, HRISTMA5 
 
 
 Jiu'^-"'- 
 
The Christmas Hirelings 
 
I'M SORRY YOU DON't LIKE US, MR. OLD GENTLEMAN." [p. 99. 
 
THE 
 
 CHRISTMAS 
 
 HIRELINGS 
 
 BY 
 
 M. E. BRADDON 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY F. H. TOWNSEND 
 
 LONDON 
 SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO. 
 
 LIMITED 
 STATIONERS' HALL COURT 
 
 189-1: 
 
 [All rights reserved] 
 
LONDON : 
 
 PIUKTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 
 STAMFORD STREET AND CHAKIKG CROSS. 
 
/A 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 I HAD long wished to write a story about children, which 
 should be interesting to childish readers, and yet not 
 without interest for grown-up people ; but that desire 
 might never have been realized without the unexpected 
 impulse of a suggestion, dropped casually in the freedom 
 of conversation at a table where the clever hostess is 
 ever an incentive to bright thoughts. The talk was of 
 Christmas ; and almost everybody agreed that the season, 
 considered from the old-fashioned festal standpoint, was 
 pure irony. Was it not a time of extra burdens, of mani- 
 fold claims upon everybody's purse and care, of great 
 expectations from all sorts of people, of worry and weari- 
 ness? Except for the children ! There we were unanimous. 
 
 593 
 
10 Preface. 
 
 Christmas was the children's festival — for us a rush and 
 a scramble, and a perpetual paying away of money ; for 
 them a glimpse of Fairyland. 
 
 " If we had no children of our own," said my left- 
 hand neighbour, " we ought to hire some for Christ- 
 mas." 
 
 I thought it was a pretty fancy ; and on that founda- 
 tion built the little story of the Christmas Hirelings, 
 which is now reproduced in book form from last year's 
 Christmas Number of the Ladys Pictorial, and which 
 I hope even after that wide circulation all over the 
 English-speaking world may find a new public at home — 
 the public of mothers and aunts and kind uncles, in 
 quest of stories that please children. This story was a 
 labour of love, a holiday task, written beside the fire in 
 the long autumn evenings when the south-west wind 
 was howling in the Forest trees outside. 
 
 The living models for the three children were close at 
 hand, dear and familiar to the writer ; and Moppet's long 
 words and quaint little mannerisms are but the pale 
 reproduction of words and looks and gestures in the tiny 
 
Preface. 1 1 
 
 girl who was then my next-door neighbour, and who is 
 now far a\\ ay in the shado\\ of the Himalayas. 
 
 The character of Mr. Danby, whom some of my critics 
 have been kind enough to praise, was suggested by the 
 following passage in the first series of the "Greville 
 Memoirs," copied in my commonplace-book long ago, 
 Avhen everybody was reading those delightful reminis- 
 cences : — 
 
 " Old Creevy — an attorney or barrister — married a 
 Avidow, who died a few years ago. She had something, 
 he nothing. His wife died, upon which event he was 
 thrown upon the world with about two hundred a year, 
 or less, no home, few connections, a great many acquaint- 
 ance, a good constitution, and extraordinary spirits. He 
 possesses nothing but his clothes, no property of any 
 sort ; he leads a vagrant life, visiting a number of people 
 who are delighted to have him, and sometimes roving 
 about to various places as fancy happens to direct, and 
 staying till he has spent what money he has in his 
 pocket. He has no servant, no home, no creditors; he 
 buys everything as he wants it at the place he is at ; 
 
12 Preface. 
 
 he has no ties upon him, and has his time entirely at his 
 own disposal and that of his friends. He is certainly a 
 living proof that a man may be perfectly happy and 
 exceedingly poor, or rather without riches, for he suffers 
 none of the privations of poverty, and enjoys many of 
 the advantages of wealth. I think he is the only man 
 I know in society who possesses nothing." 
 
 M. E. B. 
 
 Ltndhurst, 
 
 November \st, 1894. 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " I'm Sorry Yor don't like rs, Mk. Old Gentleman " 
 
 Fronlis2nece 
 
 The Reading of his Wife's Journal left in Sir John Pen- 
 
 lyon's Mind the Burden of a Lasting Remorse .. 35 
 
 She was Full of Daring, a Romp, and a Tomboy .. .. 43 
 
 She was London-bred, a very Bad Walker.. .. .. 49 
 
 " Clara, if you would be Good enough to tell me in Plain 
 Words what has happened, instead of trying to act like 
 Madame Ristori in 'Medea,' you would do me a Favour" 81 
 Stolen Hours in the Garden at Place .. .. ..83 
 
 In East London .f*" .. ■• •• •• ..89 
 
 "They're Soldiers, aren't they?" .T .. .. 94 
 
 Sir John watched her curiously .. .. .• ..105 
 
 The Podding war saluted with a Tremendous Clapping of 
 
 Tiny Hands .. •• •■ •• ••• ••• 1^9 
 
 The Old Butler was suspected of Treasonable Practices .. 142 
 "I shouldn't like my Mother to be as Fat as yours, or as 
 
 Red" 
 The Thaw — Death of the Snow Man 
 
 14^ 
 
 16^ 
 
 "The Cinperellas I was missing" .. •• •• .. l/l 
 
14 List of Illustrations. 
 
 rAGK 
 
 No MORE Complaints about a Green Christmas .. ., 187 
 
 She screwed herself still closer into her Snug Corner by 
 
 THE Fire .. .. .. .. .. .. 193 
 
 He felt the Little Languid Hands. They too were ScorcHED 
 
 WITH Fever .. .. .. .. .. .. 197 
 
 He sent his Telegram by a Mounted Messenger before Seven 
 
 o'clock .. .. .. .. .. ..205 
 
 Who was it who followed the Doctor to the Door of the 
 
 Sick-room, and waited ? . . . . . , . . 209 
 
 '• I have telegraphed fob Dr. South, and have had his 
 
 Keply" .. .. .. .. .. .. 213 
 
 They were as Full of Life and Spirits as if there were 
 
 NO SUCH Thing as Suffering in the Would .. .. 215 
 
 " Danby, you had no Eight to do this Thing " . , . . 229 
 
 She went quickly up the Steps .. ., .. .. 237 
 
 By his Side as he made his Morning Round of the Gardens 
 
 OR the Home Farm .. .. .. .. .. 253 
 
 Sir John's Affection seemed to have skipped a*" Generation.. 257 
 
THE CHRISTMAS HIRELINGS. 
 
 PEOLOGUE. 
 
 -\ HE scene was the library at Penlyon 
 Place, commonly called for short- 
 ness — Place. The personages were Sir 
 John Penlyon, a great landed pro- 
 prietor, and a line gentleman of the 
 early Victorian school ; his niece, Miss 
 Adela Hawberk, a smart yonng lady, 
 whose paternal home was in Sonth 
 Kensington ; and ^Ir. Danby, the 
 useful friend, whose home was 
 everywhere. Home of his own Mr. 
 Danby had none. He had drifted 
 lightly on the stream of life for the last forty years, 
 
20 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 living in other people's houses, and, more or less, 
 at other people's expense ; yet there lived not the 
 man or woman who would have dared to describe Mr. 
 Danby as a sponge or a toady, as anybody's hanger-on 
 or parasite. Mr. Danby only w ent where he was wanted ; 
 and the graces of his manner and the qualities of his 
 mind and heart were such that Mr. Danby was wanted 
 everywhere. He had invitations three years deep. His 
 eno-ao-ements were as far in the future as the calculations 
 in the nautical almanac. Some people, who had been 
 trying for years to get Mr. Danby to their houses, 
 compared him to that star whose inhabitants may now 
 be contemplating the Crimean War of 1854. 
 
 Sir John Penlyon and Mr. Danby had been school- 
 fellows at Eton, and chums at Christ church ; and, whom- 
 soever else he disappointed, Mr. Danby never omitted his 
 annual visits to Penlyon Place. He Christmassed there, 
 and he Eastered there, and he knew the owner of the 
 fine old Tudor house inside and out, his vices and his 
 virtues, his weaknesses, and his prejudices. 
 
 " That there Danby," said Sir John's valet, " can turn 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 21 
 
 the old chap round his finger ; but he's a good feller, 
 is Danby, a gentleman to the marrer, and nobody's any 
 the worse for 'is hinfluence." 
 
 The library at Penlyon was one of those rooms in 
 which to live seems enough for bliss. A lovely old room, 
 full of fantastic lights and shadoAvs in the December 
 gloaming ; a spacious room, lined with books in the most 
 exquisite bindings, for the binding of his books was more 
 to Sir John than the letterpress inside. He was very 
 fond of his library ; he was very fond of his books. He 
 looked at the bindings ; and he read tlie newspapers and 
 magazines which were heaped on a carved oak table at 
 one end of the room. 
 
 ]Miss Hawberk sat in a low chair, with her feet on the 
 fender, apparently lost in admiration of her Queen Anne 
 shoes. She had lately come in from a long walk on tlie 
 moor with the useful friend, and had changed her clump- 
 soled boots for these pointed toes, which set off the high 
 instep that was considered a family mark of the 
 Penlyons, A flat-footed Penlyon would have been 
 thrust out and repudiated by the rest of the clan, 
 
22 The Cheistmas Hirelings. 
 
 perhaps, like a sick cow to which the herd gives the 
 coup de grace. 
 
 Sir John was standing on the hearth-rug with his back 
 to the crackling wood fire, contemplating his books as 
 the fire-glow lit up their varied bindings. ]Mr. Danby 
 w as resting luxuriously alter his moorland walk, in quite 
 the most comfortable chair in the room, not too near the 
 fire, for Danby was careful of his complexion. At sixty- 
 three years of age a man, who means to be good-looking 
 to the end, has to be careful of his complexion. 
 
 Danby was a slenderly-built man, of middle height. 
 He had never been handsome, but he had neat, inoffensive 
 features, bright grey eyes, light brown hair, with a touch 
 of silver in it, and perfect hands and feet. He reminded 
 elderly people of that accomplished and amiable gentle- 
 man, Charles Matthews, the younger. 
 
 ]\Iiss Hawberk was tall and handsome. Slie prided 
 herself in the first place upon being every inch a Penlyon, 
 and in the second jjlace upon being undeniably smart. 
 She belonged to a set which, in the London season, sees 
 a good deal of the Royalties, and, like most peojjle wiio 
 
The Cheistmas Hirelings. 23 
 
 are in toueli A\itli personages of the blood royal, she very 
 often talked about them. 
 
 So much for the actors in the social drama, Avhich was 
 in this very hour to begin at Penlyon Castle. The 
 curtain is up, and the first words of the ptay drop quietly 
 from the lips of Sir John. 
 
 SiE John. Christmas again, Danby ! I think of all 
 the boring seasons Christmas is the most boring. 
 
 Adela (reproachfully). My dear uncle, that sounds 
 like forgetting what Christmas means. 
 
 Sir John. What does Christmas mean to any British 
 householder ? Firstly, an extra Sunday, wedged into the 
 week, — and at my age the longest week is too short, and 
 all the Sundays are too near together ; secondly, an 
 overwhelming shower of stationery in the shape of 
 pamphlets, booklets, circulars, and reports of every 
 imaginable kind of philanthrojiic scheme for extracting 
 money from the well-to-do classes — schemes so many and 
 so various that a man will liarden his heart against tlie 
 cry of the poor rather than he will take the trouble to 
 consider the multitude of institutions that have been 
 
24 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 invented to relieve their distresses ; thirdly, a servants' 
 ball, which generally sets all the servants by the ears, 
 and sometimes sets the house on fire ; fourthly, a cloud 
 of letters from poor relatives and friends one would 
 willingly forget, only to be answered decently with a 
 cheque. I won't speak of bills, for the so-called Christmas 
 bills are held back till January, to embitter the beginning 
 of the year, and to remind a man that he ^^'as born to 
 trouble, as the sparks fly upward. 
 
 Sir John takes up the poker, and illustrates this 
 passage of holy writ by striking a tremendous shower of 
 sparks out of a burning j)ine log. 
 
 Danby. I don't think you need mind Christmas. You 
 are rich enough to satisfy everybody, even the philan- 
 throj^ic gentlemen ; or you may plunge for two or three 
 of the best established and soundest charities — hospitals, 
 for choice — and give a round sum to each of them. 
 That is wliat I would do if I were a rich man. And as 
 for festivities, why, you and I are too old, and Miss 
 Hawberk is too sensible to want any fuss of that kind ; 
 so we can just put uji with the extra Sunday, and pull up 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 25 
 
 the arrears of our correspondence between luncheon and 
 dinner, while the servants are lingering over their 
 Christmas dessert. 
 
 Miss Hawberk (with a faint sigh). That is all very 
 well ; but I think Christmas Day ought to be different 
 from other days, somehow. 
 
 .Sir John (impatiently). Somehow, yes, but which 
 how? What are we, civilized people, with plenty of 
 common sense and no silly sentiment — wiiat are we to do 
 year after year in order to lash ourselves into the humour 
 for Christuias mirth and Christmas benevolence? It 
 was all very well for a miserly old churl like Dickens's 
 Scrooge to break out suddenly into kindness and joviality, 
 after a long life of avarice. Giving away turkeys and 
 drinking punch were new sensations for him. But for us, 
 who have been giving away turkeys and putting our 
 sovereigns in the plate for nearly fifty Christmas Days ! 
 You can't expect me to be enthusiastic about Christ- 
 mas, Adela, any more than you would expect me to 
 hang up my stocking wlien I go to bed on Christmas 
 Eve. 
 
26 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 Miss Hawberk. Oh, that stocking ! How old I feel 
 when I think of it ! How firmly I believed in Santa 
 Glaus, and how happy I used to be on Christmas morning 
 when I found pretty things in my stocking, or heaped up 
 at the end of my bed ! The stocking would not hold 
 a quarter of my presents, I know one year when we 
 were at Bournemouth I had a sweet little sketch of a 
 kitten sent by the Hereditary Princess of Kostroma, who 
 was wintering at the Bath for her chest. She had seen 
 me playing in a corner with my kitten a week or two 
 before, when she Avas taking tea Avith mother, don't you 
 know. 
 
 SiE John [loohing as if he neither hnew nor cared about 
 this feline incident). Stockings, presents, Santa Claus ! 
 Ah, there you've hit the mark, Adela. Christmas is 
 a splendid institution in a house where there are children. 
 Christmas can hardly be made too much of \Nhere tliere 
 are children in question. No, Adela, I am not such a 
 heathen as you think. I have not forgotten the meaning 
 of Christmas. I can still remember that it is a festival 
 kept in reverential memory of a Holy Child. If you 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 27 
 
 were not your mother's only daughter and grown up — if 
 somehow or other I had a pack of children belonging to 
 me, I would keep Christmas with the best — keep it as 
 it ought to be kept. But tlie Penlyons are a vanishing 
 race. I have no children to look to me for gladness. 
 
 (A Silence.) Adela Hawberk looks at the fire gravely, 
 thoughtfully, mournfully, and a blush mounts to her fair 
 forehead, and slowly fades away. Perhaps she is thinking 
 of a certain young officer in a cavalry regiment, to whom 
 she is not actually engaged, but who may some dav be 
 her husband, if the home authorities are agreeable. And 
 she thinks of a dim, far-off time when she and her 
 husband, and possibly their children, may be Christ- 
 massing at Penlyon Castle. The vision seems very remote, 
 almost impossible ; yet such things have been. 8ir John 
 stares at his books resolutely. 
 
 Danby (icho has been dropping asleep in his dushij corner, 
 rouses himself suddenly). Children, yes, of course ! No- 
 body knows how to enjoy Christmas if he has no children 
 to make happy. If one has no children of one's own, one 
 ought to hire some for the Christmas week — children to 
 
28 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 cram with mince pies and plum pudding; children to 
 take to the pantomime ; children to let off crackers ; 
 children to take on the ice. I have any number of god- 
 children scattered about among the houses of my friends, 
 and I feel lialf a century younger when I am romping 
 witli them. What do you think of my notion, Miss 
 Hawberk? Don't you think it would be a good dodge 
 to hire some children for Christmas Day ? Your cottages 
 swarm with brats. We should have only to pick and 
 choose. 
 
 Miss Hawbekk. Cottagers' children generally have 
 colds in their heads. I don't think one could stand 
 cottagers' children for more than an hour or two. I am 
 very fond of children, but I like them to belong to my 
 own class. 
 
 Danby. I understand. You want little ladies and 
 gentlemen, with whom you could romp at your ease. I 
 believe even that could be managed. What do you say, 
 Sir John ? Shall we hire some children for the C'hristmas 
 week, just to amuse Miss Hawberk ? 
 
 Sir John. You may do anything in the world that 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 29 
 
 is idiotic and fantastical, so long as you don't intrude 
 your folly upon me. When you do make a fool of your- 
 self you generally contrive to do the thing pleasantly. 
 If Adela would like some children playing about the 
 house next week, why, she can ask them, or you can ask 
 them ; and as long as they behave decently I shall not 
 complain. 
 
 Danby. You don't quite grasp my idea, 8ir John. 
 This is not to be a question of inviting children — children 
 out of our own set, spoilt and pampered after the modern 
 fashion, children who would cojne as guests and would 
 give themselves airs. No. What I propose is to hire 
 some children — children of respectable birth and good 
 manners, but wh(jse parents are poor enough to accept 
 the fee whicli your liberality may oft'er for the hire of 
 their olive branches. 
 
 Sir Johx. My dear Danby, the notion is preposterous, 
 — except in St. Giles's, where babies are let out to 
 beggars by the day or week, there can be no such people. 
 
 Danby. There is every kind and grade of people ; 
 but one must know where to look for them. Do you 
 
30 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 give me permission to hire two or three — say three — 
 cleanly, respectable children, to assist ]Miss Hawberk to 
 get through a solitary Christmas in a lonely country 
 house, with two old fogies like you and me ? 
 
 Sir John. That depends. Where do you propose to 
 tind your children ? Not in the immediate neighbour- 
 hood, unless you want to make me the laughing-stock 
 of the parish. Amuse yourselves to your hearts' content ; 
 but I must beg you to leave me uncompromised by your 
 foolishness. 
 
 Miss Hawberk. The Sheik is getting angry, Mr. 
 Danby. We had better give up your funny idea. 
 
 Sir John. No, no, let Danby indulge his fancy. 
 Danby 's fancies are always successful, however absurd 
 they may seem to reasonable beings. 
 
 Danby (throiving Ms liead hack ujwn the chair-cushion 
 and laughing his joyous laugh, a laugh that always puts 
 other people in good spirits). There spoke my noble Sheik 
 — the Prince of Penlyon — the man with the blood of 
 Cornish kings in his veins. We may have our little bit 
 of reasonable Christmas festivity. Miss Hawberk and I, 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 31 
 
 and you won't mind. But how about the fee tor the 
 children ? We must pay for our little mummers. We 
 must compensate the parents or parent for the sacrifice 
 of Christmas pleasures — the happy morning faces over 
 tjie stockingful of toys — the gloT\ing evening faces 
 round the humble fireplace, watching the chestnuts 
 roasting on the bars. You don't know what a little 
 world of joy humble folks lose when they don't have 
 their children about them at Christmas. 
 
 Sir John. Confound the fee ! Give them twenty, 
 fifty j)ounds, if you like ; but don't talk to me of poor 
 children. I will have no poor children at Penlyon. 
 Adela is quite right. They have always colds in their 
 heads ; they don't know how to treat decent furniture ; 
 they would scroop the heavy chairs on the oak floor ; they 
 would leave prints of tlieir horrid little thumbs on my 
 books ; and though the imprint of the human thumb may 
 be very interesting to the detective physiologist, I am 
 not a student of thumbs, and I want to keep my books 
 clean. 
 
 Danbv. I am not thinking of poor children in your 
 
32 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 sense of the word. Though I am thinking of people for 
 whom your cheque, of say fifty pounds, would be a 
 boon. 
 
 Sir John. Poor relations of your own, I suppose, 
 Danby. Don't be offended. Everybody has poor 
 relations. 
 
 Miss Hawberk. Dear Princess Komanoff-Moscova 
 has often told me how much she has to do for some of 
 her German connections. 
 
 Danby. You've hit it. I am thinking of some poor 
 relations. 
 
 Sir John. Good. If they liave any of your blood 
 they are sure to be little ladies and gentlemen. Only — 
 forgive me, Danby — poverty is ajjt to be pushing. I 
 shall write my cheque for a hundred guineas, since the 
 little people belong to you ; but don't let this Christmas 
 visit be the thin end of the wedge. Don't let me hear 
 any more of the little dears, unless I myself wish it. 
 
 Danby. You shall see them and hear of them no 
 more after old Christmas Day, unless at your own desire. 
 Remember it is not a visit. It is a transaction. You 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 33 
 
 hire these little creatures for your amusement— our 
 amusement if you like —just as you would hire a conjuror 
 for a juTenile party. You pay them their fee, and you 
 have done Avitli them. 
 
 Sir John. That is as it should be. 
 
 Sir John walks across the r(^om to his desk, lights a 
 candle, and writes his cheque, payable to Horatio Danby, 
 for (me hundred guineas, while two footmen are Ijringing 
 in lamps and afternoon tea. 
 
 Danby (folding up the cheque). jMiss Hawberk, did 1 
 not rightly call your uncle a prince ? 
 
 [TJie scene closes.) 
 
34 
 
 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 SIE JOHN PEN- 
 LYON was generally 
 described by his 
 friends as a man of 
 peculiar temper. He 
 was not a bad-tem- 
 pered man — indeed, 
 he had a certain 
 princely graciousness which overlooked small offences. 
 He was not easily made angry ; l)ut, on the other hand, 
 when deeply offended, he was vindictive, and nursed his 
 \\ rath from year's end to year's end, refusing ever again 
 to touch the liand of the offender. He had reigned 
 at Penlvon as a lord of tlie soil ever since he left the 
 
A' 
 
 J 
 
 
 THE READING OF HIS WIFe's JOURNAL LEFT IN SIR JOHN PENLYON's 
 MIND THE BURDEN OF A LASTING REMORSE. 
 
The Christmas Hikelings. 37 
 
 university, coming into his own at three and twenty 
 years of age. He had marrieil late, married a very 
 yonng woman, dowerless, but of good birth, who loved 
 him far better than he ever believed during her lifetime. 
 She died when the younger of her two daughters was 
 only six years old, and it was some years after she had 
 been laid at rest in the family vault of the Penlyons 
 that Sir John found an old diary hidden in a secret 
 drawer at the back of the secretaire in his wife's dress- 
 ing-room ; a girlish diary, written at intervals ; a record 
 of thoughts and feelings rather than of the facts and 
 occupations of daily life; a record which told the 
 widower how fondly he had been beloved, and how 
 many a careless wound he had inflicted upon that tender 
 creature whose gentle countenance was hidden from his 
 sight for ever. 
 
 The reading of his wife's journal left in Sir John 
 Penlyon's mind the burden of a lasting remorse. He 
 had believed that when the daugliter of an impoverished 
 house, his junior by twenty years, had accepted his 
 stately offer of marriage, she had been influenced as 
 
38 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 iniich by questions of convenience as lie himself had 
 been. He was marrying because the time had come 
 A\hen he ought to marry, unless he wanted to sink into 
 hojaeless bachelorhood and loneliness. She was marrying 
 because marriage with a magnate in the land would give 
 her fortune and position. Fixed in this notion of an 
 equality of indifference, he had been studiously polite 
 and kind to his young wife ; but he had never taken the 
 trouble to sound the depths of that girlish heart. He 
 had taken everything for granted. 
 
 There had been a domestic disappointment, too, in his 
 married life, calm and undisturbed as it was. Two 
 daughters had been born at Penlyon Castle, but no son. 
 And 8ir John Penlyon ardently longed for a son. His 
 chief motive in marrying at over forty years of age was 
 the desire of a son and heir. He was angry at the 
 thought that a distant cousin should ever bear his title, 
 and come to reign at Penlyon. The estate was strictly 
 entailed, and that second cousin, a soldier in a line 
 regiment, must needs succeed if Sir John died without 
 leaving a son. 
 
