grew, expecting his outbreak, and how she glanced
timidly in at the room where Stephen was, he relented. Something in the
wet brown eye perhaps recalled a forgotten dream of his boyhood; for he
sighed sharply, and did not swear as he meant to. All he said was, that
"women will be women, and that she had a worse job on her hands than the
House of Refuge,"--which she put down to the account of his ill-temper,
and only laughed, and made him shake hands.

Lois and her father came out in the old cart in high state across the
bleak, snowy hills, quite aglow wit