"We meant to have such a merry Christmas Eve," I say, half aloud—"snap-dragon with the children, and——— George, what are you going to do this Christmas? Will you be dull at the Chace? Come and spend it with us, do!" I add, laying my hand on his arm.
"No, no, dear!" he says, looking down on me, with no hidden bitterness of word or tone; "you will not want me. After all," he says, looking up at the sullen sky that has given over raining, but, gives ample promise of plenty more dropping, "I am afraid we shall not have, what you are so fond of, a white Christmas!"
CHAPTER III.
To those that wring under the load of sorrow,
But no man's virtue or sufficiency
To be so moral, when he shall endure
The like himself."
George's prophecies prove as fallacious as those of most other people here on earth, and the night after his assurances of dirty weather the snow comes down, silently and delicately covering the face of the earth with a gleaming white mantle, that makes my eyes prick and burn with its exceeding purity, as I look out at it from the dining-room window. The postman is coming up the carriage drive. How slowly he walks, and what ugly marks he makes on our soilless, dazzling carpet! I do not watch him with any interest; for it is not a letter I am looking for now, but the sound of a step in the hall, the sound of a voice in my ear. Will they not be better a hundred-fold than a few hasty words on paper? And yet 1 should have loved to have a love-letter from him. I have flung all my foolish fears away in a bundle; smiles have crept back to my mouth, lightness to my footfall. Does Lot