The C^hristmas Hirelings. 39 
 
 The diary reminded hiin of many sins ; reminded liim 
 how cohl and nnloving he had been to tliose l)aby 
 daughters. The mother's girlish handwriting had i»ut 
 every little slight on record; not in anger, but in sorrow. 
 The widower came upon such entries as this: "I think 
 it must be because he does not care for me that he is 
 so neglectful of liilian. Every one says she is a lovely 
 child. It can't be because I am fond of her that I think 
 her so beautiful. The servants all worship her. Mv. 
 Danby adores her, and she adores him. I couldn't help 
 crying the other day — I had to run out of the room, or 
 I should have made an absolute fool of myself Ijefore 
 my husband — when I saw Mr. Danby playing with her, 
 "•oino- on his hands and knees under the l)illiard-table 
 to play at bo-peep with her, just as if he had been her 
 father ; while Sir John sat reading his paper at the other 
 end of the room, and only looked up once, to complain 
 of the noise — Lilian's sweet little silvery laugh ! Plow 
 could he call that a noise ! " 
 
 And this: "I took Sibyl to the library yesterday 
 morning when her father was sitting there alone. It 
 
40 The Chklstmas Hirelings. 
 
 ^^as her birthday— her third birthday— and I thought I 
 might presume upon that. I opened the door a little 
 way and looked in. He was sitting at his desk writing. 
 I ought to have waited till he was disengaged. T 
 whispered to her to go to him and give him a big birth- 
 day kiss, and she ran in, toddling across the room in her 
 pretty Ijlue shoes, so busy, so happy, and she caught hold 
 of his arm as he wrote, and lifted herself up on tiptoe, 
 and said, ' Papa, big birsday tiss,' in her funny little baby 
 talk. He put down his pen, and he stooj^ed down to 
 kiss her ; but a moment after he rang his spring bell, two 
 or three times, and called out, ' What is this child doing 
 here, roaming about the house alone ? Where is her 
 nurse ? ' He was very kind and polite when he looked 
 round and saw me standing at the door, and when I 
 begged his pardon for having disturbed him ; but I could 
 see that he was bored, and I took 8ibyl away directly. 
 AVe met Mr. Danby in the corridor with an armful of 
 toys. What a useful good soul he is, and how sorry I 
 shall be when he has left us to go to the Duchess at 
 Endsleiffh." 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 41 
 
 There were many entries of the same nature — womanly 
 regrets, recorded again and again. '• I wonder why he 
 married me." " I wonder whether he once loved some- 
 body very dearly and couldn't marry her." " I think 
 there must be some reason for his not caring for me. I 
 ought not to complain, even to this stupid old book — but 
 the book is like an old friend. I sit staring at my name 
 and the date, written l)y my old governess at the Manor 
 House, and recalling those careless, thoughtless days 
 when my sisters and I used to think our Ollendorff 
 exercises the worst troubles we had in this world — before 
 mother began to be an invalid — before father used to 
 confide all his difficulties to us girls — the debts, the 
 tenants that wouldn't pay, the roofs that wanted new 
 slating. Oh, how long ago it all seems ! I have no 
 money troubles now. Father has had legacies, and 
 everything is going smoothly at home. And yet I 
 feel sometimes as if my heart w ere slowly turning to ice. 
 
 '• Break, thou deep vase of chilliug tears, 
 That time has shaken into frost." 
 
 Sir John Penlvon never foroot the readhig of that 
 
42 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 diary. He remembered the very day and hour ^\heii 
 looking for a missing list of family jewels — ^jewels which 
 his dead wife had worn on state occasions, and which 
 were to go back to the bank, and to lie in darkness, like 
 her who had worn them — he had come upon that old 
 German copy-book, rolled up and thrust far back in the 
 secret drawer, tied with a shabby old ribbon. He 
 remembered sitting by the tireless hearth, in the prettily 
 furnished dressing-room, disused since his wife's death. 
 He remembered the dull grey autumn sky, and the rain 
 drifting across the leaden sea, and the shags standing 
 on the rocks, drenched and drooping, all nature in low- 
 spirits. 
 
 The reading of that record of unhappiness, so meekly 
 borne, was not without one good result. Sir John took 
 more notice of his two girls than he had ever done in 
 their mother's lifetime. Sibyl, the younger, contrived 
 more particularly to find her way into his heart. She 
 was stronger and more vivacious than her elder sister. 
 She w^as full of daring, a romp, and a tomboy. Lilian 
 was like her mother, and was gentle, and shrinking, and 
 
WAS FULL OF DARING, A ROM!', ANU A TOMlluV. 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 45 
 
 subdued as her mother had l»eeu in the presence of the 
 husband she hived and feared. Sibyl had a nature 
 unacquainted with fear ; and her father fancied he saw 
 in her all the highest qualities of the Penlyons — beauty, 
 strength, courage. 
 
 '• If she had Init been a boy," he sometimes said to 
 himself, with a profound sigh. 
 
 It seemed a hard thing that such a splendid creature 
 must needs be cheated out of the heritage of her father 
 and grandfather, and of many generations before them, 
 only because she happened to be a daughter instead of a 
 son. The Penlyon estate had been growing in wealth 
 and importance while all those generations of the past 
 were growing from youth to age, through life to death. 
 The Penlvons had developed a great mining district, far 
 off yonder southward towards Truro. They had added 
 farm to farm between Boscastle and Podmin. Every- 
 thing had prospered with this proud and ancient race ; 
 and from Launceston to Tintagel and Tintagel to Bude 
 there was no such family as the Penlyons of Penlyon 
 Castle. 
 
46 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 Sir John was foolishly indulgent to his motherless 
 daughters during the first four or five years of his widow- 
 hood, making amends to them for all that had been 
 wanting in his conduct to their mother. His remorse 
 was not for sins of commission, but for sins of omission. 
 He knew that he had not been unkind to his wife. He 
 had only failed to understand her. The poor little diary 
 in the German exercise book had told him how dearly 
 he had been beloved, and how dull and ungrateful he 
 liad been. 
 
 For nearly five years after his wife's death Sir John 
 lived at Penlyon Castle, managed his estates, hunted and 
 shot, and in summer did a little yachting along that wild 
 north coast, and southward by Penzance and Falmouth, 
 and as far as the Start Point. In all those five years he 
 had his two children much about him, took them on his 
 yacht, taught them to ride, and was enraptured with the 
 pluck and the endurance shown by the younger, whether 
 on sea or land. She rode a pony that her elder sister 
 dared not mount. Her father took her with him when 
 he went out with the harriers, and she rode up and down 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 47 
 
 those \\ild hills with a dash and cleverness that enchanted 
 the squires and farmers of the district. 
 
 During all tliis time the girls were in a manner 
 running wild. They had a nursery governess to look after 
 them whose authority was of the smallest, and who soon 
 came to understand that Sir John Penlyon's daughters 
 were to do as they liked ; and that both learning and 
 elegant accomplishments counted for very little at 
 Penlyon Castle. 
 
 " Look after their health, Miss Peterson, and see that 
 they change their shoes when they come in from walk- 
 ing," said Sir John. "'All the rest is leather and 
 prunella." 
 
 Miss Peterson, who had never read Pope, took this for 
 an allusion to the shoes. 
 
 The two girls would have got the better of their 
 governess in any case ; but Sir John being avowedly 
 on the side of ignorance, the poor young la<ly had no 
 chance of making them take kindly to education. They 
 loved the gardens and the hills and the wild sea-beach, 
 and those narrow walks which looked to Miss Peterson 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 like mere ledges on the face of tlie cliff, and where she 
 could hardly stand for a minute without feeling giddy. 
 They were strong and bold, and free in every movement 
 of their young limbs, while she was London-bred, a 
 weakling, and a very bad walker. Her feet used to ache 
 on those grand moorland roads, and her poor sick soul 
 long for a Royal Blue, or any other friendly omnibus, 
 to take her in and carry her homewards'. She was one of 
 those people who say they are very fond of the country 
 in summer. The In-eezy Octol^er days, the white 
 mists of winter, filled her with sadness and dejection. 
 
 The two little girls were kind to her after their free- 
 and-easy fashion ; but they treated her with a good- 
 natured contempt. »She was afraid of a horse ; she was 
 afraid of the sea ; she was afraid of being blown off the 
 cliff when the wind was high ; and she could not walk 
 two miles without feeling tired. She confessed to being- 
 troubled with corns. 
 
 " Miss Peterson has corns," cried Sibyl ; " isn't it 
 funny ? I thought it was only old people wlio liad 
 corns," 
 
SHE WAS LONDON-BRED, A VERY BAD WALKER. 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 51 
 
 This free-and-easy life went on for five years. The 
 c'hihlren throve and grew apace — did what they liked, 
 ate what they liked, and were as idle as they liked. The 
 effect of this indulgence upon their physical health was 
 all that the fondest father could desire. The doctor 
 from Boscastle complained laughingly that the Penlyon 
 nursery wasn't worth a five-pound note to him from year's 
 end to year's end. 
 
 " You never have anything the matter with you," 
 he said, as the children skipped round him in the road, 
 fond of him in their small way. as one of the funny 
 personages of the district. " I don't believe I have 
 earned seven and sixpence out of either of you since 
 I lanced your gums." 
 
 " Did you lance my gums ? " cried Sibyl. " How 
 funny ! " 
 
 " You didn't think it funny then, I can tell you," 
 said the doctor, grimly. 
 
 "Didn't I? What's it like? Lance them now," 
 said Sibyl, curling up her red lips and opening her 
 mouth very wide. 
 
52 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 " No, thank you. You'd bite. You look as if you 
 could bite ! " laughed the doctor. " I tell you what 
 it is, I believe Miss Peterson is a witch — one of our 
 ancient Cornish witches who has turned herself into a 
 nice-looking young woman." Mv. Nicholls could not 
 so far perjure himself as to say pretty. " Miss Peterson 
 has bewitched you both. ^h.e has charmed away the 
 measles and the whooping-cough. 8he has cheated me 
 out of my just rights." 
 
 Miss Peterson heard him with a pale smile, shifting 
 her weight from the more painful foot to the foot that 
 pained her a little less. The children went leaping 
 and bounding along the road, the embodiment of healthy, 
 high-spirited childhood. 
 
 Sir John praised Miss Peterson for her care cf them, 
 and rewarded her, as the school-board mistresses are 
 rewarded, according to results ; only the results in this 
 case were physical and not mental, and Sir John's 
 Christmas present of a silk gown or a ten-pound note 
 was given because his daughters were healthy and happy, 
 rather than because they made any progress with their 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 53 
 
 education. In sober truth, they knew a little less than 
 the village children of the same age at the parish 
 school. 
 
 At the end of those five years that pleasant life came 
 to an abrupt close. North Cornwall found out all at 
 once that it could not continue to prosper and to hold 
 its own in the march of progress unless it were repre- 
 sented by Sir John Penlyon. Radical influences were 
 abroad in the land. The Church was in danger, was 
 indeed being fast pushed to the wall by the force of 
 Dissent, its superior in numerical strength. North 
 Cornwall must no longer be given over to the Eadical 
 party. It was time that a stand should be made, and a 
 battle should be fought. Sir John Penlyon, said the 
 newspapers, was the man to make that stand, and to 
 fight that battle. He was rich ; he had a stake in the 
 country ; he was influential ; he was fairly popular. 
 He had sat in Parliament fourteen years before for a 
 Cornish borough that was now among the things of the 
 past, a sop long since flung by Conservative Reformers 
 to the Democratic Cerberus. He could never again 
 
54 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 sit for Blackmoimt, the hereditary seat of his ancestors, 
 with a constituency of three and twenty ; but he could 
 sit for North Cornwall, and North Cornwall claimed 
 him for its own. 
 
 Perhaps Sir John Penlyon was getting tired of 
 rusticity. In any case he consented to be nominated 
 in the Conservative interest ; and the result of the 
 contest was a triumph for the good old family and 
 the good old cause. Sir John took a small house in 
 Queen Anne's Gate, gave himself up to politics, and 
 almost deserted his Cornish domain. Except for a 
 month or six weeks in the autumn, he was scarcely 
 seen in the West during the seven years that followed 
 his election as Member for the Western Division of 
 North Cornwall. He was re-elected during those seven 
 years without opposition, for it was now felt that the 
 Western Division had become a pocket-borough of the 
 Penlyons, just as Blackmount had been. There was 
 no use in fighting 8ir John Penlyon in his stronghold 
 of the west. 
 
 Before settling himself in his comfortable bachelor 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 55 
 
 quarters by St. James's Park, Sir .Tuhn invited his only 
 sister, Mrs. Hawberk, to Penlyon Place, with a view 
 to taking counsel with her as to the education of his 
 dauofhters. The time had doubtless come when Lilian 
 and Sibyl must cease to run wild. IVErs. Hawberk's 
 husband was the younger son of a peer, and she gave 
 herself some airs on the strength of that connection. 
 She was very fond of talking of AUerton, the family 
 seat, where she usually spent a somewhat dismal six 
 weeks in September and October while her husband was 
 going about the country speaking at political meetings, 
 and wearing himself out, as he declared, in support of 
 the cause. 
 
 Mrs. Hawberk came. She had not seen her nieces 
 since their mother's death. She took them in hand at 
 once in a masterful way ; and after spending a single 
 afternoon with them and their governess, she informed 
 her brother that his children were monsters of ignorance. 
 " The sooner you get rid of that young woman the 
 better," she said of poor Miss Peterson, who had done 
 all in her power to make herself agreeable to the 
 
56 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 great lady. "She has taught them nothing, and she 
 has not the slightest authority over them." 
 
 " She has looked after their health," replied Sir John^ 
 apologizing for the governess's shortcomings, '' and they 
 are very fond of her." 
 
 "• One wouldn't wish them to be fond of her. It is a 
 very bad sign when children are fond of their governess. 
 It means tliat she spoils them and allows them to be 
 idle." 
 
 " They have been idle at my desire. I told Miss 
 Peterson to cultivate their bodies and leave their minds 
 alone." 
 
 " And she has obeyed you to the letter. I never met 
 with such ignorant children. They pretend to be fond 
 of flowers, yet they know no more of botany than my 
 maid Rogers. They have made no progress with the 
 piano. They know no French. They are backward in 
 everything." 
 
 "They are splendid children," said Sir John, doggedly. 
 
 " No doubt ; and if you allow them to grow up with 
 Miss I^eterson they will be splendid savages ; and vou 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 57 
 
 will be put to shame by them when they go into society. 
 It does not do for girls to be ignorant and unaccomplished 
 nowadays. You w ill want them to marry well, I suppose, 
 by-and-by ? " 
 
 " I shan't want them to marry badly." 
 
 " Of course not ; and to make good matches they will 
 have to be accomplished as well as good-looking. They 
 are very sweet girls," added 3[rs. Hawberk, not wishing 
 to offend her only brother, and a wealthy brother ; " but 
 they have been dreadfully indulged." 
 
 " I wanted them to be happy." 
 
 " No doubt they have had a fine time of it. Yuu were 
 not so weak about them in tlieir poor mother's time." 
 
 " No ; I wish I had been a little weaker." 
 
 " How do you mean ? " 
 
 "I think Mary would have liked me to take more 
 notice of them." 
 
 " Nonsense, John ; you were perfect in your conduct 
 to poor 3Iary. No young woman could have had a more 
 chivalrous husband. I hope you don't reproach yourself for 
 having been wanting in any respect towards poor 3Iary ? " 
 
58 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 " Well, we needn't talk about that. Nobody can mend 
 the past. I want you to do what is best for the girls now 
 I am to be so much in London. If Miss Peterson is not 
 governess enough for them she must have a superior 
 person to help her. 8he can stay to look after their 
 health, and see that they change their shoes." 
 
 " My dear John, a maid will do all that. If you want 
 me to be of use to them you must let me have a free 
 hand." 
 
 " Certainly ; you shall have a free hand for the next 
 five years, till they have finished their education. Lilian 
 is nearly thirteen. Five years hence she will be old 
 enough to enter society." 
 
 "And it shall be my care that she is fitted for her 
 position as your eldest daughter," said Mrs. Hawberk, 
 decisively. 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 59 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 t^IPi JOHN went to 
 London, and left Mrs. 
 Hawberk mistress of 
 the field. She began 
 her work of reform by 
 dismissing meek little 
 3Iiss Peterson, who was 
 so much afraid of her 
 that she was almost glad to go ; yes, even to exchange 
 the fleshpots of Penlyon Castle for the meagre fare 
 of a lodging in Camden Town. Miss Peterson loved 
 her pupils, and wept at parting from them ; but the 
 scornful domination of the fashionable lady had eoAved 
 her spirits. She cried bitterly on the last morning at 
 
60 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 the Castle, but found few words to express either her 
 love or her sorrow. 
 
 8ibyl, the impulsive one, clung round Miss Peterson's 
 neck, and abused her aunt for sending this faithful friend 
 away. 
 
 "I shall hate the new governess, and I shall always 
 love you," she said. 
 
 " My dear, you mustn't hate any one. We have been 
 very happy together, and I hope some day Sir John will 
 let me see you and Lilian again." 
 
 " Let you see us ! " exclaimed 8ibyl ; " I should think 
 so, indeed ! You shall come and live with me again the 
 minute I am grown up. She will have no power over us 
 then." 
 
 She was Mrs. Hawberk, who had not left her room at 
 this early hour. The carriage was at the door to take 
 Miss Peterson to the coach, and the coach was to take her 
 to the station at Launceston, whence it would be a long, 
 long journey to Camden Town. 
 
 Lilian and Sibyl had packed a picnic basket for her 
 with provisions that would have lasted for a week if 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 61 
 
 the train had been snowed np on the moorland above 
 Okehampton. 
 
 " I'll go to Victoria with yon," cried Sibyl. 
 
 Victoria was the point where the coach stopped to pick 
 up passengers from Penlyon. 
 
 " No, no, my darling, your aunt wouldn't like " 
 
 But Sibyl jumped into the carriage before the sentence 
 was finished. The footman shut the door, and the coach- 
 man drove off. There was no time to spare, if the coach 
 was to swallow up poor little Miss Peterson that morning. 
 
 The coach did swallow her ; and KSibyl, \\ ithout either 
 hat or jacket, alighted from the brougham half an hour 
 afterwards to find her aunt standing in the porch awaiting 
 her return. 
 
 " You are the most undisci})lined child I ever had to do 
 with," said Mrs. Hawberk. 
 
 The new governess arrived three days after 3Iiss 
 Peterson's departure. She, too, was young in years ; but 
 she was old in culture and accomplishments. She was a 
 model governess. She had taken prizes and certificates, 
 
02 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 and bad passed examinations of all kinds. She was 
 strong in mathematics and in natural science. She knew 
 a respectable amount of Latin, and bad a useful smat- 
 tering of Greek — enough to make her oppressively erudite 
 about the derivation of words. Sibyl and Lilian began 
 by hating her, and though hatred soon simmered down 
 to toleration, they never became fond of her. She had 
 indifferent health, and suffered from neuralgic headaches ; 
 and indeed it seemed as if she introduced headaches into 
 Penlyon Place, for her pupils very soon began to suffer 
 from aching temples, and to look dark and heavy about 
 the eyes, and to lose those fine appetites for indiscriminate 
 food which they had enjoyed under the Peterson regime, 
 in the old happy time when they used to go down to 
 dessert every evening and sit on each side of their father, 
 and eat as much fruit and cake, chow-chow, guava jelly, 
 and preserved pine-aj^ple as ever they liked, while Sir 
 John nibbled an olive or two, and sipped his claret. 
 
 Neuralgia and headache reigned at Penlyon ; and the 
 two girls grew ^\■hite and wan, like their all-accomplished 
 governess ; and Mr. Nicholls, the family doctor, had no 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 63 
 
 longer to complain of the rude health of the Miss 
 Penlyons. He had plenty of visits booked against 
 Penlyon Place at the end of the year. 
 
 Just at the time when Lilian and Sibyl were growing- 
 fastest, running up from stout, chubby children, into thin 
 slips of gu'ls ; just when then- constitutions most needed 
 rest, and liberty, and pleasant exercise in the open air — 
 riding, tennis, walking, rowing, romping — this bm"den of 
 education was laid upon them. They were reminded 
 every day that they had been neglected, and that they 
 were to make amends for lost time by extra application. 
 They were crammed with 'ologies from which not one 
 young woman out of a hundred ever derives the faintest 
 pleasure or advantage in after-life. They were made to 
 sit at the piano, tap, tap, tapping the notes, lirst with one 
 linger and then with another, in monotonous five-finger 
 exercises — the athletics of piano practice. Miss Gambert 
 called this heart-sickening drudgery. Even the music 
 they played as a relief from the five-finger tapping was of 
 a dry and learned order which aroused no interest in their 
 minds — a " sad, mechanic exercise," and no more. Then- 
 
64 The Christma.s Hirelings. 
 
 only pleasure at the piano was fonnci in stolen minutes, 
 when Miss Gambert was out of ear-shot, when Sibyl, whose 
 ear was of the quickest, picked out music-hall tunes, 
 which she had heard gardeners or stable-boys whistling 
 at their work. Music-hall ditties that catch the fancy of 
 city and subm-bs will travel even as far west as Tintagel. 
 
 Mr. Nicholls remonstrated with the governess upon the 
 subject of over-much study, and had even the audacity to 
 argue the point with Mrs. Hawberk herself, on one of her 
 half-yearly visits to Penlyon Place. 
 
 That lady laughed his arguments to scorn. 
 
 " We have got beyond that old-fashioned idea of brain- 
 work being bad for the constitution, my good Mr. 
 Nicholls. Look at judges, bishops, famous physicians, 
 some of the longest-lived men on record. My nieces are 
 like all girls of their age, fanciful and rather affected. 
 Miss Gambert is giving them a sound and solid education, 
 which will make them valuable members of society ; and 
 here you come with your old-fashioned fads about over- 
 work and mental strain." 
 
 " I can only tell you, madam, that these dear young 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. Go 
 
 ladies have deteriorated in health since Miss Peterson 
 left " 
 
 " Miss Peterson ! She was a favourite of yours, 
 evidently, doctor," interrupted Mrs. Hawberk, with a 
 sneer which brought an indignant blush to the cheeks 
 and forehead of the bachelor doctor, who had never given 
 Miss Peterson so much as a thought in the way of 
 gallantry. " Come, Mr, Nicholls, in spite of your worship 
 of ignorance, I think you will admit that any deterioration 
 in my nieces is the effect of over-growth, and that it is 
 natui'al for girls of their age to be weak and weedy." 
 
 " Yes, Mrs. Hawberk, and that weak and weedy age is 
 just the period at which the educational strain should be 
 relaxed. However, I can but submit to your superior 
 wisdom, and hope that with the help of tonics and a 
 strengthening diet the young ladies may regain the 
 ground lost in the last year or so." 
 
 " Give them as many tonics as you like ; only don't 
 interfere with the cultivation of their minds." 
 
 Mrs. Hawberk took her own way in this as in every 
 other matter in which she was given what she called a 
 
 £ 
 
66 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 free hand. 81ie had an invincible belief in her own 
 wisdom, and in the foolishness of almost everybody else. 
 She drove Miss Gambert, and Miss Gambert drove her 
 pupils, and Lilian Penlyon at eighteen years of age was 
 certainly a very well read and accomplished young 
 woman, only it was a pity that she should be so weak and 
 weedy, and consumptive-looking. 
 
 " Her poor mother's constitution," Mrs. Hawberk said 
 decisively, when Sir John lamented his daughter's 
 delicate health. 
 
 Lilian made her debut in society, chaperoned by her 
 aunt, from a fine house in the best part of Cromwell lioad, 
 while Sibyl stayed at Penlyon, and went on grinding 
 at the dry-as-dust books, and the learned German music, 
 which the most advanced educational authorities had 
 prescribed for the cultivation of youthful minds. Lilian 
 w^ent everywhere, and was admired for her delicate 
 beauty and the shy dignity of her manners, and 
 her unlikeness to other girls. She had grown up 
 in solitude, and the slang of other girls was a language 
 unknown to her, and the wavs of other girls were 
 
Thk Christmas Hirelings. Q7 
 
 foreign to her mind. She was very much admired for 
 these superior qualities, and it was not forgotten that 
 she was joint heiress of Sir John Penlyon, the wealthy 
 Cornishman, whose mines and slate quarries were known 
 to'yield a large revenue, without counting his extensive 
 landed estate, the greater part of \\ hich unhappily was 
 included in the entail, and would go to the heir-at-law. 
 Before Lilian had been out three months Mrs. Ha\\berk 
 had the triumph of informing her brother that Lord 
 Lurgrave, the Earl of Holmsley's son, had proposed to his 
 elder daughter, and only waited his permission to consider 
 himself formally engaged to her. 
 
 " Does Lilian like the young man ? " Sir John asked 
 briefly. 
 
 " I believe it is quite a romantic attachment on both 
 sides." 
 
 " Then let them marry," said Sir John ; " the sooner 
 the better." 
 
 He did everything in his power to facilitate the 
 marriage. The young man was a good young man. 
 Nobody had any charge to bring against him ; and his 
 
68 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 father, Lord Holmsley, was well placed in the world, and 
 stood well with the world. The alliance was altogether 
 honourable ; and Miss Penlyon was thought to have done 
 well for herself in her first season. 
 
 Sir John had his own reasons for hurrying on the 
 marriage, reasons which he told to nobody. More than 
 once during the years of his widowhood he had been on 
 the point of taking a second wife, and at the eleventh 
 hour, on the eve of proposing to a lady whom he thought 
 inclined to favour his suit, he had drawn back. No, he 
 had married once Avithout love, and he had not made 
 his wife happy. He would not enter upon a second 
 loveless union in the hope of an heir to his estate. 
 Long ago, in his early manhood, he had loved, and he 
 had been balked in his love, which had been bestowed 
 upon one who was his inferior in birth and social status. 
 He had loved a farmer's daughter, and had wanted to 
 make her his wife, setting all social distinctions at nought 
 for her dear sake. But he had given her up at his 
 father's bidding, and at her own entreaty. She loved 
 him too well to make bad blood between father and son* 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 69 
 
 All this had happened nearly forty years ago, but it 
 had influenced the whole of Sir John Penlyon's after 
 life. He made up his mind that there should be no 
 second loveless union for him, and he looked forward to 
 seeing his grandchildren grow up about him. He could 
 not give Penlyon Place or the lands of Penlyon to his 
 daughter's son. Those must go to the heir-at-law ; but 
 he might bequeath the accumulations of long years, and 
 the quarries and mines which he himself had bought. 
 He had never spent more than a third of his income. 
 
 When he went do^^•n to the west in October he found 
 Mrs. Hawberk established there before him, superintend- 
 ing all the domestic arrangements for the marriage. The 
 wedding clothes were being made in London. All that 
 Sir John had to do was to agree with Lord Holmsley's 
 lawyers about the settlement. The wedding was fixed 
 for the fifteenth of November. The settlement was 
 liberal, but if Sir John Penlyon's daughter were to die 
 childless, her fortune would revert to her father, and 
 young Lord Lurgrave would have nothing. This point 
 was insisted upon by Sir John's lawyer. 
 
70 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 " HapjDily the young lady's death is a remote con- 
 tingency," said Lord Holmsley, when his own lawyer 
 objected to the clause. 
 
 Sir John found the lovers very happy, and Penlyon 
 Place in a pleasant bustle of expectation. He found 
 Sibyl still grinding on at science and history, and more 
 'ologies than he himself had ever heard of, a university 
 education in his day not having recognized the 'ologies. 
 He found her pale and thin, and disguised in smoke- 
 coloured spectacles, which she had taken to wearing 
 because the light hurt her eyes. 
 
 " My poor pretty Sibyl, how they have changed you ! " 
 exclaimed Sir John. 
 
 His younger daughter, once so daring in her merri- 
 ment, so frankly demonstrative in her affection, was now 
 shv and restrained in her manner to her father. He had 
 seen a good deal of Lilian in the London season ; and 
 the ice had been broken between them. Lilian was 
 almost the Lilian of old. But Sibyl was completely 
 changed ; and though Mrs. Hawberk assured him that 
 the change was an improvement, he could not help 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 71 
 
 regretting the old Sibyl, the frank and fearless com- 
 panion, the spirited young horse\\oman, the sunburnt, 
 bronze-haired girl who could handle oar or boat-hook 
 with the best of the lads of Boscastle. He saw her at 
 her studies in the library every morning ; he heard her 
 play erudite German music after dinner in the drawing- 
 room. He saw her and ]\[iss Gambert setting out every 
 afternoon for their constitutional walk on the moors, and 
 riding home in the dusk one evening he saw them pacing 
 the windblown road with :\rr. Morland, the High Chiu'ch 
 curate, in attendance. He questioned Sibyl about the 
 curate when she had played her newest mazurka and 
 was bidding him good-night. 
 
 " Is there anything between 3tiss Gambert and Mor- 
 land ? " he asked. " Is he paying his addresses to her ? " 
 
 " No, father, I think not." 
 
 "Humph; I began to suspect something when I saw 
 him walking with you two this utternoon. He is a very 
 good fellow, though his father is only a grocer in a small 
 way of business in Plymouth. She might do worse," 
 
 " Yes, he is very good." 
 
72 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 That was all. Sibyl touched her father's cheek with 
 a faint fluttering kiss and retired, leaving the room in the 
 quiet manner which Miss Gambert had impressed upon 
 her as the proper manner for a young lady belonging to 
 one of the county families. 
 
 Miss Penlyon's wedding was a very smart wedding, or 
 as smart as a wedding can be in the wilds of Cornwall. 
 She had a bishop to marry her, assisted by a High 
 Church archdeacon, and by Mr. Morland, curate of the 
 parish — Mr. Morland, who was a pale, thin young man 
 with large blue eyes and a short, nervous cough, and 
 who was nearer Rome in all his thoughts and aspirations 
 than the archdeacon. 
 
 Lilian Penlyon was as graceful and dignified a bride as 
 any one could desire to see ; and Mrs. Hawberk prided 
 herself upon the result of her wise administration. 
 
 " I hope you are satisfied with your daughters to-day, 
 John," she said, swelling with conscious merit, her 
 matronly form seeming larger than usual in the amplitude 
 of a brand new velvet gown. 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 73 
 
 " They are looking very handsome ; but I wish they 
 did not look so fragile," replied Sir John, gravely. 
 
 " Blood, my dear John, blood. You wouldn't expect 
 a racer to show the bulk and bone of a carthorse." 
 
 When the wedding was over, and Lilian and her 
 husband were travelling in Italy on a wedding tour 
 which was to last till the spring, life at Penlyon Castle 
 dropped back into the old grooves ; and the old grooves 
 meant books and piano and drawing-board, varied only 
 by the dull constitutional walk or the duller drive. The 
 winter skies in that western land were clear and bright, 
 and a few stray flowers lingered here and there in the 
 shelter of the hills, as if winter had forgotten them ; but 
 the landscape in all its poetic beauty was a melancholy 
 landscape for the afternoon eyes of a girl, whose long 
 laborious mornings were given to dry books and drier 
 music, and to convincing herself with strenuous toil that 
 she had no talent for painting. 
 
 The daily walk was insisted upon by doctor and 
 governess ; so Miss Penlyon was marched out in fair 
 weather or foul, and had to tramp submissively for at 
 
74 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 least four miles, sometimes buffeted by the wind and the 
 spray, sometimes moving ghost-like in a grey mist of rain. 
 
 Mr. Morland, the curate, often joined governess and 
 pupil in these afternoon walks. He had nothing to say 
 about the world of men, but he had lived and had his 
 being from boyhood upwards in a little world of books, 
 and about these he was eloquent. Carlyle, Emerson, 
 Hawthorne, Longfellow, Shelley, Keats — these were his 
 gods, and he would quote them and talk of them for an 
 hour at a stretch. 
 
 To Sibyl, who had l^een reared upon hard facts strictly 
 on the Clradgrind principle, the world of philosophy and 
 poetry was a revelation. She explored her father's 
 library, and in a corner among the very refuse of the 
 shelves found a shabby old volume of Shelley, printed in 
 Paris ; and this treasure she carried off to her bedroom 
 and kept under her pillow and pored over in secret, 
 marking his favourite passages and learning them by 
 rote ; so that one day, half unconsciously, she took up the 
 line where ^h. ]\[orland stopped, and went on to the en(l 
 of the stanza. 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 75 
 
 " I hope you found those lines in a book of selections," 
 said Miss Gambert. " I am sure yoiu- aunt would dis- 
 approve of Shelley." 
 
 " She may disapprove, but I'm sure she never read 
 him," answered Sibyl. " Lilian told me that she never 
 reads anything but the tradesmen's books, and that she 
 pores over them every Tuesday morning in a maddening 
 manner, and then has awful talks with her housekeeper." 
 " Mrs. Hawberk is a very clever woman and an admirable 
 manager." 
 
 '•'I dare say she is; but she need not parade her 
 butcher's book. She has a pile of horrid tradesmen's 
 books on the breakfast table, and looks over them as she 
 eats her breakfast. I call it absolutely indecent. Lilian 
 said it made her hate Tuesday mornings. She used to 
 wonder if aunt thought she made too much difterence in 
 the weekly bills." 
 
 " Mrs. Hawberk has ample means, and keeps a liberal 
 table ; but she abhors waste, as all sensible w(unen do," 
 said the governess, reprovingly. 
 
 " If she parades her butcher's book \\ hen I am in the 
 
76 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 Cromwell Koad I shall say something rude to her," 
 retorted Sibyl ; " but I hope Lilian will be in town in 
 the spring, and then she will be able to chaperon 
 me. 
 
 "You are looking forward eagerly to the spring, 
 when you will have left Cornwall," said Mr. Morland, 
 pensively ; and then there came a silence upon Sibyl 
 and the curate, and Miss Gambert did all the talking 
 during the homeward walk. 
 
 Sir John Penlyon went back to London soon after 
 Christmas, and politics claimed him for their own. He 
 had arranged with his sister that Sibyl Avas to make her 
 dehut from the Cromwell Eoad as Lilian had done. Lady 
 Lurgrave, even if she ;were to have a house in town, 
 which was doubtful, would be too young and inexperienced 
 a matron to take charge of her sister. She would not 
 have the firmness of will needed to keep younger sons 
 at bay ; she would be too good-natured and easy in her 
 treatment of detrimentals : altogether Sir John felt that 
 his sister would be the only competent chaperon for 
 Sibyl, whom he always thought of as wild and difficult to 
 
The Christmas Hieelings. 77 
 
 manage, remembering how rash and wilfiil she had been 
 in those childish years, when she rode the piebald pony, 
 and insisted upon going faster at ditches and hedges than 
 her father thought safe for so juvenile a performer. She 
 had been headstrong and disobedient in those days ; but 
 he had loved her for her high spirits and daring. Now 
 on the threshold of womanhood she was obedient enough 
 to please the most exacting parent. Mrs. Hawberk and 
 Miss Grambert between them had succeeded in taming 
 her; but perhaps Sir John hardly liked this younger 
 daughter of his quite so well after that careful training 
 as he had liked her in her childhood, when she had been 
 as wild and sweet as a dog-rose and as full of thorns. 
 Mrs. Hawberk, however, took credit to herself for having 
 produced the most perfect thing in young ladies ; and 
 Sir John felt that he ought to be grateful. 
 
 He really did feel grateful to this clever sister of his 
 for having taken all his paternal responsibilities off his 
 shoulders and left him free to attend to the affairs of the 
 nation— very grateful, until one foggy afternoon in 
 February when a telegram was brought to him in 
 
78 The Christma.s Hirelings. 
 
 the library at the Carltou, where he was writing his 
 letters. 
 
 " To 8ir John Penlyon. 
 
 " Sibyl left the castle at seven this morning. She 
 has been traced as lar as Bodmin-road Station ; supposed 
 to have gone to Bristol. I am in the greatest distress of 
 mind. Pray tell me what I am to do. 
 
 " Gambert." 
 
 " What does the woman mean ? " Sir John asked 
 himself, staring at the words in the telegram. " Sibyl 
 must have quarrelled with her, and is on her way to 
 London, meaning no doubt to come to her aunt or to me. 
 Bristol is all nonsense — a mistake of the porters or of the 
 servant who followed her to Bodmin. A foolish, trouble- 
 some business — just now, too, with this amendment coming 
 on to-night, and when I am so full of work." 
 
 He looked at his watch. Half-past two. The train 
 from Bodmin would arrive at Paddington soon after four. 
 He must be on the platform, of course, to receive this 
 foolish daughter. It was very wrono; of her — a vein of 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 79 
 
 the old Adam cropping up in tlie regenerate Sibyl. Who 
 would have thought her capable of such rebellion ? 
 
 " She seemed so tame and well broken when I was at 
 Pen 1 yon," mused Sir John, " but no doubt that middle- 
 aged young lady with the spectacles and the scraggy 
 shoulders is rather a trying person to live with, in a 
 country house, through a long winter." 
 
 He went on writing his letters till there was only just 
 time to get to Paddington, allowing a widish margin for 
 the fog — before the fast train from the far west came in. 
 If the train also had not been delayed by the fog, Sir 
 John would not have been there to see its arrival. 
 
 He was there, walking up and down the plattbrm, 
 watchful and on the alert, until the last cab had driven 
 away with the last passenger and the last portmanteau ; 
 but among all those passengers there was no daughter 
 of his. 
 
 "I am a fool," he said to himself; "she may have got 
 out at Westbourne Park." 
 
 He took another cab and had himself driven slowly 
 thr(jugh the thickening fog across the park to South 
 
80 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 Kensington and tlie fine large house in the Cromwell 
 Eoad, from which Sibyl was to take a header into London 
 society. 
 
 Mrs. Hawberk was sitting alone in the subdued lamp- 
 light of the back drawing-room, the spacious front 
 drawing-room a yawning gulf of shadows lighted only by 
 occasional gleams from a low fire. 
 
 She started from her chair as Sir John was announced, 
 and ran to him and fell upon his neck sobbing — 
 
 " Oh, my dear, dear John, I am so sorry for you," she 
 exclaimed gaspingly. 
 
 "What do you mean, Clara? What has happened? 
 Has Sibyl come to you ? " 
 
 " Come to me, poor blind, deluded girl ! Come to me ? 
 Oh, John, haven't you heard ? Didn't you receive poor 
 Miss Gambert's second telegram ? " 
 
 "No!" cried Sir John, fiercely. "What does it all 
 mean ? Has there been an accident on the line ? Is the 
 girl hurt— killed? " he asked, hoarse with sudden terror. 
 
 His sister's tears, her agitation, her embraces were 
 enough to suggest direst calamity. 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 1 
 
 "Killed!" cried Mrs. HawLerk. "Xo, she is safe 
 enough. There are some parents, perhaps, who wonld 
 rather hear that she had been killed in a railway accident 
 
 " CLARA, IF YOU WOrLD liE liOOU EN'OUGH TO TELL JIE IN PLAIN WUIiDS 
 WHAT HAS HArPENED, INSTEAD OF TRYING TO ACT LIKE MADAME 
 RISTORI IX ' MEDEA,' YOU WOULD DO ME A FAVOUR." 
 
 than that she had so lowered herself, thrown lierself 
 away so Idindly as slie has done ! " 
 
 " Clara, if yon wonld be good enough to tell me in plain 
 words what has happened to my daughter, instead of 
 trying to act like IMadame Ristori in Medea, you would do 
 me a favour," said Sir John, in liis most un])leasant voice. 
 
 F 
 
82 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 Mrs. Hawberk sat down and collected herself, thinking, 
 as she did so, that it was in the fraternal nature to be 
 disagreeable at every stage of life. She remembered 
 dimly how shamefully her brother had ill-treated her 
 favourite doll five and forty years before. He was the 
 same man now — now, after she had toiled and slaved for 
 him, saving him all thought and care about his mother- 
 less girls. The same man, utterly heartless and unfeeling. 
 
 " Your daughter Sibyl was married to Mv. Morland, 
 the curate, at St. Sophia's Church, Plymouth, this morn- 
 ing," she said with haughty indifference. " If you haven't 
 received your own telegram, you may like to see mine." 
 
 She waved her hand towards an occasional table, on 
 which lay an open telegram. Sir John snatched it up 
 and read it eagerly, stooping to get the light of the 
 shaded lamp, which was intended to make darkness 
 visible rather than to illuminate the room. 
 
 " The inquiries about Bristol were only a blind. She 
 went to Plymouth with ^h. jMorland, and they were 
 married at St. Sophia's, and have gone to Torquay for 
 their honevmoon. A telegram from him to me — letter 
 
The Christmas Hirp]lings. 
 
 83 
 
 r ,T 
 
 STOLEN HOURS IX THE GARDEN AT PLACE. 
 
 to follow. Also letter to Sir John. I think yon mnst 
 feel for me, dear friend, for yon alone can nnderstand my 
 feelings imder this crnel l)low." 
 
 It was a long telegram. A woman mnst be deeply 
 moved before she can be so reckless in the expenditm-e 
 of words, every one of which has to be paid for. 
 
84 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 " Her feelings ! " growled Sir John ; " what have her 
 feelings to do with my daughter's misconduct, except so 
 far as she has proved herself unworthy of being trusted 
 with the care of a pupil ? " 
 
 " Oh, John ! don't you know the poor thing ^vas 
 engaged to Morland ? He pretended to be only waiting 
 for his first living in order to marry her." 
 
 " Oh, that was the state of the case, was it ? " said Sir 
 John, with cutting coolness. " And he thought it a 
 better speculation to marry my daughter. I am very 
 sorry for him. He will find he has made a bad bargain. 
 He would have done better to marry the governess, for 
 she is a bread-winner, and my daughter will never bring 
 him a sixpence." 
 
 " Oh, John ! She has been very foolish, poor child, 
 but I know you will forgive her — after a time." 
 
 " Not after an eternity — if eternity could have an 
 afterwards. She has set me at nought, and from this 
 hour to my last hour on earth I shall set her at nought. 
 It shall be to me as if she had never existed," 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE time, after- 
 noon — the after- 
 noon of Christmas 
 Eve ; the place, the 
 library at Penlyon 
 Castle ; and the 
 only personage Sir John Penlyon, sitting by the fire 
 in the gathering dusk, somewhat out of temper with 
 the world at large, and with himself as the most im- 
 portant member in it. The morning had been trouble- 
 some, spent for the most part with his bailiff, who \\as 
 full of the wants and the shortcomings of tenants. Sir 
 John had missed his useful friend Danby, and that 
 philosophical spirit which always made light of such 
 
86 The Chrlstmas Hirelings. 
 
 thorns in the flower-bed of a rich man's lot, and 
 always succeeded in laughing him out of his bad temper. 
 
 Mr. Danby had been absent for the last four 
 days. 
 
 He had gone, with 8ir John's cheque in his pocket, 
 to fetch the Christmas hirelings ; the little people -who 
 were to come to the dull old castle and make merri- 
 ment for its solitary lord. 
 
 The more Sir John Penlyon meditated upon the 
 business, especially this afternoon, the more preposterous 
 and vexatious it seemed to him. 
 
 " I must have been an arrant fool to consent to such 
 a piece of folly," he said to himself. 
 
 Enter Adela Hawberk, flushed and excited. 
 
 Adela. AVe have finished, uncle (clapping her hands). 
 It is quite the prettiest tree you ever saw. How delighted 
 the dear little things will be ! 
 
 Sir John {testily). Dear little things, indeed ! How 
 do you know they mayn't be odious little things, spoilt 
 and cantankerous, or underbred and hypocritical, if they 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 87 
 
 have been what a middle-class mother calls " well brought 
 up " — brought up to sit u})on the edge of their chair, 
 and to be afraid of everybody ? 
 
 Adela {with conviction). They are sure to be nice 
 children. Mr. Danby Avouldn't bring nasty ones. 
 
 Sir Johx. What does he know about children — an old 
 bachelor ? 
 
 Adela. Why, uncle, you can't have seen him in a 
 children's party, or you'd never say that. He is a pro- 
 digious favourite with the children in all the houses he 
 goes to. Perhaps that is one reason why the mothers are 
 so fond of him. Hark ! They ought to be here by this 
 time. The carriage Avent to Victoria an hour ago to meet 
 the coach from Launceston. They were to stay at Ply- 
 mouth last night. Mr. Danby thought it would be too 
 long a journey for the little things to do in one day. He 
 is so considerate. 
 
 Sir John. He is a fool; and I am a greater fool to 
 encourage his nonsense. The utter absurdity of bringing 
 children from the other end of the world ! Do you know 
 where the creatures come from, Adela ? 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 Adela. I haven't the faintest notion. All Mr, Danby 
 said was that they lived on the other side of London, and 
 that he wanted a clear week to fetch them. You must 
 remember, uncle, you told him you wanted to know 
 nothing about them. They Avere to come and go, and 
 you Avere to hear no more of them. They were to have 
 no claim upon you in the future. 
 
 Sir John. I should think not, indeed. Claim upon 
 me, forsooth ! But it would have been only civil to tell 
 me Avhere the brats come from, and who their people are. 
 
 Adela. No doubt he will tell you, if you ask him. 
 
 Sir John. He ought to have told me of his own 
 accord. I am not going to ask him. 
 
 Adela was discreetly silent, seeing that her uncle was 
 in what she called one of his tempers. She ahvays 
 respected her uncle's tempers. 
 
 She went to the big bay windoAV from which she could 
 see a long way down the drive. It was not four o'clock, 
 but the dimness of a wintry tAvilight was creeping over 
 the landscape. The afternoon was mild and calm, by no 
 means an old-fashioned Christmas, an afternoon that 
 
The Christma.s Hirelings. 
 
 89 
 
 might have been October. iShe could hear a faint sigh- 
 ing of the wind in the trees near at hand, and the roaring 
 of the waves far off", 
 not a stormy roar, 'In 
 only the rhythmical 
 rise and swell of the f" U 
 great Atlantic roll- 
 ins: over the stonv 
 beach. 
 
 Everything had 
 been made ready for 
 the little strangers. 
 There were lires 
 blazing in two large 
 bedrooms overhead ; 
 rooms with a door of 
 communication. In 
 one there were still 
 
 the two little white beds in which Lilian and Sibyl had 
 slept when they were children ; poor Lilian, whose bed 
 was in the English cemetery at Florence, under a white 
 
 IN EAST LONDON. 
 
90 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 marble mouiiment erected by lier sorrowing husband, 
 and whose sorrowing husband had taken to himself a 
 second wife five years ago. Every one knew where 
 Lilian was lying ; but no one at Penlyon Castle 
 knew where Sibyl's head had found rest. All that 
 people knew about the disobedient daughter was that 
 her husband had died within three or four years of 
 her marriage, worn to death in some foreign mission, 
 after toiling for a year or so at the east end of London. 
 Of his luckless widow no one at Penlyon had heard 
 anything, but it was surmised that her father made her 
 an allowance. He could hardly let his only daughter 
 starve, people said, however badly she might have treated 
 him. Lady Lurgrave's early death had been a crush- 
 ing blow to his love and to his pride. She had died 
 childless. 
 
 The rooms were ready. Adela ran uj^stairs to take 
 a final survey. One of the housemaids had been told 
 off to wait U23on the little strangers ; and Adela's maid 
 was to give a hand. Neither of these young women had 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 91 
 
 any objection to the extra duty. Each professed herself 
 foud of children. 
 
 " They'll enliven the phxce a little, poor mites," said 
 Harrop, who considered Penlyon the abode of dullness ; 
 and Sarah the housemaid agreed with her. 
 
 Harrop was to sleep in the larger room, and in the 
 bed which Miss Peterson had occupied during five 
 peaceful years. Sarah had put up her truckle bed in 
 the inner and smaller room, where she was to keep guard 
 over the little boy. 
 
 "' It would be downright cruelty to let any child sleep 
 alone in one of these gashly rooms," said Sarah, the 
 " gashliness " being doubtless a question of spaciousness 
 and oak panelling, and ponderous old-fashioned furniture 
 which cast monstrous shadows in the pale glimmer of the 
 night-light. 
 
 Hark ! Yes, that was the roll of wheels on the gravel 
 drive, a nearer sound than the sullen swell of the sea 
 out yonder grinding the pebbles in an unresting mill. 
 
 Adela Hawberk flew down to the hall, followed by 
 Harrop, while Sarah the housemaid stopped upstairs and 
 
92 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 gave a final stir to the fires after the wont of her tribe, 
 who are always ready to use the poker, wanted or not 
 wanted, with a noble disregard to the coal-merchant's 
 bill. 
 
 Sir John had heard the carriage stop, and the opening 
 of the hall door ; and although he pretended to go on 
 reading his paper by the lamp placed close at his elbow, 
 the pretence was a poor one, and anybody might have 
 seen that he was listening with all his might. 
 
 The footman had opened the hall door as the wheels 
 drew near, and it was wide open when the carriage 
 stopped. The red light from the hall fire streamed out 
 upon the evening grey, and three little silvery voices 
 were heard exclaiming — 
 
 " Oh, what a pretty house ! " 
 
 " Oh, what a big house ! " 
 
 And then the smallest voice of the three, with amazing- 
 distinctness — 
 
 " What an exceedingly red fire ! " 
 
 The carriage door flew open, and two little girls, all 
 in red from top to toe, and one little boy in grey, rolled 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 93 
 
 out in a heap, or seemed to roll out, like puppies out 
 of a basket, and scrambled on to their feet, and ran up 
 the steps, Mr, Danby, slim and jaunty as usual, following 
 them. 
 
 " Good gracious, how tiny they are ! " cried Adela, 
 stooping down to kiss the smaller girl, a round red 
 bundle, with a round little face, and large dark grey 
 eyes shining in the firelight. 
 
 The tiny thing accepted the kiss somewhat shrinkingly, 
 and looked about her, awed by the grandeur of the hall, 
 the large fireplace and blazing logs, the men in armom-, 
 or the suits of armour standing up and pretending to 
 be men. 
 
 "I don't like them," said the tiny girl, clinging to 
 Danby, and pointing with a muffled red hand at one of 
 these mailed warriors. "They're not alive, are they, 
 Uncle Tom?" 
 
 " No, no, no. Moppet ; they're as dead as door-nails." 
 
 " Are they ? I don't like dead people." 
 
 " Come, come, Moppet, suppose they're not people 
 at all — no more than a rocking-horse is a real live 
 
94 
 
 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 horse. We'll pull one 
 of them down to-mor- 
 row and look inside 
 him ; and then you'll 
 be satisfied." 
 
 The larger scarlet 
 mite, larger by about 
 an inch, older by a 
 year, was standing be- 
 fore the fire, gravely 
 warming her hands, 
 spreading them out 
 before the blaze as 
 much as hands so tiny 
 could spread them- 
 selves. The boy was 
 skipping about thehall, 
 looking at everything, 
 the armed warriors 
 especially,} and not at 
 all afraid. 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 95 
 
 " They're soldiers, aren't they ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes, Laddie." 
 
 " I shoukl like to be dressed like that, and go 
 into a battle and kill lots of people. I couldn't be 
 killed myself, conld I, if I had that stuff all over me ? ". 
 
 " Perhaps not. Laddie ; but I don't think it would 
 answer. You'd be an anachronism." 
 
 " I wouldn't mind being a nackerism if it saved me 
 from being killed," said Laddie. 
 
 "Come, little ones, come and be presented to your 
 host," said Mr. Danby, as the footman opened the library 
 door; and they all poured in, Danby, Adela, and the 
 children, the smallest running in first, her sister and 
 the boy following, considerably in advance of the 
 grown-ups. 
 
 Moppet ran right into the middle of the room, as fast 
 as her little red legs could carry her, then seeing Sir 
 John sitting where the bright lamplight shone full upon 
 his pale elderly face, with its strongly marked features, 
 black eyebrows, and silvery grey hair, she stopped sud- 
 denly as if she had beheld a Gorgon, and began to back 
 
96 The Christmas Hirelings, 
 
 slowly till she brought herself up against the silken skirt 
 of Adela Hawberk's gown, and in that soft drapery she 
 in a manner absorbed herself, till there was nothing to 
 be seen of the little neatly rounded figure except the 
 tip of a l)right r^d cap. and the toes of two bright red 
 gaiters. 
 
 The elder mite had advanced less boldly, and had 
 not to beat so ignominious a retreat. She was near 
 enough to Mr. Danby to clutch his hand, and holding 
 that, she was hardly at all frightened. 
 
 The boy, older, bolder, and less sensitive than either 
 of the girls, went skipping round the library as he had 
 skipped about the hall, looking at things and apparently 
 unconscious of Sir John Penlyon's existence. 
 
 " How d'ye do, Danby ? " said Sir John, holding out 
 his hand as his old friend advanced to the fire, the little 
 red girl hanging on to his left hand, while he gave his 
 right to his host. " Upon 'my word, I began to think you 
 were never coming back. You've been an unconscionable 
 time. One would suppose you had to fetch the children 
 from the world's end." 
 
The Christma.s Hirelings. 97 
 
 " I had to bring them to the world's end, you might 
 say. Boscastle is something more than a day's journey 
 from London in the depth of winter." 
 
 " And are these the chihh-en ? Good heavens, Danby ! 
 What could you be thinking about to bring us such 
 morsels of humanity ? " 
 
 " We wanted children," said Danby, " not hobblede- 
 hoys." 
 
 " Hobbledehoys ! no, but there is reason in everything. 
 You couldn't suppose I wanted infants like these — look 
 at that little scrap hidden in Adela's frock. It's posi- 
 tively dreadful to contemplate ! They will be getting 
 under my feet. I shall be treading upon them, and 
 hmling them seriously." 
 
 " No you won't. Jack, I'll answer for that." 
 
 " Why not, pray ? " 
 
 " Because of their individuality. They are small, but 
 they are people. When Moppet comes into a room every- 
 body knows she is there. She is a little scared now ; but 
 she will be as bold as brass in a quarter of an hour." 
 
 Sir John Penlyon put on his spectacles and looked at 
 
 G 
 
98 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 the little hirelings more critically. Their youth and 
 diminutive size had been a shock to him. He had 
 expected bouncing children, with rosy faces, long auburn 
 hair, and a good deal of well-developed leg showing below 
 a short frock. These, measured against his expectations, 
 were positively microscopic. 
 
 Their cheeks were pale rather than rosy. Their hair 
 was neither auburn nor long. It was dark hair, and it 
 was cropped close to the neat little heads, showing every 
 bump in the broad, clever -looking foreheads. Sir John's 
 disap23roving eyes showed him that the children were 
 more intelligent than the common run of children ; but 
 for the moment he was not disposed to accejjt intelligence 
 instead of size. 
 
 "They are preposterously small," he said, "not at all 
 the kind of thing I expected. They will get lost under 
 chairs or buried alive in waste-paper baskets. I wash my 
 hands of them. Take them away, Adela. Let them be 
 fed and put to bed ; " then turning to Mr. Danby as if to 
 dismiss the subject, " Anything stirring in London when 
 you were there, Tom ? " 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 99 
 
 Before Danby could answer, Moj^pet emerged from her 
 shelter, advanced deliberately, and planted herself in 
 front of Sir John Penlyon, looking- him straight in the 
 face. 
 
 " I'm sorry yon don't like us, 3Ir. Old Gentleman," she 
 said. 
 
 Every syllalile came A\ith clear precision from those 
 infantine lips. 3Ioppet's strong point was her po\\er of 
 speech. Fu-m, decisive, correct as to intonation, came 
 every sentence from the lips of this small personage. 
 Ponderous polysyllables were no trouble to Mojjpet. 
 There was only an occasional consonant that baffled 
 her. 
 
 " "Who says I don't like you ? " said Sir John, taken 
 aback, and lifting the animated bundle of red cloth 
 on to his knee. 
 
 He found there was something very substantial inside 
 the woolly cloak and gaiters, a pair of round plump arms 
 and sturdy little legs, a compact little fignre. which 
 perched firmly on his knee. 
 
 " You said so," retorted ^loppet, with her large grev 
 
100 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 eyes very wide open, and looking" fnll into his. " Yon 
 don't like ns because we are so very small. Everybody 
 says we are small, but everybody doesn't mind. Why do 
 you mind ? " 
 
 "I didn't say anything about not liking yon, little 
 one. I was only afraid you were too small to go out 
 visiting." 
 
 " I went out to tea when I was two, and nobody said I 
 was too small. I have real tea at parties, not milk-and- 
 water. And I have been out to tea often and often — 
 haven't 1, Lassie ? " 
 
 " Not so many times as I have," replied the elder red 
 thing, with dignity. 
 
 She was standing in front of the wide old fireplace, 
 warming her hands, and she was to Sir John's eye some- 
 what suggestive of a robin redbreast that had fluttered in 
 and lighted there. 
 
 " Of course not, because you're older," said Moppet, 
 disgusted at this superfluous self-assertion on her sister's 
 part. " I am always good at parties— ain't I, Uncle 
 Tom ? " turning an appealing face to Mr. Danby. 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 101 
 
 " So these Lilliputians are your nieces, Danby ? " 
 exclaimed Sir John. 
 
 "Well, no, they are not exactly nieces, though they 
 are very near and dear. I am only a jury uncle." 
 
 " A jury uncle ! " cried Moppet, throwing her head back 
 and laughing at the unknown word. 
 
 " A jury uncle ! " echoed the other two, and the three 
 laughed prodigiously, not because they attached any 
 meaning to the word, but only because they didn't know 
 what it meant. That was where the joke lay. 
 
 " You know that in Cornwall and in Sicily all the 
 elderly men are uncles, and all the old women aunts ; 
 everybody's uncles and aunts," concluded Mr. Danby. 
 
 Moppet still occupied Sir John's knee. She felt some- 
 how that it was a post of honour, and she had no 
 inclination to surrender it. Her tiny lingers had possessed 
 themselves of liis watch-chain. 
 
 "Please show me your watch," she said. 
 
 Sir John drew out a big hunter. 
 
 Moppet approached her little rosy moutli to the hinge 
 and blew violently. 
 
102 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 " Why don't it open like Uncle Tom's watch does when 
 I blow ? " she asked. " Is it broken ? " 
 
 " Blow again, and we'll see about that," said Sir John, 
 understanding the manoeuvre. 
 
 The big bright case flew open as Moppet blew. 
 
 " Take care it doesn't bite your nose off." 
 
 " How big and brio-ht it is — much bio-oer and briohter 
 than Uncle Tom's." 
 
 "Uncle Tom's is a lady's watch, and Uncle Tom is a 
 lady's man," said Sir John, and the triple peal of childish 
 laughter which greeted this remark made him fancy 
 himself a wit. 
 
 Small as they were tliese children were easily amused, 
 and that was a point in their favour, he thought. 
 
 " Tea is ready in the breakfast-room," said Adela. 
 
 " Tea in the breakfast-room ! Oh, how funny ! " And 
 again they all laughed. 
 
 At any rate they were not doleful children — no 
 long faces, no homesick airs, no bilious headaches — so 
 far. 
 
 " I dare say they will all start measles or whooping- 
 
The Christmas Hieelings. 103 
 
 cough before we have done with them," thought >Sir 
 John, determined not to he hopeful. 
 
 " Oh, we are to come to tea, are we ? " he said cheerily, 
 and he actually carried 3Ioppet all the way to the 
 breakfast-room, almost at the other end of the rambling- 
 old house, and planted her in a chair by his side at the 
 tea-table, ^^he nestled up close beside him. 
 
 " You like us now, don't you ? " she asked. 
 
 " I like you." 
 
 "And you'll like her," pointing to her sister with 
 a small distinct finger; "and him," pointing to her 
 brother, "to-morrow morning. You'll know us all to- 
 morrow morning." 
 
 " To-morrow will be Christmas," said Laddie, as if 
 gi\ing a piece of useful information to the company in 
 general. 
 
 " Christmas ! " cried Danby ; " so it will. I mustn't 
 forget to hang up my stocking." 
 
 This provoked a burst of mirth. Uncle Tom's stock- 
 ing ! Uncle Tom hoping to get anything from fe'anta 
 Claus ! 
 
104 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 " You needn't laugh," said Mr. Danby, seriously. " I 
 mean to hang up one of my big Inverness stockings. It 
 will hold a lot." 
 
 " What do you expect to get ? " asked Laddie, 
 intensely amused. " Toys ? " 
 
 " No ; chocolates, butterscotch, hardbake, alecompane." 
 
 " Oh, what's alecompane ? " 
 
 The name of this old-fashioned sweetmeat was received 
 with derision. 
 
 "Why, what an old sweet-tooth you must be!" 
 exclaimed Moppet ; " but I don't believe you a bit. I 
 shall come in the middle of the night to see if your 
 stocking is there." 
 
 " You won't find my room. You'll go into the wrong 
 room most likely, and find one of the three bears." 
 
 Moppet laughed at the notion of those familiar beasts. 
 '• There never were three bears that lived in a house, and 
 had beds and chairs and knives and forks and things," she 
 said. " I used to believe it once when I was very little " 
 — she said vewmj little ; " but now I know it isn't true." 
 "She looked round the table with a solemn air, with her 
 
SIR JOHN WATCHED HEU CURIOUSLY. 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 107 
 
 lips pursed up, challenging contradiction. Her quaint 
 little lace, in ^^hich the forehead somewhat overbalanced 
 the tiny features below it, was all aglow with mind. One 
 could not imagine more mind in any living creature than 
 was compressed within this quaint scrap of humanity. 
 
 Sir John watched her curiously. He had no experience 
 of children of that early age. His own daughters had 
 been some years older before he began to notice them. He 
 could but wonder at this quick and eager brain animating 
 so infinitesimal a body. 
 
 Moppet looked round the table ; and what a table it 
 was ! She had never seen anything like it. Cornwall, 
 like Scotland, has a prodigious reputation for 1»reakfasts ; 
 but Cornwall, on occasion, can almost rival Yorkshire in 
 the matter of tea. Laddie and Lassie had set to work 
 already, one on each side of Miss Hawberk, who was 
 engaged with urn and teapot. Moppet was less intent 
 upon food, and had more time to wonder and scrutinize. 
 Her big mind was hungrier than her little body. 
 
 " Oh, what a lot of candles ! " she cried. " You must 
 be very rich, Mr. Old Gentleman." 
 
108 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 Eight tall candles in two heavy old silver candelabra 
 lighted the large round table, and on the dazzling white 
 cloth was spread such a feast as little children love — 
 cakes of many kinds, jams, and marmalade, buns, muffins, 
 and crisp biscuits fresh from the oven, scones both white 
 and brown, and the pale yellow clotted cream in the 
 preparation of which Cornwall pretends to surpass her 
 sister Devon, as in her cider and pery and smoked pig. 
 It is only natural that Cornwall in her stately seclusion 
 at the end of Western England should look down upon 
 Devonshire as sophisticated and almost cockney. Corn- 
 wall is to Devon as the real tScottish Highlands are to the 
 Trossachs. Besides the cakes and jams and cream-bowl, 
 there were flowers, Christmas roses, and real roses, yellow 
 ami red, such flowers as only grow in rich men's green- 
 houses, and there was a big silver urn in A\hich Laddie 
 and Lassie could see their faces, red and broad and 
 shining, as they squeezed themselves each against one of 
 Adela's elbows. 
 
 " Oh, Uncle Tom," exclaimed Lassie, in a rapturous 
 tone, " we shall never die here." 
 
The Cheistmas Hirelings. 109 
 
 " Not for want of food certainly, Lassie." 
 
 The cLildren had eaten nothing since a very early 
 dinner in Plymouth, and on being- pressed to eat by Miss 
 Hawberk and ]\[r. Danby, showed themselves frankly 
 greedy. Sir John did nothing but look on and wonder at 
 them. They showed him a new phase of humanity. Did 
 life beffin so soon ? Was the mind so fully awakened 
 while the body was still so tiny ? 
 
 " How old are you, Mistress Moppet ? " he asked, when 
 Moppet had finished her first slice of saffron cake. 
 
 " Four and a quarter." 
 
 Not five years old. She had lived in the world less 
 than five years. She talked of what she had thought and 
 believed when she was little ; and she seemed to know as 
 much about life as he did, at sixty-five. 
 
 " You are a wonderful little woman, not to be afraid of 
 going out visiting without your nurse ? " 
 
 " Nurse ? " echoed Moppet, staring at him with her 
 big grey eyes ; " what's a nurse ? " 
 
 " She doesn't know," exi)lained Laddie. " We never 
 had a nurse. It's a woman like Julie has to take care of 
 
110 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 her, Moi^pet," he explained condescendingly—" a honne 
 we call her. But we've never had a tonne" he added 
 with a superior air. 
 
 " Indeed," exclaimed Sir John ; " then pray who has 
 taken care of you, put you to bed at night, and washed 
 and dressed you of a morning, taken you out for walks, or 
 wheeled you in a perambulator ? " 
 
 "Mother," cried the boy. "Mother does all that^ 
 except for me. I dress myself. I take my own Imth. 
 Mother says I'm growing quite inde-in-de " 
 
 " Pendent," screamed Moppet across the table. " What 
 a silly boy you are ! You always forget the names of 
 things." 
 
 Moppet was getting excited. The small cheeks were 
 flushed and the big eyes were getting bigger, and Moppet 
 was inclined to gesticulate a good deal when she talked, 
 and to pat the tablecloth with two little hands to give 
 point to her speech. 
 
 " Moppet," said Mr. Danby, " the hot cakes are getting 
 into your head. I propose an adjournment to Bedford- 
 shire." 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. Ill 
 
 " No ! no ! NO ! Uncle Tom. We ain't to go yet, is 
 we ? " jileaded the child, snuggling close up to Sir John's 
 waistcoat, ^^ith the settled conviction that he was the 
 higher authority. The lapse in grammar was the 
 momentary result of excitement. In a general wav 
 Moppet's tenses and persons were as correct as if she had 
 been twenty. 
 
 " I think you ought to lie tired after your long journey," 
 said the baronet. 
 
 " But it wasn't a long journey. We had dinner lirst, 
 and in the morning we walked on the Hoe. Isn't that a 
 funny name for a place ? And we saw the sea, and Uncle 
 Tom told us of the " 
 
 "Spanish Arcadia," interrupted Laddie, who felt it 
 was his turn now, " and how Drake and the other captains 
 were playing bowls on the Hoe, just where' we were 
 standing that very minute, when the news of the Spanish 
 ships came and they went off to meet them ; and there 
 was a storm, and there was no fighting wanted, for the 
 storm smashed all tlie ships, and they went back to King 
 Philip without any masts, and Queen Elizabeth went on 
 
112 The Christjvias Hirelings. 
 
 horseback to Tilbury, and that was the end of the 
 Arcadia." 
 
 " For a historical synopsis I don't call that bad," said 
 Mr. Danby ; " nevertheless I recommend Bedfordshire if 
 our little friends have finished their tea." 
 
 " I have," said Lassie, with a contented yawn. 
 
 Moppet did not want to go to bed. She had eaten less 
 than the other two, but she had talked more, and had 
 slapped the table, and had made faces, while Lassie and 
 Laddie had been models of good manners. 
 
 " I wish you wouldn't call it Bedfordshire," she said, 
 shaking her head vindictively at Mr. Danby. " It makes 
 it worse to go to bed when people make jokes about it ! " 
 
 Mr. Danby came round to where she sat, and took her 
 up in his arms as if she had been a big doll instead of a 
 small child. 
 
 " Say good night to Sir John," he said. 
 
 Moj)pet stooped her face down to the baronet's, and 
 pursed up her red lips in the prettiest little kiss, which 
 was returned quite heartily. 
 
 " Take her away, Danby, she is much too excited, and 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 113 
 
 she is the funniest little thing- I ever saw. Good niglit, 
 my dears," he said to the others, as he ruse and walked 
 towards the door. " I hope you will spend a happy 
 Christmas at Place. Adela, be sure the little thino-s are 
 comfortable, and that Nurse Danby's instructions are 
 obeyed." 
 
 The children laughed at this rude mention of Mr, 
 Danby, and went off to bed repeating the phrase " Nurse 
 Danby " with much chucklinu; and aioo-lino-. 
 
 H 
 
114 
 
 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ELL, Jack," saidDanby, 
 when Miss Hawberk 
 
 bad left the dining- 
 room, and he and Sir 
 3:| John were alone, with their 
 U,^l chairs drawn up to the hearth, 
 their cigarettes lighted, and a 
 bottle of Chateau Lafitte on the 
 table between them, " Have 3^011 forgiven the children 
 for being so much smaller than you expected ? " 
 
 " I could forgive that youngest mite anything — smash- 
 ing the Portland vase, if I owned it. She is what your 
 friends over yonder " (with a nod westward) " would call 
 an amusing little cuss." 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 115 
 
 " She is a little lump of love," answered Danby.. " One 
 has to know that child well to know how much there is 
 in her." 
 
 " You are very weak about her evidently— very fond 
 of all three, no doubt ? " 
 
 " Yes, I am fond of them all. Lassie is going to grow 
 up a beauty. I shall be very proud of her twelve years 
 hence, if I live so long." 
 
 "You say they are not actually your nephew and 
 nieces ? " 
 
 " Not actually ! " 
 
 "But they are pretty nearly related to you, I 
 take it ? " 
 
 " They are as near to my heart as they can be ! " 
 
 " You are not very explicit." 
 
 " Why, no. Jack ; that isn't in the bond. It was 
 agreed that tlie children were to come and go, and you 
 were to know nothing about them, except that they were 
 decently brought uj^, and not likely to make themselves 
 obnoxious. They were to have no claim upon you. This 
 visit was not to be the thin end of the wedge." 
 
116 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 " You needn't echo me, Danby. I dare say I was 
 rather cantankerous the other day." 
 
 " No, no. Jack, you were open-handed and liberal, as 
 you always are ; but naturally you didn't want, by a 
 casual kindness, to establish a claim, or to give anybody's 
 poor relations the right to bother you. We'll stick to 
 the original notion, my dear friend. These chiklren are 
 hired to amuse you, and to give just the touch of homely 
 mirthfulness that suits the season. They will enjoy all 
 the good things your hospitality provides, and their 
 frank happiness will enliven this solitary old house, 
 and on the morning after Twelfth Night they will wish 
 you good-bye, and will be seen no more at Penlyon 
 Place." 
 
 " Manage it your own way," said Sir John, with a faint 
 sigh. 
 
 He was thinking of his daughter Lilian, his elder 
 daughter, who had never disobeyed him — whose marriage 
 had gratified his pride as a father. If she had lived 
 to be a mother how happy he would have been to see 
 the third generation growing up about him, to have 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 117 
 
 welcomed sturdy grandsons and blooming granddaughters 
 to the house of his forefathers, to have seen the line of 
 the Penlyons carried on towards the dim future, with the 
 promise of new honours and increasing wealth. 
 
 The bell rang at half-past eight for morning prayers, 
 a big bell in a cupola over the hall door. Sir John was 
 in his armchair near the hearth, with the large crimson- 
 bound prayer-book open on the table in front of him, 
 waiting for the assembling of the household. The bell 
 was still ringing when a scampering of little feet was 
 heard in the hall, the door was opened rather violently, 
 and Laddie and the two little girls came rushing in, their 
 eyes sparkling, their cheeks fresh and cold from the 
 morning air. 
 
 Moppet ran straight to Sir John, and lifted up her 
 rosebud mouth for a kiss, and was immediately taken 
 upon his knee. It seemed the only possible thing to do 
 with such a small creature, so round, so caressing, so 
 bright and fresh with sweet morning breezes and morning 
 sunshine. 
 
118 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 "What a veway nice garden yours is," said Moppet, 
 aj^provingly. 
 
 "You have seen the garden already, What an early 
 bird you are I " 
 
 " Yes, but I didn't catch any worms. I don't like 
 worms. They're veway ugly," said jMoppet, shaking her 
 head. '• I'm not afraid of them now, not even when 
 they're ever so big; but I — do— not — like — them." 
 
 She slapped her open palm upon Sir John's coat-sleeve 
 to give emphasis to this final statement : such a tiny, 
 tiny hand, but with so much character in all its move- 
 ments. Laddie and Lassie meanwhile were walking 
 slowly r(umd the breakfast-table, looking at the good 
 things upon it. The big Cornish ham and savoury pie, 
 and cold pheasants were on the sideboard ; but the large 
 round table was amply furnished with covered silver 
 dishes, in which the children admired themselves, and 
 crystal jars of jam, and bowls of clotted cream, just the 
 same as at last night's tea. 
 
 Laddie came to a full stop, gazing with wide open 
 eyes, and gave a long sigh of content. 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 119 
 
 " Poor mother ! " he said, almost in tears. 
 
 " What's the matter with mother ? " asked Moppet 
 from her perch on Sir John's knee. 
 
 " She never has breakfast like this." 
 
 " She has what she likes. Mother isn't greedy like 
 you. Cake doesn't make her happy, nor even jam," said 
 Moppet, with a philosophical air. "She has an egg 
 every morning. My fowl lays it for her, sometimes." 
 
 " So you keep fowls, Moppet ? " asked Sir John, 
 curiously interested in every detail of these small 
 lives. 
 
 " I keep a fowl — a hen ; cocks are ever so much 
 prettier, but they are fierce, and they won't lay eggs. 
 I have got a hen, and she has got one, and he has got 
 one," said Moppet, pointing to the brother and sister, 
 "and they all lay eggs for mother's breakfast, except 
 when they won't." 
 
 " Hush, my pet, I am going to read prayers." 
 
 " Ave you ? " said Moppet, looking at him with wonder- 
 ing eyes. " Why don't you say your prayers dreckly 
 you're dressed, like we do ? " 
 
120 The C-hristmas Hirelings. 
 
 " These are family prayers, for everybody." 
 
 " Oh," said Moppet, resignedly, with a very long face, 
 " like church, I s'pose." 
 
 Adela Hawberk and Mr. Danby came in one by one 
 during this conversation, and Adela now took Moppet, 
 as it were, into custody, while Danby looked after the 
 other two. The three children were seated solemnly, 
 with their little hands quietly folded, but their eyes 
 roaming about the room, when the servants came filing 
 in, and took their places near the door — the butler, 
 portly and pompous ; the valet, tall and slim, languidly 
 elegant ; the cook colossal ; the maids fresh-coloured and 
 prim, in cotton frocks and smart white caps; and Miss 
 Hawberk's woman, bringing up the rear, in a neat black 
 gown and a something of lace and ribbon, which was as 
 little like a caj) as she could make it. 
 
 Moppet, with her mouth 'wide open, counted these 
 good people in a loud whisper, and then, just as Sir John 
 opened his book, and began the preliminary scriptures, 
 turned to Miss Hawberk in irrepressible surprise, and 
 exclaimed aloud — 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 121 
 
 " Twelve servants ! Mother has only one ! " 
 
 She looked very sorry the next instant, when she heard 
 her little clear voice clash against Sir John's deep tones, 
 and till the very end of the family prayers she knelt or 
 sat as mute as a statue. 
 
 The prayers were not too long for any one's patience. 
 The servants filed out of the room as quietly as they 
 had entered, Miss Hawberk's Abigail departing with 
 an indolent grace, and with the door held open for her 
 by an admiring footman. Then came a delicious odour 
 of coffee ; and then the business of breakfast began in 
 earnest, and the children, who had been up at the first 
 glimpse of day, eager to find the toys in their stockings, 
 "mother's" little gifts among them, and who had been 
 dressed and running about since half-past seven, were 
 quite ready for the meal. Mr. Danby looked after them, 
 and took care tliat they had only the things that were 
 good for them, and those composed a somewliat Spartan 
 bill of fare. 
 
 Tlie Ijutler, who was on duty at the sideboard, carving, 
 approached Laddie as solemnly as if he were a grown-up 
 
122 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 person, and offered him a plate of pheasant and ham. 
 Laddie looked appealingly at Uncle Tom. 
 
 " Not to be thought of, Laddie ! You are going to 
 have a dinner fit for a Lord Mayor of London, and you 
 must save yourself for that. Bread and butter and an 
 egg for breakfast, and nothing more." 
 
 Moppet, who was breakfasting on a basin of bread and 
 milk, shook her head at her brother across the wide, 
 round table. 
 
 " You know. Laddie, we never have meat for breakfast," 
 she said, " and we don't always have it for dinner. Some- 
 times we have rice pudding, and sometimes we have 
 batter pudding," she explained to the company in 
 general ; " and then we don't want meat, you know. It's 
 better for us, and it's cheaper for mother." 
 
 She was as much at home in the dining-room at 
 Penlyon Place as if she had been in her own nursery. 
 She had dragged a chair close to Sir John's elbow, and 
 had placed herself at his side unbidden. Moppet had 
 a preference for the ruder sex, perhaps resulting from 
 her experience of her good friend Danby, who indulged 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 123 
 
 her more than anybody else in her small world. She 
 admired Adela, and she liked Adela's frock, and the 
 way her hair was done ; but she wanted to sit next 
 the nice old gentleman with the black eyebrows and 
 silver-grey hair, who had taken her on his knee and 
 talked to her in his big, deep voice. 
 
 The church was close to the gates of Penlyon Place, 
 and they all walked there together on this fine Christmas 
 morning. It was what people call a green Christmas, 
 tlie air soft and warm, the sky blue, and the sun shining 
 on the leafless branches of oak and beech and on the 
 green underwood. 
 
 " There ought to be snow at Christmas," said Lassie. 
 " It isn't like Christmas without snowballing." 
 
 The children behaved so discreetly in church that it 
 was clear that they were good little church people, and 
 that the service was familiar to them, though only 
 Laddie made any pretence at reading his Prayer-book, 
 and he always read in the wrong place. Never a word 
 spoke Moppet all through the long rustic service, though 
 her eyes and her sensitive lips were eloquent of many 
 
124 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 emotions — wonder at the monuments on the wall in front 
 of her, the knightly gentleman kneeling face to face with 
 his stately lady, and a diminishing line of six kneeling 
 boys behind him, and a diminishing line of six kneeling 
 girls behind her. 
 
 "Had they really six aj)iece?" Moppet asked Sir 
 John, as she trotted homeward by his side, her tiny hand 
 held firmly in his strong fingers. 
 
 " Six what — who ? " 
 
 " Had the gentleman with the frill round liis neck six 
 little boys? and had the lady with the frill round her 
 neck six little girls ? " 
 
 "Yes, Moppet, it's quite true, only they shared 
 them." 
 
 " Then why are the boys all on one side ? " 
 
 " I suppose it's a more orderly arrangement." 
 
 "Were they all dead — down to the very littlest boy 
 Avhen that thing was made ? " 
 
 " I hope not, for it would give me apoor opinion of 
 Cornwall as a health resort two hundred and fifty years 
 ago." 
 
The Christmas Hieelings. 125 
 
 " Was it as long ago as that when there were those 
 little boys ? " asked ^loj^pet. 
 
 "Longer. iS"eaiiy three hundred years I " 
 
 " Three hundred ! What a pity ! I should like to 
 have six little boys like those to play with ! " 
 
 " What would you do with them ? " 
 
 " Lots of things. We could play at Ijattles — one can't 
 make a battle with three. It isn't like it." 
 
 '• And it isn't a fair fight either. 3Ioppet.. two to 
 one." 
 
 " No, but Laddie thumps very hard. We have to push 
 him down and sit upon him ; and when he can't get up 
 we've won ! " explained Moppet, with a triumphant air. 
 
 Lassie had been walking ahead with xVdela, but she 
 came running back and placed herself on Sir John's 
 other side, pushing a very small hand, but not so tiny 
 as Moppet's, into his. 
 
 " I hope you like me a little bit, too," she said with 
 dignity. 
 
 " Of course I do, Lassie. I think you are a very nice 
 little sirl." 
 
126 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 "But you don't like me as well as you do her," 
 pointing to Moppet. 
 
 " Perhaps I know her best. She is such a forward 
 young lady, and she and I are quite old friends." 
 
 " Not really older than me and you," said Lassie. 
 
 " Is it naughty to be forward ? " Moppet asked gravely, 
 having considered the phrase. 
 
 "Not at four years old. You won't be able to jump 
 U23on an elderly gentleman's knee and put your arms 
 round his neck when you're four and twenty." 
 
 " I shall be too big ; and I shouldn't want to unless 
 I liked him as much as I like you. Little girls sit 
 on their father's knees, don't they ? " 
 
 " Sometimes." 
 
 " I mean good little girls. And that isn't being- 
 forward, is it ? " 
 
 "No, Moppet, no. Fathers are made to be sat 
 upon ! 
 
 " I wish you would be my father." 
 
 " Why, Moppet ? " 
 
 " Because I never had one. Never, never. It's 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 127 
 
 curious, isn't it? Other little girls say it's curious 
 when I tell them about it. Mother's a " — stopping with 
 a puzzled look — "the kind of person who has a dead 
 husband." 
 
 " A widow," suggested Sir John, startled at the turn of 
 speech. 
 
 "Yes, a widow. And I was born after he was dead. 
 It's so long ago that I don't remember, and mother was 
 very sorry then, awfully sorry, and she was so ill and so 
 sorry that she didn't care about me. She didn't even 
 know I was there. It was months and months before she 
 knew anything about me ; but, when she began to know, 
 she liked me very much, and that's why I'm her favourite 
 child," explained Moppet. 
 
 '•You mustn't talk about faA^ourites. A mother loves 
 all her children alike." 
 
 "That isn't true," said Moj)pet. "But you're not a 
 mother, and you don't know, so you didn't mean to 
 tell a story." 
 
 Sir John accepted this rebuke meekly, and as they 
 had now arrived at the hall door he informed his vounji- 
 
128 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 friend that he had some letters to write, and must part 
 company with her for an hour or two. 
 
 The little woman in red looked up at him with a 
 sorrowful face. She was an adhesive young person, and 
 she had taken a fancy to her host. 
 
 " Mayn't I come with you ? " she asked plaintively. 
 " I'll be very quiet. I sit with mother when she writes 
 her letters, and sometimes she lets me wipe the pen. 
 tShe has such a dear little penholder, like a tortoise-shell 
 cat, only it's not alive." 
 
 8ir John was polite but firm. He was charmed with 
 Moppet, but he preferred to write his letters without her 
 company. 
 
 " We shall meet at dinner," he said, stooping very low 
 to kiss the atom of a hand. 
 
 " And I shall sit next you ? " asked Moppet. 
 
 " On my right hand, as the guest of the evening." 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 129 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 FIE Christmas custom at Pen- 
 lyon Place was one which in 
 Sir John's mind reduced Christmas 
 Day to a penitential anniversary. 
 On Christmas Day the family 
 dinner was at five o'clock instead 
 of at eight, in order that the ser- 
 ;, vants might enjoy their evening. 
 " Their evening ! " echoed Sir 
 John, ruefully, when the matter was 
 put before him as a sacrifice which 
 the head of a respectable British 
 household was called upon to make. 
 "■ Their evening, forsooth ! As if 
 they had not three hundred and 
 sixty-five evenings in the year in 
 which to take their ease and be 
 merry from nine to eleven, but 
 
 I 
 
130 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 must needs throw our lives out of gear, and make our 
 evening wretched with the memory of a ridiculously early 
 dinner, while they are uproarious over snapdragon or forfeits 
 in the servants' hall. The whole thing is an absurdity." 
 
 Absurd as it was, Sir John had been coaxed into sub- 
 mission ; and now on this particular Christmas Day he was 
 quite resigned to the five-o'clock dinner, and was amused 
 at the delight of the little hirelings, who clapped their 
 hands and jumped and chirjied like three grasshoppers. 
 
 " We're all going to have late dinner ! " they cried, in 
 a chorus of small silvery voices. 
 
 " You poor things ! " exclaimed 3Iiss Hawberk, " Do 
 you never have late dinner at home, not even on 
 Christmas Day ? " 
 
 " Never," answered the boy. " There isn't any late 
 dinner. Mother dines with us very early, and then in 
 the evening, when the candles are lit, we all have tea, 
 mother and all of us, and jam sandwiches, and then I sit 
 by the fire and learn my spelling while mother puts 
 Lassie and jMoppet to bed." 
 
 "He stops up last because he's the oldest," explained 
 
The Chkistmas Hirelings. 131 
 
 Moppet, who always addressed her small speeches to Sir 
 John, "and we don't learn no spelling because we're too 
 young. But I know most of Laddie's words," she added 
 with sly triiunph. " I^addie is very slow, and I'm rather 
 quick." 
 
 " Too quick. Moppet," said Mr. Danby, lifting the tiny 
 creature in his arms, and looking at her with a touch of 
 melancholy. "If my watch were to go as fast as that 
 small brain of yours I should be afraid the works would 
 wear out." 
 
 The children went for a walk on the cliffs with Miss 
 Hawberk and the gentleman whom they called Uncle 
 T(uu, and while they were strolling in the grey softness 
 of a green Christmas, watching silvery sea-gulls wheeling 
 and chattering in the soft grey sky, or congregating on 
 a ledo-e of rocks, and the black shags diving for fish, Sir 
 John came across the hillocky turf and joined them. 
 
 " Have you written all your letters ? " asked jMoppet, 
 severely. 
 
 " x\.s many as I cared to write, little one. The mild 
 afternoon tempted me to a stroll." 
 
132 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 Moppet waited for no permission, but at once possessed 
 herself of Sir John's forefinger, and held on to his thick 
 doeskin glove with a firm little grip. He could but 
 wonder that such tiny fingers could hold him so tight. 
 
 " And \^ hat does Moppet think of the sea ? " he asked. 
 
 " I like your sea better than our sea at home. There 
 are such big, big, big rocks, and such a lot of black 
 birds, and such a lot of white and grey birds. Uncle 
 Tom showed us a rock just now that was all covered with 
 birds. You couldn't see the rocks for the birds. And 
 then he threw a stone and they all flew off screaming, 
 screaming like human persons. It Avas so funny ! " 
 
 " Then it seems you live by the sea when you are at 
 home. Moppet ? " 
 
 " Always — 'cept Avhen it's the season, and then mother 
 lets her house to an English family, and we go to a farm 
 where there are calves, and pigs, and ducks and chickens, 
 and where we all wear wooden shoes and run about in the 
 mud. It's lovely." 
 
 " So, Moppet, you are only half an English girl. You 
 live on the other side of the Channel ? " said Sir John. 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 133 
 
 " I don't know what you mean by the Channel. We 
 live in F'ance, but we're not F'ench." The letter r 
 represented difficulties not always surmounted even in 
 Moppet's exceptionally distinct speech. " Mother's 
 English, and father's English, and we're English." 
 
 " Your father was English," corrected Sir John. " You 
 told me your father was dead." 
 
 " Ah, but we never say ivas about father. Mother 
 likes us to think that he's always with us, though we 
 can't see him. His spirit is there, you know, and he is 
 glad when we are good, and he is very, very sorry when 
 we are naughty — most of all a^ hen we are unkind to each 
 other. Laddie didn't think of that the day he gave me 
 the bad slap," continued Moppet, as if she were speaking 
 of an event in history, like the Indian Mutiny, " or he 
 wouldn't have done it ; but he thought of it afterwards, 
 and he was awfully sorry for having grieved father." 
 
 " How is it you don't all talk French, Moppet, since 
 you live in France ? " 
 
 " Because we always live with mother, and she talks 
 English with us. She doesn't want us to learn French 
 
134 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 from servants and common people ; so we only know the 
 useful words — things you know — food and clothes and 
 such things, and how to ask our way, or to tell people 
 where we live, if ever we should be lost. And we pick 
 up words sometimes. We can't help learning words on 
 the sands when we hear the little French children who 
 are playing there, though mother won't let us play 
 with them. And mother is going to teach us French 
 grammar by-and-by, when we are old enough to learn 
 properly. But I," concluded Moppet, putting on a 
 consequential air, " am not to learn anything for ever 
 so long." 
 
 " What a privileged little person ! But why not, 
 pray ? 
 
 " Because I'm much too clever, Mr. Minchin said. 
 I'm greatly in advance of my age. If I were forced or 
 worried about lessons I might have water on the brain ! " 
 
 Nothing could have surpassed Moppet's grand air as 
 she mentioned this jjossibility. 
 
 " Mr. Minchin is your doctor, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Yes ; he's a hoppafist." 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 135 
 
 " I thought so," growled Sir John. " Xobody but a 
 foul would have talked in that way before a dear little 
 girl." 
 
 " No, he isn't a fool really," replied 3Ioppet, with her 
 most grown-up air. '• He didn't know I could hear him. 
 I was playing in the garden, and the parlour window Mas 
 open, and I took my little chair under the window and 
 sat there quietly and listened." 
 " That was not right. Moppet." 
 
 " So mother said when I told her. But why shouldn't 
 I listen ? It was all about me." 
 
 " Perhaps ; but you weren't meant to hear it." 
 •• I hate secrets — about me. I don't like doctors that 
 whisper in corners about medicines, and next morning 
 mother comes with a dose of something horrid, because 
 of what the doctor said yesterday when I was playing 
 with mv doll. I call that mean of a doctor. But 3Ir. 
 Minchin isn't like the horrid doctors. He only gives us 
 globules or tablaws. Can you swallow tablaws without 
 tasting them ? " 
 
 '' I suppose you mean tabloids. No, Moppet, I have 
 
136 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 never tried them. The doctor hasn't attacked the gout- 
 tiend with anything so mild. Homoeopathy has never 
 tempered the wind for this shorn lamb." 
 
 Dinner at Penlyon Place on that particular Christmas 
 Day was a grand function. The cook had surpassed 
 herself in the preparation of plum pudding, mince pies, 
 creams, jellies, and junket, stimulated to effort by the 
 thought of the children. What was the use of making 
 tarts or jellies for 8ir John's table, when the master of 
 the house rarely touched anything of that kind, hardly 
 looked at the best trifle or tipsy cake that could be 
 offered to him ; but there was some pleasure in cooking- 
 nice things for children, even if the children were to 
 make themselves ill by eating too much or by mixing 
 their jjuddings. Christmas came only once in the year ; 
 and no restraining consideration of health or the doctor 
 should be allowed to spoil such a joyful season. 
 
 80 the creams and jellies and junket were placed upon 
 the dinner-table, as if it had been a ball supper, in order 
 that the children should see them ; and loud and joyous 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 137 
 
 were the childish exclamations at the appearance of the 
 feast, at the clusters of tall candles in the old silver 
 candelabra, the old-fashioiaed epergne with its crystal 
 dishes of bon-bons and sparkling fruits, crowned with a 
 large basket-shaped dish of great j)^u'ple grapes ; the 
 flowers, the dazzling white damask, and diamond cut 
 glass. There was nothing new or modish from Venice or 
 Bohemia, no Liberty silk or fantastic ornamentation. tSir 
 John Penlyon's dinner-table was not in the movement. 
 Indeed, it was arranged very much as it had been for his 
 grandfather when the centiu'y was young. 
 
 " I never saw late dinner before," said Moppet ; and 
 then with a sigh of contentment, she exclaimed, " It's very 
 beautiful ! " 
 
 The children were dressed for dinner, and there was 
 nothing shabbily genteel or tawdrily fine in their raiment. 
 Laddie wore a neat little black velvet suit, and the two 
 little gh'ls were in white cashmere frocks, which made 
 them look more like dolls than ever. 
 
 The crowning glory of the feast was the pudding. The 
 room was darkened in the old-fashioned wav, and the 
 
138 The Christma.s Hirelings. 
 
 great plum pudding was brought in surrounded with 
 flames, and all the company looked like ghosts in the 
 blue unearthly light, a ceremony repeated all over the 
 land on that day in houses where there were children — 
 rather boring for the grown-ups, but such a rapturous 
 experience for the children, especially for the smallest 
 child, who is just a little frightened perhaps at the 
 entrance of the demon pudding, and hysterical with 
 delight when the first shock is over. 
 
 This pudding was saluted with a tremendous clapping 
 of tiny hands, which sounded like the applause of an 
 audience of fairies. The whole business was rapture, 
 most of all when it was discovered that there were some 
 new sixpences in the })udding. The excitement increased 
 to fever-heat when Mr. Danby found a sixpence in his 
 portion, and exhibited an amount oi pleasure which 
 indicated an avaricious disposition, and quite shocked 
 Moppet. 
 
 "I suppose you'll give me your sixpence," she said, 
 stretching out a tiny palm in his direction ; " you can't 
 want it yourself." 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 139 
 
 " Can't I ? " ejaculated Mr. Danby. " I do want it 
 very niueli. Sixpence is sixpence all the world over." 
 
 THE PCDDING WA6 >ALITLD WITU A TKEMENDUU:^ CLArPlNG Of TINT HANDS. 
 
 "But a man of your age can't want sixpence," with 
 urave remonstrance. 
 
140 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 " Can't he ? Why, there are lots of things that six- 
 pence will buy for a man of my age. A cigar, for instance." 
 
 " But you can't want that sixpence. You have always 
 lots of money. I've seen you take out shillings — a 
 handful of shillings — from your waistcoat pocket when 
 you were paying for our brioches at the pastrycook's, 
 or buying us toys in the Grande Kue. You can't want 
 that sixpence." 
 
 "Not to spend. Moppet. I shall keep it for luck. 
 I shall bore a hole in it and wear it next my heart 
 in memory of a Christmas dinner with you— your first 
 late dinner." 
 
 "I'm glad of that," said Moppet, greatly relieved. 
 " I was afraid you were a miser after all." 
 
 Laddie and Lassie greeted this speech with uproarious 
 laughter. 
 
 "A miser! Uncle Tom a miser! Why, you know 
 he is always bringing us things. Mother has to be 
 quite cross sometimes to prevent him spending too much 
 money upon us," said Laddie. 
 
 "Uncle Tom gave us our silk stockings," explained 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 141 
 
 Lassie. "They're real silk; not spun silk, like most 
 little girls have. They came in a letter from Wears 
 and Swells. AVasn't that a funny letter? Mother 
 told Uncle Tom he was dreadfully extravagant ; but 
 he only laughed. He is not the least little bit of a 
 miser ; not nearly such a miser as Moppet, who puts 
 all her half-francs into a money-box that won't open, 
 and then asks mother for sous to spend." 
 
 There was more than one sixpence in the pudding. 
 Each of the children discovered a glittering new coin, 
 and in Moppet's portion there were two sixpences. The 
 stout and serious butler helping the pudding on the 
 carving-table by the light of a single candle was 
 suspected of treasonable practices. 
 
 If the pudding with its halo of blue flame were a 
 glorious thing, how much more glorious was the 
 Christmas-tree in the great Tudor hall, the Christmas- 
 tree with innumerable tapers that were reflected in the 
 brig-ht armour of those dead and gone warriors whose 
 prowess had helped to win victory at Agincourt, or whose 
 
U2 
 
 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 vStrengtli had prolonged the bitter struggle at home in 
 the Wars of the Eoses. Miss Hawberk had sent round 
 some little notes of invitation, swift and sudden as the 
 fierv cross, and had assembled all the little ladies and 
 
 THE OLD BDTLER WAS SUSPECTED OF TREASONABLE PRACTICES. 
 
 gentlemen of the neighbourhood, the pretty fair-haired 
 girls from the Eectory, and the children of the only two 
 gentlefolk's families within an easy driye of Penlyon 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 143 
 
 Place, and Mr. Nicholls, the old bachelor doctor, had 
 also been invited ; perhaps in order to throw in a 
 warning word occasionally when the revellers seemed 
 inclined to over-eat themselves. All the little girls 
 had long hair, combed and brushed and crinkled to 
 perfection ; and they looked rather suspiciously at Lassie 
 and Moppet's round-cropped heads, as little Africans with 
 their hair caked in clay might look at the children of 
 another tribe who wore no clay. 
 
 " Have you and her had a fever ? " one little girl inquired 
 of Moppet, pointing at Lassie as she asked the question. 
 
 '• No ! " 
 
 •■•' Then why was your hair cut su short ? " 
 
 " That's the F'euch way," explained Moppet, gravely. 
 " We are not F'ench, but we live in F'ance, and mother 
 likes our hair cut in the F'ench way." 
 
 " Oh," sighed the long-haired child, relieved in mind. 
 " It's very ugly. Gracie had her hair like that once, but 
 then she'd had a fever. Your muther must be a funny 
 woman." 
 
 " No she ain't, " cried 3[oppet, tiring instantly. " She 
 
144 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 ain't half so funny as your mother." Moppet pointed to 
 a stout lady in black velvet and a Koman sash — a stout 
 lady with a rubicund face. " I shouldn't like my mother 
 to be as fat as yours, or as red," said Moppet, and with 
 this parting shot marched off and left the long-haired 
 beautifully brushed and crinkled little girl inanely 
 staring, shocked, but far too stupid to retort, hereditary 
 fleshiness muffling her intellectual faculties. 
 
 Sir John Penlyon had just seated himself on the great 
 oaken settle in the chimney corner, after somewhat 
 languidly performing his duty as host. Moppet walked 
 straight to him, clambered on his knee, and nestled her 
 head in his waistcoat, gazing up at him with very much 
 the same dumb devotion he had seen in the topaz eyes 
 of a favourite Clumber spaniel. 
 
 " Why, Moppet, are you tired of your new little 
 friends ? " he asked kindly. 
 
 " I don't like children. They are so silly," answered 
 Moppet, with decision. " I like you much better." 
 
 " Do you really, now ? I wonder how much you like 
 me. As well as you like junket ? " 
 
"l SUOCLDN't LIKC MV MUIlIEli TU liL AS FAT AS YOUUS, Oil AS RED." 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 147 
 
 " Oh, what a silly question ! As if one could care for 
 any nice thing to eat as well as one cares for a live 
 person ? " 
 
 " Couldn't one ? I believe there are little boys in 
 Boscastle who are fonder of plum pudding than of all 
 their relations." 
 
 " They must be horrid little boys. Laddie is greedy ; 
 but he is not so greedy as that. I shouldn't like to live 
 in the same house with him if he were." 
 
 " For fear he should turn cannibal and eat ijou ? " 
 
 " What is a camomile, and does it really eat people ? " 
 
 " Never mind, Moppet ; there are none in our part of 
 the world," said Sir John, hastily, feeling that he had 
 made a faux pas, and might set Moppet dreaming of 
 cannibals if he explained their nature and attributes. 
 
 He had been warned by his friend Danby that Moppet 
 was given to dreaming at night of anything that had 
 moved her wonder or her fear in the day, and that she 
 would awaken from such dreams in a cold perspiration, 
 with wild eyes and clenched hands. Her sleep had been 
 haunted by goblins, and made hideous by men who had 
 
148 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 sold their shadows, and by wolves who were hungry for 
 little girls in red cdoaks. It had been found perilous to 
 tell her the old familiar fairy tales which most children 
 have been told, and from which many children have 
 suffered in the dim early years, before the restrictions of 
 space and climate are understood, and wolves, bears, and 
 lions located in their own peculiar latitudes. 
 
 Sir John looked down at the little dark head which 
 was pressed so lovingly against his waistcoat, and at the 
 long dark lashes that veiled the deep-set eyes. 
 
 " And so you really like me ? " said he. 
 
 " I reallv love you. Not so much as I love mother, 
 but veway, veway much." 
 
 " As much as Danby — as Uncle Tom ? " 
 
 " Better than Uncle Tom ; but please don't tell him 
 so. It might make him unhappy." 
 
 " I dare say it would. Uncle Tom has a jealous dis- 
 position. He might shut you up in a brazen tower." 
 
 Another faux pas. Moppet would be dreaming of 
 brazen towers. Imagination, assisted by plum pudding, 
 would run readily into tormenting visions. 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 149 
 
 Happily Moppet made no remark upon the tower. 
 She was thinking — thinking deeply — and presently she 
 looked up at Sir John with grave, grey eyes, and 
 said — 
 
 " I believe I love you better than Uncle Tom, because 
 you are a grander gentleman," she said musingly, " and 
 because you have this beautiful big house. It is yours, 
 isn't it — your veway, veway own ? " 
 
 'Oly very, very own. And so you like my house. 
 Moppet ? And will you be sorry to go away ? " 
 
 " Oh no, because I shall be going to mother." 
 
 " Then you like your own home better than this big 
 house ? " 
 
 " No, I don't. I should l^e very silly if I did. Home 
 is a funny little house, in a funny little sloping garden 
 on the side of a hill. Uncle Tom says it is very healthy. 
 There is a tiny salon, and a tiny dining-room, and a dear 
 little kitchen, where the bonne a tout /aire lives, and four 
 tiny bedrooms. It was a fisherman's cottage once, and 
 then an English lady — an old lady — bought it, and made 
 new rooms, and had it all made pretty, and then she 
 
150 The Cheistmas Hireijngs. 
 
 died ; and then Uncle Tom happened to see it, and took 
 it for mother." 
 
 *' And was my little Moppet born there ? " 
 
 " No, I was born a long, long way off — up in the hills." 
 
 "What hills?" 
 
 " The north-west provinces. It's an awful long way 
 off — but I can't tell you anything about it," added 
 Moppet, with a solemn shake of her cropped head, " for 
 I was born before I can remember. Laddie says we all 
 came over the sea — but we mustn't talk to mother about 
 that time, and Laddie's very stuj)id — he may have told 
 me all wrong." 
 
 "And doesn't Lassie remember coming home in the 
 ship?" 
 
 " She remembers a gentleman who gave her goodies." 
 
 '• But not the ship ? " 
 
 " No, not the ship ; but she thinks there must have 
 been a ship, for the wind blew very hard, and the 
 gentleman went up and down as if he was in a swing. 
 Laddie pretends to remember all the sailors' names, but 
 I don't think he really can." 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 151 
 
 " And the only house yon can remember is the house 
 on the hill ? " 
 
 " T\Tiere mother is now — yes, that's the only one. and 
 I'm very fond of it. Are you fond of this house ? " 
 
 " Yes, Moppet ; one is always fond of the house in 
 which one was born. I was born here." 
 
 Moppet looked up at him wonderingly. 
 
 "Is that yery surprising ? " he asked, smiling down at her. 
 
 " It seems rather surprising you should ever have been 
 born," replied Moppet, frankly ; " you are so veicay old." 
 
 " Yes, but one has to begin, you see, Moppet." 
 
 '' It must have been a twemendously long time ago 
 when you and Uncle Tom began." 
 
 The explosion of a cracker startled Moppet from the 
 meditative mood. It was the signal for the rifling of the 
 tree. The crackers — the gold and silver and sapphire 
 and ruby and emerald crackers — were being distributed, 
 and were exploding in every direction before Moppet 
 could run to the tree and hold up two tiny hands, crying 
 excitedly, " ^Me, me, me ! " 
 
 It had been settled that the tree was not to be touched 
 
152 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 till the visitors had finished their tea. The house-party, 
 represented by Laddie and Lassie, had been fuming and 
 fretting at the slowness with which cakes and buns were 
 consumed ; but now Uncle Tom, robed in a long maroon- 
 velyet dressing-gown of Sir John's, with a black velvet 
 cap on his head, to represent a necromancer, had given 
 the signal, and was scattering crackers among the eager 
 hands of dancing, leaping children, all crying, " Me, me ! " 
 
 Mr. Danby had taken a good deal of trouble to 
 disguise himself. He had made himself a long beard of 
 white horsehair — a beard which would have done for old 
 Father Time himself — and which reached from Mr. 
 Danby's ears to his waist. But the children hardly 
 looked at him and expressed no astonishment at his 
 appearance. All they cared for was to get the crackers 
 and the toys. 
 
 " Me, me ! Another cracker, please. Please, please 
 give me one ! " That was the cry, varied by smaller 
 voices saying, " Dive me a doll," " Dive me that pretty 
 fing up dere ! " jjointing to a glittering gilt watch, or to 
 a fairy in star-spangled skirt. 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 153 
 
 But the toys on tlie tree were little dainty things 
 more for ornament than use. The real toys were in a 
 great washing basket which two men brought into the 
 hall, staggering under it. 
 
 There were toys enough for everybody ; and Mr. 
 Danby distributed them with admirable judgment. He 
 had even a packet for Miss Hawberk, tied with blue 
 ribbon, out of which rolled a pair of long gloves such as 
 young ladies love. Adela screamed at sight of the 
 gloves, just as the children screamed at their railway 
 engines and stone bricks. 
 
 When every child had received the most appropriate 
 toy possible and general contentment prevailed, the 
 basket was not even half empty. Laddie peered into 
 its depths curiously, hugging his clockwork steam-engine 
 under his arm — a green engine modelled upon those on 
 the South-Western Eailway, which are said to be the 
 finest in England. 
 
 " There are lots more toys," he said to Mr. Danby, with 
 that shrewd insinuating look which marks childish greed. 
 " Are we ffoino; to have those ? " 
 
154 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 " No, Laddie. You have had your share. Those are 
 for other chiklren." 
 
 "What children?" 
 
 " You'll see, Laddie, all in good time." 
 
 Laddie thought the only good time would be a time 
 which would give him a share in those unopened 
 parcels. 
 
 For Moppet the necromancer had a doll — a lovely fair- 
 haired doll, with staring blue eyes which occupied about 
 a third of her face. Nature has endowed the expensive 
 doll with these enormous eyes. To Moppet's lively 
 imagination the doll, from the moment it was deposited 
 in her arms, became a personage. 
 
 " My darling, you must have a name ! " she murmured 
 tenderly. " I shall call you Mary, after me." 
 
 She ran to Sir John with her treasure. 
 
 " Isn't she lovely ? " she asked ; and then, without 
 waiting to be answered, " Her name is Mary." 
 
 His wife's name ! He started ever so slightly at the 
 sound ; so familiar long ago, so strange to-day. 
 " Why Mary ? " 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 155 
 
 " She is called after me. I am her godmother. I shall 
 have to teach her the catechism — the catechism that 
 Laddie has to learn." 
 
 " And so you have an alias. I thought your name was 
 Moppet," said Sir John, as she seated her doll on his 
 knee and stood leaning against him, touching and 
 examining that divine piece of waxwork, its lace petti- 
 coats, its blue silk shoes and open-work socks — a very 
 paragon of dolls. 
 
 " Yon knew my real name wasn't Moppet," she said. 
 " iNTobody was ever christened Moppet ! It's only one of 
 mother's nonsense names, like Laddie and Lassie." 
 
 " Oh, then you all have bettermost names for high days 
 and holidays. Pray, what is Laddie's name ? " 
 
 " The same as yours." 
 
 '• Oh, he is John, is he ? " 
 
 " Yes, John — but not Sir John. He is not a bawonight," 
 making a great deal of the strange word which the 
 servants had taught her, as an attribute of the grave 
 elderly gentleman to whom she had taken so kindly. 
 " Will he be a bawonight when he grows up ? " 
 
156 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 " That's his own look-out. I take it he will have to 
 win his baronetcy." 
 
 " Win it ? At cards ? " 
 
 " Why, what does my little Moppet know about cards ? " 
 
 " Lots. We play at spekilation with Uncle Tom, for 
 nuts, and vingt-et-un, and he says that's almost as good 
 as bac-bac-bac-ca-ra ! " She stumbled over the word, but 
 finished it triumphantly. 
 
 " I am afraid Uncle Tom is a dangerous person to be 
 with children." 
 
 "He is. Mother says so. He takes us down to the 
 flage and gives us donkey rides, and I once fell off" — 
 this with an air — "and grazed my elbow. The blood 
 came through the sleeve of my over-all. Lassie has 
 never fallen off a donkey. Laddie has. They generally 
 lie down with him. He kicks them too much. They will 
 bear a good deal of kicking because their skins are so 
 thick, but Laddie overdoes it. He is not a nice boy — 
 not always," Moppet concluded musingly. 
 
 She liked standing quietly at Sir John's knee with her 
 doll, though the other children were playing Post in a 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 157 
 
 noisy circle round Mr. Danby and Adela on the other 
 side of the hall. The many-colonred tapers on the 
 Christmas-tree were all extinguished but not burnt out, 
 only half-burnt, and the tree was still covered with 
 golden balls, and tiny oranges, and glittering green and 
 ruby fish, and fairy dolls nodding and trembling in 
 space. 
 
 " Wouldn't you like to go and play with the children 
 over there, 3Ioppet ? They seem to be having a spirited 
 game." 
 
 , " I don't care for games. I like to be here with you 
 and Mary. You don't mind me here, do you ? " 
 
 "Xo, my dear. I think I can put up with you till 
 your bedtime." 
 
 That word bedtime is always a damper to juvenile 
 spirits. In all those early years of life the idea of bed is 
 pretty much what the idea of Portland or Dartmoor is to 
 the criminal classes. Children hear their elders talk of 
 wanting to go to bed, and wonder at such a perverted 
 taste. There is always a sense of humiliation in that 
 premature banishment. The grown-ups sit smiling and 
 
158 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 talking — bid goodnight condescendingly in a parenthesis 
 — and one feels that their evening is only just beginning. 
 The elder sisters step into a carriage perhaps, and are 
 whisked off to the opera or play-house, while strong- 
 armed Nurse conducts the little ones to their nursery 
 cots — to jjremature night and darkness that seem endless. 
 It is a cruel inequality of fortune. 
 
 " Isn't it a lovely tree ? " Moppet inquired presently, 
 her eyes wandering to that fairy-like conifer in the 
 middle of the hall, with horizontal branches rising tier 
 above tier, laden with things of beauty. 
 
 " Yes, it is a fine specimen of the arbor toyensis." 
 
 "There's only one thing that makes me sorry about it," 
 said Moppet, Avith a sigh. 
 
 " And what may that be ? " 
 
 " Everybody hasn't got a tree." 
 
 "Ah, you are a little socialist. You would like all 
 children to have just as good a Christmas as you are 
 having." 
 
 " Why shouldn't they ? They're just as good as me, 
 ain't they ? " 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 159 
 
 "I suppose they are, Moppet; only you happen to 
 be here and they are somewhere else. But don't be 
 down-hearted, my pet ; there are a great many Christmas- 
 trees blooming with toys and golden flowers to-night, and 
 thousands of children dancing round them, just as happy 
 as you and Lassie and Laddie." 
 
 " Are there more children who have a Christmas- 
 tree than the children who haven't a Christmas-tree ? " 
 asked Moppet, after a pause, with the child's love of 
 statistics. 
 
 " No, I'm afraid there are more of the treeless children 
 than of the fortunate ones." 
 
 " Isn't that a pity ? If it was only the naughty 
 children who had to go without toys it wouldn't matter," 
 argued Moppet, severely ; " but I dare say there are 
 naughty boys and girls getting toys and crackers, while 
 there are poor good children without so much as a penny 
 toy, only because their mothers haven't any money. Our 
 mother isn't rich, but we've had a Christmas-tree ever 
 since I can remember — quite two Christmases. It was 
 only a little tree ; but such a pretty little tree. Uncle 
 
160 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 Tom sent us all tlie toys and ornaments and little coloured 
 candles in a big wooden box ; and we all helped mother 
 to dress the tree. It was more fun than not knowing 
 anything about it, and standing outside the door in the 
 dark, and then coming in and being surprised. Our fun 
 lasted ever so much longer, and we were surprised after 
 all when we saw the tree with the candles all lighted. It 
 wasn't a bit like the same tree." 
 
 " And you wouldn't have known the dolls if you had 
 met them in the street ? " said Sir John, smiling at her 
 grave earnestness. 
 
 Bedtime, the inexorable summons, put an end to the 
 conversation. The fair-haired Rectory girls and the other 
 little people Avere bidding good night, and the girls were 
 being muffled in pink and blue hoods and cloaks, while 
 the boys struggled manfully with the sleeves of their 
 warm overcoats. 
 
 A cold wind blew in from the vestibule when the 
 outer door was opened — a nipping, frosty wind. 
 
 " There's a change in the weather," said Mr. Danby. 
 " They've had snow at Brighton and at Portsmouth. I 
 
The Cheistmas Hikelings. 161 
 
 shouldn't wonder if our green Christmas were to change 
 to a white one." 
 
 " Oh, how nice that woukl be ! " cried Laddie, clapping 
 his hands. 
 
 " Woukl you like to be snowed-up at Penlyon Place ? 
 Well, we don't often get snow in Cornwall, but perhaps 
 we may be able to oblige you," said Sir .John, gaily. 
 
162 
 
 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 WHEN Moppet 
 looked out of win- 
 dow next morning 
 she looked at a 
 white world — a 
 world of fairy-like 
 trees, whose inter- 
 woven branches 
 made a brilliant 
 lace - work that 
 sparkled in the 
 Sim. A north-east 
 wind was blowing 
 under a blue, cloudless sky. It must have been snowing 
 
 ^'^-C^^ 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 163 
 
 for a long time to cover the jmrk and gardens with 
 that thick white carpet; but the morning was bright 
 and sunny, and 3Ioppet thought the change delightful. 
 
 Pleasant news greeted her at breakfast. First a little 
 present from mother, a soft Shetland shawl, knitted 
 by mother's own fingers, and snowy -white like the outside 
 world— a shawl to wrap Moppet's head and shoulders 
 when she ran out into the garden. liassie had one 
 exactly like it, and Laddie had a big, thick white scarf. 
 They had come in a post-parcel to Mr. Danby. 
 
 " Did mother know it was going to be cold ? " wondered 
 Lassie. 
 
 "Mother's thoughts always go before things," said 
 Moppet, gravely. 
 
 The next pleasantness was the ne^^■s of a party, another 
 children's party, which had been planned by Mr. Danby 
 and Miss Hawberk, and which Avas submitted to Sir .John 
 for approval. 
 
 Would he object to their giving the cottage children 
 a tea-party in the schoolhouse that evening, with the 
 reversion of the Christmas-tree as the feature of the 
 
164 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 entertainment? They had plenty of toys left for dis- 
 tribution, plenty of Tom Smith crackers. 
 
 " Dear Tom Smith ! " sighed Moppet. " What a nice 
 man he must be! You don't object, do you?" she 
 asked Sir John, squeezing her chair, with a high cushion 
 upon it to bring her up to table level, a little closer 
 to his own. " You'd like the cottage children to have 
 some fun ? They all looked so nice at church yesterday, 
 in their pretty red cloaks." 
 
 " Sir John gave them those red cloaks," observed Miss 
 Hawberk. 
 
 " How good of you ! But you don't object, do you ? 
 They are such tidy children. I'm sure they'll be careful 
 of their toys." 
 
 Moppet had her doll on her lap, wedged in between 
 her pinafore and the table, and supposed to be consuming 
 occasional spoonfuls of bread and milk. 
 
 Sir John did not object. They could have a tea-party 
 tor all the children in Cornwall if they liked, if they 
 could get the pixies to bring them. 
 
 " What are the pixies ? " 
 
Thp: Christmas Hirelings. 165 
 
 Moppet had to be told about the pixies before she 
 would peacefully finish her bread and milk. She rattled 
 her spoon against the basin in her excitement, and the 
 dark grey eyes seemed to grow larger as she listened. 
 
 There were occasional snow showers in the day, just 
 enough to maintain the freshness of that vast white 
 carpet which had been unrolled over the park. The 
 north-east wind blew with a biting sharpness which it 
 rarely knows on that western coast, and swept every 
 cloudlet out of the bright blue sky. The children wore 
 their warmest wraps when they ran out on the terrace, 
 which the gardeners had swept from end to end, piling 
 up a bank of snow on the outer side, all the length 
 of the broad walk, a store of material for the building 
 of a snow man which Mr. Danby assisted them to pile 
 up at the further end of the walk, out of sight of the 
 windows, lest he should be an eyesore. 
 
 This rugged and shapeless monster was not completed 
 till the children's early dinner, though they toiled 
 vigorously, digging out lumps of snow from the bank, 
 
166 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 running backwards and forwards, flushed and eager, 
 fetching and carrying for that accomplished sculptor, 
 Uncle Tom, who desisted not from his labours till the 
 monster towered like Milton's Lucifer, but with no more 
 shape or likeness of humanity than a pillar post-box. 
 The likeness was achieved presently by an old cloth cap 
 of Uncle Tom's, a short pij)e, two bits of coal for eyes, 
 and two bits of stick for nose and mouth. 
 
 " I think he'll do now," said the sculjjtor, complacently. 
 
 " He's rather crooked," criticized Laddie, while the 
 little girls stood, flushed and panting, with no feeling but 
 admiration for this great work of art. 
 
 " Don't say that, Laddie," cried the sculptor. " Crooked- 
 ness means destruction. A snow man must hold himself 
 straight or he is doomed. You'd better bring me some 
 more snow." 
 
 They ruslied off with their spades and wooden baskets 
 — spades and baskets that had been used on the beach 
 by a former generation, and which had been produced 
 from an old toy closet by Sarah, the housemaid. They 
 brought more snow, and Uncle Tom thickened the base 
 
•»SP<«- 
 
 THE THAW — DEATH OF THE SNUW 31AN. 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 169 
 
 of the monster till he looked like a Druidic monument, 
 and then they left him to his fate. 
 
 " He'll last now till the thaw," said Uncle Tom. 
 
 " Will the thaw spoil him ? " 
 
 " Yes, when the thaw comes he will silently vanish 
 away, like the Snark. There will be nothing left of him 
 but a great puddle at that end of the terrace." 
 
 Uncle Tom sent the children off to get their shoes 
 and stockings changed before dinner. He was like a 
 nurse in his care of them. 
 
 8ir John was out shooting, tramping through snowy 
 plantations, and the luncheon-dinner was a very noisy 
 meal. Mr. Danby and Miss Hawberk let the children do 
 as they liked. It was Bank Holiday, and that meant 
 liberty for great and small, Mr. Danby said. There never 
 was a merrier meal eaten at Place — certainly not within 
 Adela's recollection. 
 
 " Christmas used to be so dreadfully dull in this house," 
 said the young lady. " One felt one ought to be a little 
 livelier because it was Christmas, and that only made 
 one feel duller, don't you know. It was all very well for 
 
170 The Christmas. Hirelings. 
 
 you, Mr. Danby, out shooting all day with Sir John and 
 playing billiards in the evening, but I could only read 
 a novel, or brood over all the Cinderellas I was missing." 
 
 Poor Adela had been sent to Penlyon Place, as into 
 captivity, for more Christmas seasons than she could 
 count, her mother and father declaring that it was her 
 duty to go and amuse her uncle at that festive time, 
 since he had always been particularly fond of her. 
 
 This idea of fondness on Sir John's part had no definite 
 basis, but Mrs. Hawberk was in the habit of talking as if 
 Adela were her uncle's acknowledged heiress. 
 
 " He must leave his money to somebody," she told her 
 husband, " and why not to Adela ? After all these years 
 of estrangement he will never take Sibyl into favour 
 again." 
 
 " There is nothing so sure to happen as the unexpected," 
 said Mr. Hawberk, sententiously. " You had better not 
 reckon Adela's chickens before they are hatched. Your 
 brother is not obliged to leave his money to anybody. 
 He may leave it to a hospital, as many such old cur- 
 mudgeons do." 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 173 
 
 " You have no occasion to call my brother a cur- 
 mudgeon." 
 
 " He has never given me any reason to call him any- 
 thing else." 
 
 "You and he never understood each other. As for 
 Adela, he likes having her at Place, and there can be no 
 doubt he is very much attached to her." 
 
 The village party was quite as successful as the genteel 
 party, and Moppet was a much more prominent j)ei"sonage 
 in the schoolrooms than she had been the night before at 
 Penlyon. Her whole heart was in this rustic entertain- 
 ment. Her eyes shone like stars, her cheeks were flushed 
 with delight. The pretty little schoolhouse, with rooms 
 for schoolmaster attached, had been built thirty years 
 before by Sir John, soon after he came to his own, and 
 everything about the building was sound and neat and 
 trim. The Christmas-tree was in the boys' schoolroom, 
 the tea-party was in the girls' room. The children were 
 to know nothing about that glorious tree, or that noble 
 collection of tovs for distribution, till after tea. when the 
 
174 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 lights were to be suddenly extinguished, and the door 
 between the two schoolrooms was to be oj)ened, and 
 the tree was to be seen with all its fairy-like tapers 
 burning. 
 
 It would be a thrilling moment, and Moppet's heart 
 beat fast as she thought of the children's rapture. 
 
 " Have they never seen a tree ? " she asked Adela — 
 " never, never, never ? " 
 
 "No, they have never seen one. There are so few 
 great houses about; and there have been no children 
 at Place for the last twenty years. These poor little 
 things have never had any gaiety, except the rector's 
 summer treat." 
 
 " And they couldn't have a Christmas-tree in the 
 summer, could they ? " mused Moppet. " That would be 
 simply silly." 
 
 Moppet held office on this occasion. She was to dis- 
 tribute the presents, assisted by the schoolmaster, who 
 would tell her the names of the children and advise her 
 choice. There was to be no long-bearded necromancer 
 this evening. Mr. Danby did not think it worth while 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 175 
 
 to disguise himself, remembering how little notice the 
 genteel children had taken of his robe or his beard, and 
 how all their thoughts had been centred on the tree and 
 the toy-box. These children would no doubt be even 
 more stolid and unimpressionable. 
 
 There they were at tea, solemnly munching, solemnly 
 handing in their mugs for more of the steaming brew — 
 tea ready milked and sugared in a huge urn; no nice 
 distinctions as to sweetness or non-sweetness, no study of 
 individual tastes : hot, sweet, milky tea for everybody. 
 The buns were the feature of the feast. The piled-up 
 dishes of bright yellow cake were not neglected ; but 
 the buns were first favourite. Moppet could not have 
 believed so many buns could disappear in so short a time. 
 It was almost as good as seeing a conjurer dispose of live 
 rabbits. The cake dishes were half full when the meal 
 was finished ; but not a bun remained. 
 
 Suddenly there came a darkness, and one simultaneous 
 " Oh ! oh ! " arose from the children, while such vulgar 
 words as " Lawks ! " and " Crikey ! " floated in the steamy 
 atmosphere. And then the door was opened, and the 
 
176 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 tree was seen, and instantly saluted by a tremendous 
 clapping of hands and a thunder of hob-nailed boots as 
 the children all trooped into the next room. 
 
 Oh, it was a noble tree ! It looked ever so much larger 
 here than in the great hall at Penlyon Place. The head 
 of the fairy on the topmost branch brushed against the 
 schoolroom ceiling as she swayed to and fro, waving a 
 beneficent wand. 
 
 The crackers were a source of rapture, and Tom Smith 
 was the hero of the evening. Laddie was in his element, 
 letting off crackers all over the schoolroom with cottage 
 boys who had never seen a cracker before, and who cried 
 " Crikey ! " or " My ! " whenever one went off. Laddie 
 did not expect another toy ; but he was determined to 
 have a good go in at the crackers. Lassie, the prim 
 little lady, stood close against Adela Hawberk's skirt 
 Avhile these ruder festivities were going on, not relishing 
 that odour of corduroy and boot leather, which is inevi- 
 table in such company. But Moppet was moving from 
 child to child in the friendliest way, handing the toys 
 allotted to each, explaining, patronizing, altogether 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 177 
 
 mistress of the situation, a Lady Bountiful of two feet 
 high, flushed and feverish with pleasure. 
 
 While the excitement was at its highest point Sir John 
 appeared suddenly in the doorway. IVEoppet flew to him 
 in a moment. It seemed as if he always exercised the 
 most powerful attraction for that young person. She 
 gravitated to him as surely as the aj)ple falls to the 
 ground. 
 
 "Isn't it lovely?" she asked him. "Ain't they 
 happy ? Ain't their faces red ? " 
 
 " And ain't yours red. Moppet ! Why, you are in a 
 high fever. I think you had better sit on my shoulder 
 and see the fun, instead of running about in this black 
 hole of Calcutta." 
 
 After the sharp evening air outside, the atmosphere of 
 the schoolroom seemed like the heat of an oven. The 
 toys were all distributed, the box was empty, and all the 
 dolls had been unhooked from their perches on the 
 waving green boughs. Only the impossible golden fruits 
 and gold and silver fish and flags remained, and the 
 tapers were expiring in smoke. 
 
178 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 Moj^pet sat on Sir Jolin's shoulder surveying the crowd, 
 each child engrossed in its own pleasure, examining its 
 booty. 
 
 " Now, boys and girls," said the schoolmaster, " three 
 cheers for Sir John Penlyon." 
 
 " No, no," remonstrated Sir John ; " I've nothing to 
 do with the affair." 
 
 Remonstrance was useless — the loud chorus arose about 
 him deafeningly. 
 
 " And now for Miss Hawberk." 
 
 More cheering ; loud and shrill, treble and bass. 
 
 "x\.nd now for Mr. Danby, who is always so kind to 
 you." 
 
 More and more cheering, much louder, much shriller, 
 as from hearts overcharged with warmest feelings. 
 
 " And now for the little girl who gave out the 
 toys." 
 
 Another special cheer — final at least for the party 
 from Place, for Sir John turned and fled, with Moj^pet 
 sitting on his shoulder ; but more cheering sounded 
 through the winter darkness from the schoolhouse behind 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 179 
 
 them as they hurried along the frosty road through the 
 park. 
 
 " Oh, ^^ hat a happy evening it has been ! " said Moppet 
 from her perch on Sir John's shoulder. 
 
 " And now you are ready for Bedfordshire," said Mr. 
 Danby. 
 
 " No, Uncle Tom. I am not the littlest bit sleepy." 
 
 In spite of this energetic asseveration, Moppet was dis- 
 covered to be fast asleep when the party arrived at Place, 
 and in that unconscious condition was undressed and put 
 to bed, and knew nothing more till next morning, when 
 she awoke bright and fresh, and greatly astonished that 
 it should be to-morrow. 
 
180 
 
 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THERE could be no 
 doubt about Moppet's 
 affection for Sir John 
 Penlyon. It was not 
 cupboard love. Self- 
 interest had nothing 
 to do with it. The 
 child's young fancies 
 centred in the grave elderly man who had so kindly 
 and protecting an air when she nestled by his side 
 in his roomy armchair, or squeezed herself close up 
 against him at the breakfast or the luncheon table. 
 Sir John would have been more or less than human 
 had he not been flattered by this preference. She 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 181 
 
 liked him better than she liked Danby ; yet she had 
 knoNvn Danby for the whole of her little life, and 
 Danby was her slave, would crawl on all-fours for 
 her, simulating anything zoological she might choose 
 to order, would carry her on his shoulder for a mile 
 on end, and studied her desires in the toy world with 
 a reckless disregard of expense. She was fond of Danby, 
 Init not so fond as she was of Sir John. 
 
 " You're so very grand," she explained always, patting 
 her new friend on his shoulder. 
 
 She seemed to have a precocious appreciation of this 
 personal grandeur, for certainly Sir John Penlyon had 
 the grand air which impresses society in general. To 
 Moppet's fancy he absorbed into himself all the dignity 
 of his surroundings — the portly black-coated butler, the 
 handsome liveries and powdered heads of the footmen, 
 the space and splendour of the house, the wide-reaching 
 park and grounds, and those farms which stretched so 
 far away that Moppet, asking ever so many times in a 
 morning walk, " Are all these fields yours ? " had hardly 
 ever been answered in the negative. 
 
182 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 " You are like the Marquis of Carabas, only it's all true 
 instead of fibs," said Moppet. 
 
 And in her small half-conscious way Moppet ad- 
 mired the baronet's tall, erect figure, his handsome 
 features, the grey hair and beard, and the strongly 
 marked black eyebrows which gave such character to 
 the face. 
 
 Once when some discussion as to personal beauty arose, 
 Moppet expressed herself decisively. 
 
 "You are very pretty," she told him, "quite the 
 prettiest of us all ! " 
 
 " Would you like to be as pretty when you grow up, 
 Moppet ? " he asked. 
 
 " Of course not, you silly man. I am going to be 
 a young lady, and wear frocks like hers," pointing to 
 Adela's low bodice. " How funny I should look with 
 a beard like yours ! " 
 
 Sir John accepted her flatteries laughingly, and owned 
 to Danby that the little hireling amused and interested 
 him ; but he questioned his friend no further as to 
 her belongings. He seemed content to accept her as 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 183 
 
 a waif from afar, who was to vanish out of his home 
 as quietly as she had entered there, leaving no trace 
 behind. 
 
 " We are to go home on the seventh day of the new 
 year," she informed him gravely one morning, in a pause 
 of his letter-writing. 
 
 It was her privilege — obtained by sheer persistence — 
 to sit in his room while he wrote his letters. She pledged 
 herself to silence and stillness, and she would sit upon 
 her hassock in a corner by the fire, playing with her dolls 
 for an hour at a time, without a word spoken above a 
 whisper, so low that not a sound reached him at his 
 writing-table ; but, looking at her sometimes, he would 
 see the little red lips moving rapidly, and he knew that 
 an elaborate make-believe conversation was going on 
 between Moppet and her dolls. 
 
 " Will you be glad to go away ? " he asked. 
 
 ".Sorry to go away, but glad to go back to mother," 
 she answered, looking up at him with clear, truthful eyes. 
 " Will you be sorry when I am gone ? " 
 
 " I'm afraid I shall, Moppet ; but I shall have to get 
 
184 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 over it. I have had to get over worse sorrows than 
 that." 
 
 One day Adela Hawberk came into the drawing-room 
 excitedly, in the quiet quarter of an hour before dinner, 
 when the children had vanished into the deep silence of 
 Bedfordshire. 
 
 " Uncle, I have just made a discovery," she exclaimed. 
 
 " Indeed ? And what may that be ? " 
 
 " Moppet is the living image of the Shrimp Girl — not 
 so pretty, but extraordinarily like." 
 
 " Have you only just found that out ? " 
 
 " Only five minutes ago, coming through the gallery." 
 
 " I have seen the likeness for a long time," rej^lied Sir 
 John, quietly, " and I think " — with a curious emphasis — 
 " Danby must have observed it also." 
 
 Mr. Danby blushed, but held his peace, and the butler's 
 announcement of dinner closed the conversation. 
 
 The Shrimp Girl was a fancy portrait of Sir John 
 Penlyon's great aunt Priscilla, by Sir Joshua Keynolds, 
 and almost as famous as the Strawberry Girl at Sum- 
 merley. 
 
The Chrlstmas Hirelings. 185 
 
 Well-informed people who were s1io\\ti over Place 
 House always made a point of asking to see the Shrimp 
 Girl. It was a picture that had been written about by 
 art critics, and it had been exhibited some winters ago 
 among the old masters at Burlington House. 
 
 The little girl was painted sitting on the sands, in 
 a reddish-brown frock, with bare head and bare feet, a 
 shrimping net in her hand, a gipsy hat with blue ribbons 
 lying by her side. A pretty rustic picture of a not par- 
 ticularly pretty child, in the painter's grandest, boldest, 
 most supremely natural manner ; and the little girl 
 looked almost as much alive as Moppet herself. 
 
 There was a likeness, undoubtedly. The dark grey, 
 deepset eyes, the overhanging forehead, and sensitive 
 mouth, the dimples and mutinous smile were all sug- 
 gestive of Moppet; but when the subject was reopened 
 by Adela later in the evening, Sir John would not allow 
 any discussion about it. 
 
 " All children of the same age and complexion are 
 alike," he said curtly ; and Mr. Danby plunged into the 
 conversation with an entirely new theme. 
 
186 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 There were no more complaints abont a green Christmas 
 after that evening in the schoolhouse. The first fall of 
 snow had been the herald of a severer winter than had 
 been known in that western extremity of England for at 
 least ten years. 
 
 The young peojile were glad and the old people were 
 sorry. For the yoimg there were the novel pleasures of 
 skating and hockey on the ice ; for the old there was the 
 fear, and in many cases the reality, of bronchitis ; and fuel 
 was dearer, and life was harder by as many degrees as the 
 quicksilver sank in the thermometer. 
 
 For one little person in this big busy world that wintry 
 season seemed a time of unalloyed delight. Moppet's 
 little red legs trotted over the hard roads and along the 
 narrow footpaths which the gardeners had swept in park 
 and gardens, almost always trotting beside other and 
 older footsteps, the little red woolly hand almost always 
 held in the warm grip of Sir John's buckskin glove, 
 age and childhood consorting in a curious companion- 
 shij). 
 
 Together Sir John and his little friend visited all the 
 
-r^ 
 
 NO MORE COMPLAINTS ABOUT A GREEN CHRISTMAS. 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 189 
 
 striking features of the neighbourhood. They stood 
 together upon Tintagel's wind-blown height, and watched 
 the white-breasted gulls holding their parliament on the 
 long low lines of smooth dark rock round which the spray 
 danced and the emerald green water tumbled so merrily. 
 Moppet loved those bold and perilous heights. 
 
 " I should be afraid if I was here quite alone, or even 
 with Miss Hawberk," she explained ; " but I'm not a bit 
 afraid with you ; " and indeed the tenderest and most 
 experienced of nurses could not have been more careful 
 of a tiny charge than was Sir John Penlyon. 
 
 " Did you ever have any little girls of your own ? " 
 Moppet asked him one day. 
 
 " Yes, Moppet, once upon a time." 
 " And did you love them veway, veway, veway much," 
 with intense emphasis, " ever so much better than you 
 love me ? " 
 
 " Love cannot be measured off-hand. Moppet. It is 
 a long time since I had any little girls of my own." 
 
 " I am veway glad of that," said Moppet ; and Sir John 
 was glad that she asked no further questions. 
 
190 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 He took her to Pentargain Bay, to see the seals, and 
 would have been very pleased to show her those creatures 
 had there been any on view ; but as there were none 
 visible to the naked eye he could only tell her about the 
 ways and habits of the seal tribe : and he took her down 
 to the beach and prowled about with her between the 
 caves and the sea, and she was full of interest and 
 excitement. 
 
 Playing quietly in the library next morning while Sir 
 John wrote his letters, he saw that she had made a kind 
 of tent of WliitaJcers Almanack, and had put three or fom* 
 old gold seals — those ponderous gold and cornelian seals 
 of the eighteenth century — in this tent, and was con- 
 templating them with evident satisfaction. 
 
 " What new game is that. Moppet ? " he asked. 
 
 " I am playing at seals." 
 
 " But those seals are not a bit like the animals I told 
 you about yesterday." 
 
 " I know that, only I can make believe they are nice 
 soft hau-y animals, with funny blunt noses, living on land 
 and in water. They are seals, you know." 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 191 
 
 " That is a tremeudous stretch for your small imagina- 
 tion." 
 
 Small imagiuatiuu, quotha ! The dark, deep-set eyes 
 gazing up at him indicated a power of imagination rare 
 even amono- men and women. 
 
 The ice on the pond in the park was pronounced to 
 be in perfect condition one bright morning, and Adela 
 Hawberk gave herself up to the delight of skating with 
 a little party of genteel youths from the neighbourhood. 
 It was an ice carnival in a small way. Hot drinks and 
 other refreshments were sent from Place House. The 
 villagers came to look on. 3Ir. Danby was in his glory 
 cutting figures upon the ice, and taking care of the 
 children, who had a slide in a corner, upon which they 
 slid and tumbled untiringly, with much noise of shrill 
 voices and happy laughter. It was nearly dark when 
 they all went back to the house, 3Ioppet upon Danby's 
 shoulder. There was only time for a very noisy 
 tea, at which Moppet's excitement and conversational 
 powers were tremendous — before the journey to Bedford- 
 shire. 
 
192 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 " I hope the sea will be frozen by the time we are home 
 with mother," said Moppet, as she was carried oft'. 
 
 Laddie and Lassie went back to the pond next day 
 with Miss Hawberk; but Moppet was reported to have 
 a cold, and was kept indoors. She did not rebel against 
 this decree, but was quite contented to sit on her hassock 
 in her favourite corner by Sir John's fireside, with her 
 dolls and Christmas toys spread about her on the 
 hearthrug. 
 
 Looking up now and then from liis letters. Sir John 
 saw that she was not as busy with her dolls as usual. 
 She sat very quietly, with her head leaning against the 
 marble column of the chimney-piece, and her favourite 
 doll, the one she had christened Mary, lying in 
 her lap. 
 
 "I'm afraid my Moppet is not very well to-day," he 
 
 said. 
 
 "Oh yes, I'm very well, but I've got a little cold. 
 People don't take powders for colds," she added hastily ; 
 "they only stay indoors and keep themselves warm. I 
 am veway warm, thank you." She screwed herself still 
 
SHE SCREWED HERSELF STILL CLOSER INTO HER SNU.J CORNER 
 BY THE FIRE. 
 
 N 
 
The Cheistmas Hirelings. 195 
 
 closer into her snug- corner by the tire, and he saw her 
 eyelids droop heavily over the tired eyes. 
 
 Certainly Moppet was not qnite herself to-day. Her 
 eyes were very dull, and her voice was thick ; bnt every- 
 body knows that these are the common symptoms of the 
 common cold. 8ir John would not alhiw himself to l^e 
 uneasy about an everyday childish ailment. 
 
 When the luncheon gong- sounded she told him she 
 did not want any dinner, and would rather stav where 
 she was. He compromised the matter by ordering a tray 
 to be brought, and the old housemaid Sarah appeared \\ ith 
 roast mutton and rice pudding, and tried her best to coax 
 the child to eat ; but 3Ioppet stuck to her text. 
 
 "No, thank you, Sarah; I'm sure it's very nice, but 
 I'd rather not have any of it till to-morrow," she said. 
 
 The day wore on to evening, the premature evening of 
 those dark days after Christmas, and still ]\roppet sat in 
 the corner fast asleep. Sir John had taken the velvet 
 pillows from his sofa, and had made a luxurious little 
 nest for the child in the angle of the projecting chimney- 
 piece — a warm nook where the fire-glow could not scorch 
 
196 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 her face. Here she slept — breathing very heavily — till 
 Mr. Danby came to look for her at afternoon tea-time. 
 
 The footman came in with a lamp immediately after 
 him, and Sir John started up from his forty winks in 
 his big armchair on the opjiosite side of the hearth. He 
 had been giving himself a holiday in the dusk of the 
 evening. 
 
 " Come, Moppet," said ]\Ir. Danby, kneeling down 
 beside the child. " Aren't you ready for tea ? Why, 
 what a cosy little bed you have made for yourself, and 
 what a lazy little puss you are ! " 
 
 The eyelids were lifted languidly, the dark grey eyes 
 looked at him wearily, as if they hardly recognized the 
 familiar face. 
 
 " I don't want any tea," said the small voice, piteously. 
 " 1 want to stay here. Please go and take care of the 
 others." 
 
 She coughed with a short dry cough that alarmed 
 j\lr. Danby's ear. He knew much more about children 
 and their ailments than Sir John Penlyon, old bachelor 
 though he was. 
 
HE FELT THE LIITLE LAKGUID HANDS. TUEY TOO -WEBE SCOULUEU 
 WITH FEVER. 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 199 
 
 " I'm afraid my Moppet is ill," he said gravely, lifting 
 the weary little figure into a chair opposite Sir John's, 
 where the lamplight shone full upon flushed cheeks and 
 swollen eyelids. 
 
 He felt the little wrist. Alas ! the pulse was galloping 
 faster than any horse in Sir John's stables had ever 
 galloped — galloping on the road that leads to wild 
 fancies and strange delusions and all the terrors of 
 fever. 
 
 " Good God ! " cried Sir John, bending over Moppet, 
 and thoroughly scared by this time, " the child's forehead 
 is burning." 
 
 He felt the little languid hands. They too were 
 scorched with fever. 
 
 " It's nothing veway bad," exclaimed Moppet. '• I've 
 often been feverish before." 
 
 But the little choking cough which interrupted even 
 this short speech, the quick panting breath, and the vivid 
 crimson flush gainsaid Moppet's reassuring words. 
 
 Mr. Danby took her up in his arms. 
 
 " She must go to bed this instant," he said. " You'd 
 
200 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 better send off at once for tlie doctor, Jack. I'm very 
 sorry to have brought this trouble upon you." 
 
 "I'm very sorry the chikl should be ill," said Sir 
 John, ringing the bell furiously. 
 
 " Please don't be unhappy about me," gasped Moppet, 
 as she was carried off, looking back at >Sir John from the 
 threshold, and waving a hot little hand in affectionate 
 leave-taking. " I'm not going to be veway bad — children 
 are so soon up and down, you know — but I'm afraid I 
 shall have to be poulticed." 
 
 Poultices were the word. Before midnight the whole 
 household was concerned about Moppet's poultices. The 
 doctor had been at Place three times since tea-time, and 
 a nurse had been telegraphed for, and was to arrive from 
 Plymouth next morning ; for Moppet was down with 
 acute congestion of the lungs, and as the evening 
 darkened into night, the symptomatic fever began its 
 dreary effect upon the childish brain, and Moppet's wits 
 were wandering in strange places, and strange visions 
 were passing before those shining glassy eyes, which 
 seemed to see nothing of the real people about her bed, 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 201 
 
 the serious upper housemaid, who put on the poultices, 
 or Adela Hawberk, always ready with lemonade for the 
 thirsty lips, or the doctor bending gravely down to listen 
 to the laborious movement of the chest, or to take the 
 patient's temperature. 
 
 Little French phrases dropped from the dry lips now 
 and then, and it was clear that the child fancied herself 
 in France again. And very often there were appealing 
 cries to mother, which smote Sir John's heart with in- 
 tolerable pain, as he stood just inside the door of the 
 spacious bedroom, hidden from Moppet by the tall four- 
 leaved screen which sheltered the bed from the hazard 
 of draughts. 
 
 The little life was trembling in the balance, he told 
 himself, though the doctor had sounded no note of 
 alarm, had indeed been quite cheerful about his small 
 patient. 
 
 " It's rather a sharp attack," he told 8ir John. " But 
 children generally take kindly to congestion of the 
 lungs." 
 
 " This child is so frao-ile " 
 
202 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 " Fragile ! Not a bit of it," interrupted Mr. Nicholls. 
 " Wiry, not fragile. There's a great deal of brain, rather 
 too much brain, perhaps. The dull child has always a 
 better chance than the clever child. But I hope this 
 one will do very well. It's all a question of nursing. 
 The trained nurse will be here to-morrow morning — and 
 in the mean time all my instructions are being carried 
 out by Miss Hawberk and the maid." 
 
 They were thus distinctly assm*ed that there was no 
 danger; yet nobody at Penlyon seemed inclined to go 
 to bed that night. One o'clock struck with the sound 
 of ghostly solemnity which belongs particularly to the 
 single solitary stroke of the first hour after midnight ; 
 two o'clock struck, and Sir John and Mr. Danby sat 
 reading by the drawing-room fire, pretending not to know 
 how late it was. 
 
 At half-past two Adela came fluttering in to tell them 
 that Moppet was asleep ; very feverish still, and still 
 with short and painful breath, but sleeping. That was 
 in itself cause for rejoicing. 
 
 After this hopeful news Sii" John discovered the 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 203 
 
 lateness of the hour, and he and Mr. Danby bade each 
 other good night. 
 
 " I'm very sorry the chikl is ill, for your sake. Dauby," 
 he said. " I know how fond you are of her." 
 
 " Yes, I could not be fonder of her ; and it may be my 
 fault that she is ill. I hate myself for having kept her 
 so long in that east wind ; but she was so happy, she was 
 enjoying herself so thoroughly. I never dreamt of danger." 
 
 " Don't talk of danger. Nicholls says she will be 
 better to-morrow, and if she isn't better we'll get some 
 great man from London. But I have faith in our Bos- 
 castle doctor. He has a great deal of experience and 
 plenty of sound common sense, and he has no antiquated 
 notions. But we'll telegraph for a physician to-morrow 
 morning, even though the child be better. We won't 
 waste time," added Sir John, uneasily. 
 
 It was wonderful to see him so strongly moved by the 
 waif's illness, he who was supposed to have outlived every 
 gentle emotion. 
 
 He sent his telegram by a mounted messenger before 
 
204 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 seven o'clock, a telegmm addressed to Dr. South, the 
 famous ohiklren's doctor, entreating him to travel by the 
 express from Waterloo which would arrive at Launceston 
 before six o'clock. A carriage would be waiting for him 
 at the station tq bring him over the moor to Penlyon. 
 
 "We'll have the highest authority," Sir John said to 
 Mr. Danby, who came into his room just as the servant 
 carried oif the message. " We must not have to reproach 
 ourselves with neglect, if " 
 
 He did not finish the sentence, but bent over his 
 writing-table to arrange the papers which he had thrust 
 aside when he wrote his telegram. 
 
 It was not seven o'clock yet, and the master of Penlyon 
 Place was in his dressing-gown. His valet would not 
 come to him till eight ; but sleep had been imj^ossible, 
 and the only relief was in moving about his room by the 
 ghastly morning candle-light, \\hile Danby, who was 
 fully dressed, stood looking at him, 
 
 " Danby ! " cried Sir John, presently, stopping in his 
 slow pacing up and down ; " you look as if you hadn't 
 been in bed all nis'ht." 
 
ire slint his telegram by a mounted messenger befoke seven 
 o'clock. 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 207 
 
 " I haven't — much." 
 
 " Danby, you're a fool — a fidgety old fool. You heard 
 what Nicholls said about children — they generally take 
 kindly to congestion of the lungs." 
 
 " Yes, I heard him — and I have heard her breathing. 
 One might take kindly to a wolf sitting on one's chest, 
 but one would rather not have him there. Take kindly ! 
 That's a doctor's phrase for struggling through a painful 
 malady. The child survives where the adult might 
 succimib; but in the mean time there's acute suffering 
 to be borne somehow. And Moppet is so patient ! One 
 feels angry with Providence— for punishing — such a— 
 little creature." 
 
 Mr. Danby escaped hurriedly from the room, but Sir 
 John heard something like a sob before the door shut 
 behind him. 
 
 " What fools we are ! " he muttered. " All this fuss 
 and anxiety about a child, when all the London slums 
 are choked with children whose future maintenance is 
 problematical ! One child less or more upon this teemino- 
 earth ! What difference ought that to make ? A 
 
208 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 creature that lias only just begun to think and to feel ! 
 Why, less than five years ago there was no such thing 
 as Moppet ; and now I believe Danby thinks the world 
 would be empty without her." 
 
 Danby ! Was it only Mr. Danby who was so foolishly 
 anxious about that little life struggling with illness? 
 Who was it who walked up and down the terrace in the 
 early morning, watching for the coming of the doctor ? 
 Who was it who followed the doctor to the door of the 
 sick-room, and waited outside in the corridor till he came 
 out again ; waited with aching heart and a sick dread of 
 hearing bad news ? 
 
 The news was bad. Mr. Nicholls found J^foppet worse 
 to-day than yesterday. 
 
 " If you would like a second opinion " he began. 
 
 " I have telegraphed for Dr. South," Sir John answered 
 curtly, " and have had his reply. He will be here this 
 evening." 
 
 " Of course I can have no objection to meet a man of 
 Dr. South's distinction." 
 
 Objection ! As if this country doctor's feelings, and 
 
IW: 
 
 ViHiJ WAS IT WHO FOLLOWED THE DOCTOR TO THE DOOK OF THE SICK-ROOM, 
 AND WAITED? 
 
 o 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 211 
 
 the petty restrictions of medical etiquette, were to he 
 studied when that little life was wavering in the balance 
 — weighed in a balance so fine that a hair might 
 turn it. 
 
 Oh that long, dreadful day of waiting and suspense ! 
 
 Mr. Nicholls came many times in the day, indeed he 
 
 only drove hither and thither on hurried journeys to see 
 
 his other patients, and then came back to Penlyon Place, 
 
 making that his head-quarters. The child showed no 
 
 signs of improvement as the day wore on. There was a 
 
 hush throughout the house, almost as if death were 
 
 already there ; while Danby and Adela went about with 
 
 pale faces, too restless and anxious for settled occuj)ation 
 
 of any kind. Their talk was all of the child, and of 
 
 different cases of childish illness out of which the patient 
 
 had come triumphantly. If they had ever known of fatal 
 
 cases they did not mention those. 
 
 And all through the sunny morning and the short 
 afternoon Laddie and Lassie were at: play on a little lawn 
 in front of the library, and a Lmg way from the sick 
 child's room, a spot whence no sound of those shrill 
 
212 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 young voices could reach her. They had one of the 
 women servants to look after them, and to see that they 
 did not catch cold ; and they had their shuttlecocks and 
 battledores, and bats and balls and hoops, from their 
 treasury of Christmas ' gifts, and were as full of life and 
 spirits as if there were no such thing as suffering in. 
 the world. Sir John almost hated these small egotists, 
 flushed and happy under the cloudless blue of a bright 
 winter sky, Lassie skimming across the little lawn like 
 a scarlet bird. Laddie skipping and bounding about like 
 a boy on wires, never still. 
 
 Sir John looked so worried when they approached ]iim 
 that Mr. Danby, quick to read all his old friend's feelings, 
 ordered their early dinner in tlie housekeeper's room 
 instead of at the family luncheon-table. They were 
 treated all through the day as if they were in disgrace, 
 and nobody took any notice of them. Towards evening 
 they grew fractious and fretful, and began to feel really 
 sorry that Moppet was ill, or that things in general had 
 become uncomfortable. 
 
 " I should like to go home to mother," said Lassie. 
 
I HAVE TELEGRAPHED FOR DR. SOUTH, AND HAVE HAD HIS REl'LY. 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 215 
 
 "So should I," agreed Laddie. "It's no fun being 
 here when there's only servants to play with," 
 
 THEY WERE AS FULL OF LIFE AND SPIRITS AS IF THEUE WERE NO SUCH 
 THING AS SUFFERING IN THE WORLD. 
 
 "We shan't have such nice dinners when we go 
 home," mused the girl. " We shall have rice puddings 
 
216 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 some days, and potato soup some days ; but not 
 always fowls, and tarts, and cream, and junket, like we 
 do here." 
 
 " Who cares ? " cried the boy, with a dash of 
 defiance. 
 
 " You care — very much ! " retorted his sister, with 
 vigorous assertion. "It is a story to say you don't. 
 You know you're much the greediest of us. You quite 
 love your dinner." 
 
 " So do you ! So does everybody that is hungry ; 
 everybody except mother. She never cares. She likes 
 us to have all the nice things, and pretends she doesn't 
 want any." 
 
 And so, squabbling, but not unfriendly, and talking 
 to each other through the open door between the two 
 rooms. Laddie and Lassie dropped asleej), and their 
 brief day was done ; while to those elders below stairs, 
 who waited for the London physician, it seemed hardly 
 evening. 
 
 Sir John sat in the library, just where he had sat when 
 the notion of the Christmas hirelings was first mooted. 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 217 
 
 with the monthly time-table of the London and South- 
 western Eailway open on his knee. He had looked at 
 it a dozen times within the last hour to see how soon 
 Dr. South could arrive. 
 
 It was night when there came that thrilling sound of 
 carriage wheels — thrilling when every nerve is strained 
 in expectation of some particular guest — and Sir John 
 went out to the hall to receive the doctor. Then came 
 the examination of the patient, and then the consultation 
 within closed doors. 
 
 How long, how infinitely long it seemed to those who 
 waited ! Danby, Adela, and Sir John were in the 
 drawing-room, having given up the library to the doctors. 
 They sat with the door wide open, listening for the 
 opening of that other door, which should announce the 
 end of, the consultation. It would be like the entrance 
 of the jury after a trial of life and death. They were 
 waiting for the verdict ; waiting to know whether Mojjpet 
 was to die. 
 
 At last the door opened, with the sonorous sound of a 
 massive oaken door two hundred years old, and the two 
 
218 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 doctors came across to the drawing-room where Sir John 
 stood waiting for them on the threshold. 
 
 "Weil? "he asked. 
 
 Dr. South gave a faint sigh before he answered that 
 monosyllabic question. 
 
 "The child is gravely ill," he said. "We are going 
 to do all that can be done. ]\Ir. Nicholls thoroughly 
 understands the case. There has been no time lost, no 
 measure omitted. But I cannot disguise the fact from 
 you — the child is gravely ill." 
 
 "Mr. Nicholls told us that children generally take 
 kindly to inflammation of the lungs." 
 
 "The generality of children. But this is a peculiar 
 child — a child of a very excitable temperament, with a 
 preponderancy of brain. The mind here tells against the 
 body. Everything will be done, but " 
 
 " There is danger ! " interrupted Sir John. 
 
 "Yes, there is danger. I should do very wrong not 
 to admit that. Has the child no mother ? " 
 
 Not for a moment did the physician mistake Adela 
 Hawberk for the child's mother, though Adela might 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 219 
 
 have been taken for any age between twenty and twenty- 
 five, and thns might seem quite old enough to be the 
 m(jther of 3Ioppet. The doctor's keen eye saw at a 
 single gknce that this pretty young lady in the evening 
 frock was not the sick child's mother. She was anxious 
 and tearful and sympathetic ; but the white despair, the 
 agony of suspense and terror — that look of the wild 
 animal at bay, and ready to fight for the menaced life 
 of her young, which he knew in the mother's eye, was 
 lacking here. This pretty young lady was bound by no 
 such close tie as motherhood to the little creature 
 struggling for breath in the room above. 
 
 "The little girl's mother is living," answered Mr. 
 Danby. " Ought she to be sent for ? " 
 
 " Undoubtedly. I hope she is not very far off." 
 
 That last sentence soimded like Moppet's deatli- 
 warrant. 
 
 " She is in London." 
 
 " I thouo-ht she was in France," muttered Sir John, 
 with a curious downcast look. 
 
 " I hope she is in London by this time. I telegraphed 
 
220 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 to her yesterday. I told her the child was ill — but not 
 dangerously ill — and that she had better come as far 
 as Plymouth, in case of any change for the worse." 
 
 " Shall you know where to find her in Plymouth ? " 
 asked Dr. South. 
 
 " Yes ; she will expect a telegram at the post-office." 
 ■ " Good. Then get your message despatched as soon as 
 you can." 
 
 " It's a pity you didn't tell her to come straight here," 
 said Sir John. 
 
 Mr. Danby accepted the reproof in silence. Sir John 
 led the way to the dining-room, where dinner was waiting 
 for the traveller from London and the household doctor. 
 
 Dr. South was to spend the night at Penlyon, and was 
 to be driven to Launceston next morning in time for the 
 earliest train. There would doubtless be a change in the 
 patient by the morning, either for better or worse. If 
 the change were for worse, it would most likely be the 
 last change of all, and the mother would arrive too late to 
 clasp her living child even in a farewell embrace. 
 
 " Danby ! " exclaimed Sir John, severely, when he and 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 221 
 
 his old friend had gone back to the library, " in God's 
 name why did not you tell the mother to come straight 
 through as fast as rail and coach could bring her ? " 
 
 " I did not like," faltered Danby. " I had no right to 
 summon her to this house without your permission." 
 
 " You might have asked my permission." 
 
 " No, no, no ! " exclaimed Danby, agitatedly. " I 
 wanted it to be spontaneous. I could not introduce the 
 subject " 
 
 " Pshaw ! what matters it to me who comes or goes 
 while that child is lying at death's door ? " cried Sir 
 John, fiercely. " I should not see — the person. It is 
 of the child I think — the child only. She was calling 
 Jier mother to-day when I was in the room — so sweet, 
 so loving, so sensible. She kissed me again and again 
 with her feverish lips as I bent over her bed. She knew 
 me perfectly. Yet there was a touch of delirium ; and 
 she called to her mother as if she were in the room. 
 That made my heart ache, Danby." 
 
 " Well, the mother will be here to-morrow, I hope. I 
 telegraphed to her yesterday. After Nicholls had seen 
 
222 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 the child for the second time, I fancied he was a little 
 uneasy about her, though he wouldn't own it. So I just 
 walked into Boscastle and telegraphed to — the mother. 
 She would be quick to take alarm, I dare say — though I 
 only told her that her youngest was laid up with a severe 
 cold, and she could come to Plymouth if she felt anxious, 
 so as to be within easy reach. I had a reply a few 
 hours after to say she was leaving for Folkestone by 
 the boat. She is at Plymouth by this time, I have no 
 doubt." 
 
 " Folkestone ! " muttered Sir John, " Then the place 
 those children talk about is Boulogne." 
 
 "Yes, it is Boulogne — a very good place, too, for a 
 widow with a small family. They can live as cheaply 
 there as anywhere, and in fine fresh air." 
 
 Sir John made no comment upon this, but sat absorbed 
 and silent by the neglected fire, and then rose restlessly, 
 walked about the room, took a book from the shelves, 
 taking pains to find a particular volume, opened, glanced 
 at it, and threw it aside. His face had a look of listening, 
 and often in his pacing to and fro he stopped to open 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 223 
 
 the door, and stood for a few moments holding it ajar, as 
 if waiting for some one. 
 
 They had moved Moppet to one of the principal bed- 
 rooms at the top of the grand staircase, the spacions 
 chamber in which the most important gnests had been 
 always installed when there was a house party at Penlyon. 
 This state room had been aired and warmed and prepared 
 in hot haste for the tiny visitor, when it was found that 
 Moppet's bad cold was going to be a serious illness. It 
 was chosen as the largest, airiest room in the large, airy 
 house, and Mr. Nicholls highly approved the arrange- 
 ment, though he had not advised it. Laddie and Lassie 
 had their two rooms all to themselves, and — light-hearted 
 and forgetful as they were in their morning play — in the 
 silence and solitude of the after-bedtime aftection pre- 
 vailed over egotism, and Lassie and Laddie each shed 
 a few tears for their missing sister. 
 
 " Do you think she'll be quite well to-morrow ? " ques- 
 tioned Lassie, sitting up in bed, and calling to her unseen 
 brother in the adjoining room. 
 
 " I am afraid not. Sarah says she's very bad, and that 
 
224 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 when Sarah's little niece had the same complaint she 
 died ; but then Sarah's little niece had a neglectful 
 mother, Sarah says." 
 
 " Moppet has no mother at all now," said Lassie, dole- 
 fully. " Oh, I wish mother was here ! I wish we were 
 all at home. I don't want Moppet to die. What will 
 mother do if Moppet dies, and she has only us ? " 
 
 " She'd be very miserable with only us," replied Laddie, 
 with a Yoice that was muffled by distance and bedclothes, 
 and perhaps a little by sleepiness. " We're so big, and 
 mother's so fond of little children." 
 
 " We must be very, very, very good, and very, very, 
 very kind to mother if Moppet should die," Lassie said 
 conclusively. And then, after a pause, she inquired, 
 " Should we have to go into mourning ? " 
 
 " You would, of course, because you're a girl. But I 
 shouldn't. There's no such thing as boy's mourning, 
 stupid," replied Laddie, awakened by what he considered 
 a futile question. "Fancy a boy playing football in 
 mourning — or cricket ! But Moppet isn't going to die. 
 There's a doctor from London come to cure her. Sarah 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 225 
 
 said his — What is it they give doctors ? " questioned 
 Laddie, suddenly at fault. " His free— that's it ! Sarah 
 said his free would be two hundred guineas — down on the 
 nail. I heard her tell the other housemaid so." 
 
 " What does ' down on the nail ' mean ? " asked Lassie, 
 more interested in that mysterious phrase than in the 
 coming of the medical Alcides. 
 
 L^nable to explain, and really sleepy, Laddie pretended 
 to be actually asleep. He threw a little extra power 
 into his breathhig, and the imitation soon became 
 reality. 
 
 The night wore on — another night on which people 
 pretended to forget the hour, and no one thought of 
 going to bed. It was felt that Dr. South's presence in 
 the house was a tower of strength, a rock of defence 
 against the Great Enemy. Indeed, Sir John had reason 
 to think so, when, stealing with cautious footfall to 
 Moppet's room in the dead of night, he saw the physician 
 sitting at the bottom of the bed watching for the result 
 of his treatment. 
 
 Dr. South came down to the drawing-room half an hour 
 
 p 
 
226 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 afterwards, aud foiiud Sir John and his friend sitting 
 forlornly, far apart, like people who had nothing to say 
 to each other. It was between three and fonr o'clock. 
 The clusters of candles on the mantelpiece had Lurnt 
 down to the sockets, and one of the lamps had gone out. 
 Adela had been sent off to bed an hour before, very 
 reluctant to go, and indeed had been met by the doctor 
 in the corridor, in her dressing-gown, hanging about for 
 news of the child. 
 
 " Oh, Doctor South, you don't think she's going to die, 
 do you ? " she asked piteously. 
 
 " I think we're trying very hard to save her, my dear 
 young lady, and with God's help we may prevail," 
 answered the doctor, gravely ; and with this assurance 
 Adela was fain to be content. 
 
 Those clinging arms, and the showers of kisses that 
 were like the bubbling up of childish love from a deep 
 fountain of tenderness ; those bright eyes and dimpling 
 smiles, had endeared the little hireling to the light- 
 hearted young woman as well as to the worn-out elderly 
 man. 
 
The ChristxMas Hirelings. 227 
 
 The night wore on. It was five o'clock before the 
 doctor would go to the room that had been prepared for 
 him, and where the fire had been made up again and 
 again by the housemaid, who sat up all night to wait 
 upon the sick-room. Mr. Danby had to remind him of 
 his long jom-ney to-morrow— actually to-day — after his 
 long journey of to-day — actually yesterday; but Dr. 
 South made light of the matter. He could always sleep 
 in the train. He made his final visit to ]\Ioppet's bedside 
 at five, and went to bed, leaving instructions that he 
 should be called instantly if there were any change for 
 the worse. 
 
 This night— with the knowledge of danger staring 
 them full in the face — neither Sir John nor Danby went 
 to bed at all. 
 
 "Danby," Sir John said vehemently, stopping suddenly 
 in front of the despondent figure seated far away from the 
 neglected fire, " you had no right to do this thing." 
 
 " What thing ? " Danby asked, looking up at him 
 confusedly. 
 
 " You had no right to bring that little child here — and 
 
228 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 let me love her — let her grow into an old man's heart. 
 Think what sorrow you have made for me — a sorrow at 
 the end of my life — if she is to die." 
 
 " She shan't die," cried Danby. " We're making a 
 good fight of it anyhow. I tell you she shan't die," he 
 repeated huskily. •' I'm going upstairs now — ^just to 
 listen at her door — I won't go in. I won't risk waking 
 her with the opening of the door. But I may hear 
 something. The nurse may be stirring, or the maids 
 may be in the corridor. It is agonizing to sit here, and 
 not know if things are going well or ill." 
 
 Mr. Danbv went out like a ghost, and Sir John waited 
 in the hall while his slow soft steps ascended the stairs. 
 He came down again in about a quarter of an hour. . He 
 had seen one of the maids, who told him Mojjpet was a 
 little less restless than she had been earlier in the night. 
 
 He and Sir John made the most of this news, and at 
 the first glimmer of the grey cold day they both went to 
 their dressing-rooms to make bath and toilet serve instead 
 of sleep. 
 
 Breakfast was to be at half-past eight for Dr. South, 
 
"DANBY, YOr HAD NO EIGHT TO DO THIS THKG. 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 231 
 
 who was to leave Penlyou at nine. Sir John met Lassie 
 on his way to the breakfast-room, very neat and prim in 
 her warm serge frock, quite the ekler sister. Lassie was 
 to he six in May, a fact of which she informed people 
 gravely, as if she were coming into a fortune at that date. 
 Six years old ! It is not every little girl who is soon 
 going to be six. Poor little things who are only four 
 look towards that dignified age across a desert of inter- 
 vening years. Lassie had learnt to tie her petticoat 
 strings, and put on her stockings, and even to button 
 her boots, in anticipation of her approaching dignity. 
 
 " Mother says I must be very useful when I am six," 
 she told her friends. 
 
 Lassie ran to Sir John and put her hand into his, 
 looking up at him piteously. 
 
 "Mayn't we have breakfast with you, as we used to 
 before Moppet was ill ? " she asked. " Please don't send 
 Laddie and me to the housekeeper's room. We haven't 
 been naughty, have we, Sir John ? " 
 
 "No, no, my dear. You and Laddie eire verv good 
 children — onlv = " 
 
282 The Christmas Hirelings, 
 
 He stojjped with a troubled air, looking down at the 
 small face that looked so imploringly up at his, as if he 
 were Proyidence personified. 
 
 He conld not tell her that, while ]\Ioppet's little life 
 trembled in the balance, she and her brother were almost 
 hateful to him. If Moppet were to die he would prefer 
 the world to be altogether empty of children. 
 
 The voices and the faces of children would torture him 
 with bitterest memories and regrets. 
 
 " You may come to breakfast with us, Lassie ; but 
 you and yoiu- brother must be very quiet. We 
 are all of us anxious and a little unhappy about your 
 sister." 
 
 " But she will get well, won't she ? " Lassie asked, with 
 a touch of deep distress. 
 
 " We hope so, my dear." 
 
 Laddie was skipping about in front of the great hall 
 window, keenly interested in a solitary fly that was 
 buzzing drowsily and knocking itself feebly against the 
 glass. Laddie came bounding across to 8ir John 
 presently, and said — 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 233 
 
 " Please mayn't we have breakfast with you, we had no 
 cream yesterday morning, how's Moppet ? " all in a breath. 
 Sir John frowned upon him darkly and did not answer ; 
 but Laddie, seeing his sister go to the breakfast-room 
 hand in hand with their host, skipped airily after them, 
 asking no further questions. Adela came down early 
 in her very plainest tailor-made gown, but with her hair 
 dressed as elaborately as usual. Harrop, the maid, would 
 hardly have neglected that beautiful auburn hair in the 
 midst of direst calamity. Laddie and Lassie nestled on 
 either side of the young lady, and soon began to prattle 
 to her, and to each other across her, in low voices which 
 grew louder by degrees. 
 
 ''If you talk so loud yon ^vill l)e sent away," x\dela 
 murmured wariiingly. 
 
 "But why mustn't we talk? Moppet can't hear us 
 upstairs in that big, big room. It's like being in church. 
 Is it always like this when people are ill ? " interrogated 
 Laddie. 
 
 "When people are feeling unhappy they like to be 
 very quiet." 
 
234 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 " People who are unhappy don't like anything. Un- 
 happiness is disliking," argued the boy, with the air of 
 an infant Socrates. 
 
 " Are you unhappy ? " asked Lassie. 
 
 " I am very anxious." 
 
 " Then you think she will die ? " urged Lassie, 
 searchingly. 
 
 " No, no, no. You must not say such things. Pray 
 be quiet, children. Dr. South is just going." 
 
 There was a little movement and talk and a quiet 
 leave-taking. Sir John and Mr. Danby both went to 
 the hall door to see the phj'sician drive away. He had 
 done or advised all that science could do for the little 
 girl who was fighting so bitter a battle, and he left them 
 not utterly hopeless. 
 
 " The outlook is brighter to-day than it was last night," 
 he said finally ; " but I mustn't promise too much. We 
 are not out of the wood yet. Please let me have an 
 occasional telegram to say how she is going on. She is 
 a dear little child — a most winning little child. I have 
 seen the loveliest children who did not interest me half 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 235 
 
 so much as that quamt little face of hers, with the large 
 forehead and the dark deep-set eyes. I hope her mother 
 will be here to-day." 
 
 Sir John did not respond to that last speech, and Pr. 
 South stepped into the nsefnl station brongham and was 
 driven away by the nsefnl npstanding horses. It is a 
 good day's work for any pair of horses to post from 
 Penlyon Place to Lannceston and back again. 
 
 The day wore on towards evening without any marked 
 change in the sick-room. :\toppet was living and suffer- 
 ing ; and Dr. Xicholls and the nurse were carrying out 
 Dr. South's thoughtful treatment with the utmost care. 
 All that science and forethought could do for the child 
 was being done, as ]Mr. Dauby remarked at least a dozen 
 times in the course of the day. 
 
 He was walking with Sir .John on the terrace early in 
 the afternoon when the carriage that had taken Dr. South 
 to Taunceston drove up to tlie hall door. The coachman 
 had been ordered to watch the arrival of trains for a 
 strange lady who was to come from Plymouth, and to 
 
236 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 bring that strange lady to Place. Mr. Danby had given 
 the man his instructions as to the style and appearance 
 of the lady for whom he was to look out. 
 
 The bell rang, the carriage door was opened, and a 
 lady alighted, a tall slim figure in a dark cloak, a pale 
 face under a neat black bonnet. 
 
 Mr. Danby stood hesitatingly as she went quickly up 
 the steps, he and Sir John being distant from the door 
 by about twenty yards. 
 
 " Aren't you going to her ? " asked 8ir John, sternly. 
 
 " I — yes — of course — yes. But won't you see her — 
 before she goes to the child ? " 
 
 " See her ? No ! " with his darkest frown. " Why 
 should I see her ? She comes here to see her child — for 
 that and for that alone. Go and look after her, Danby. 
 You must consider her your guest." 
 
 Danby gave him a distressed look, and was hurrying 
 off, when he stopped suddenly and went back to Sir 
 John, fumbling in his waistcoat pocket as he drew near. 
 
 " Stay," he said agitatedly, " there is something I 
 ought to have thought of before that lady entered your 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 237 
 
 house." Taking a folded paper out of his letter-case, 
 "Your cheque. There it is; and it has never left my 
 pocket since you gave it to me. The hiring was a fiction 
 
 SHE -WENT QUICKLY UP THE STEPS. 
 
 —I wanted you to know those children— and I planned 
 the thing on the spur of the moment." 
 
 " You wanted to break my heart," said Sir John, " and 
 it's quite likely that you will realize your wish." 
 
238 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 " No, 110. I wanted to prove to you that you have 
 a heart." 
 
 " Go and look after your friend ! " 
 
 Mr. Danby went one way, Sir John the other, and the 
 cheque to bearer for one hundred guineas was torn up 
 and scattered upon the thin cokl air. 
 
 Deep and deeper into the heart of the park, where the 
 wind-blown oaks all leant away from the west, went Sir 
 John Peiilyoii, full of grief and anger — grief for the 
 child who might die, anger against the friend who had 
 brought her there. 
 
 " The meddling, officious fool ! I was hap^jy enough. 
 I had got over the wrench that I felt when that shameless 
 girl disobeyed me. My life was barren, but it was 
 peaceful. What more did I want ? " 
 
 What did he want now ? Only the little clinging arms 
 round his neck, the soft little cheek pressed against his 
 own, the silvery little voice prattling gaily to him — 
 inquiring, philosophizing, laying down the law, as if the 
 four-year life were full to the brim of wisdom and 
 experience. He wanted Moppet. He cared nothing for 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 239 
 
 the tall young woman whom he had seen pass hurriedly 
 under that dignified portal which she was never to have 
 passed again. His affection had concentrated itself upon 
 this morsel of humanity, brought into his house by 
 a trick — a ridiculous trick of this interfering wretch 
 Danby, 
 
 Moppet's mother was sitting by her bedside. Moppet 
 was better already. Ouly the sight of the familiar face, 
 only the touch of the motherly hands, had done her 
 good. This was the account which Adela gave 8ir John 
 when he went back to the house after dark. 
 
 " The mother seems quite a nice person," said Adela. 
 " She has very sweet manners, and must have been very 
 pretty, but of course her every thought is devoted to that 
 dear little thing. There has been no time for talk of 
 any kind. She won't come down to dinner. Mr. Danby 
 has arranged that she shall have the dressing-room 
 opening out of Moppet's room to sit in, and the bedroom 
 next to Moppet's to sleep in. We shan't see her down 
 here yet awhile." 
 
 " So much the better," said her uncle, curtly. 
 
240 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 " Oh, I can quite understand what a bore it must be 
 to you to have a perfect stranger brought into your 
 house," said Adela, ^\ith a sympathetic air. 
 
 The days wore on, and Sir John saw nothing of the 
 stranger. Nor did he see Moppet. Mr. Nicholls advised 
 that the child shoukl be kept as quiet as possible. There 
 should be no one in her room but her mother and the 
 nurse. The sensitive brain needed repose, after the long 
 nights of fever and delirium. 3Ioppet was improving ; 
 that was the grand point. " We have turned the corner," 
 Mr. Nicholls announced delightedly on the third day 
 after the mother's arrival. " We have fought a hard 
 fight, and we are going to win." 
 
 The upstair maidservants were almost hysterical with 
 gladness when the news was passed along the corridor 
 and in and out of the rooms where neat housemaids in 
 pink cotton frocks were sweeping and bed-making. Mr. 
 Danby went about the house with a stej) as light as 
 Mercury's ; and everybody began to be kind to Laddie 
 and Lassie, who had suffered a season of snubbing, and 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 241 
 
 had been made to feel that nobody wanted them ; except 
 just in that ten minutes at bedtime, when their mother 
 came to their room, and heard them say their prayers, 
 and hung over their beds, with innumerable good-night 
 kisses, 
 
 " ^Fay we go and see ]\roppet ? ^fay we play \\ ith her 
 again ? " asked I>assie. 
 
 " Xot quite yet, Lassie. She will have to eat a few 
 more dinners first." 
 
 " She won't mind that," .said Laddie ; "she is very fond 
 of dinner." 
 
 " She doesn't love it as you do," remonstrated Lassie. 
 
 Sir John Penlyon left for Plymouth directly after the 
 doctor's cheering announcement. He had business in 
 Plymouth, he told ^Ir. Dauby. 
 
 " Is the mother to leave Place now that the child is 
 out of danger ? " asked I)anl)y, while his friend was 
 waiting for the carriage. 
 
 " You and the mother can please yourselves about 
 that," Sir John answered cnhlly. "I shall be away for 
 
 Q 
 
242 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 some days. I have to see Barton," his Plymouth solicitor. 
 " And I may go on to town." 
 
 " Then she had better stay till the child is well 
 enough for them all to go home together," Danby said 
 quietly. 
 
 Sir John winced as if something had hurt him. Yes, 
 the child would vanish out of his life — ^just as she had 
 entered it — unless — unless he should bring his mind to 
 forget the wrong done him by the daughter he had 
 loved ; forget his stern resolve never to forgive her 
 or to hold communion with her after that one rebellious 
 act. 
 
 His daughter had taken her own course without regard 
 for his wishes. She had chosen the degradation of what 
 to his mind was a low marriage — a marriage with a man 
 whose father kept a small, shabby shop in a small, shabby 
 street : a self-made young man, who had climbed out of 
 the petty tradesman's sphere by the rugged, narrow path 
 of patronage and help from his superiors — helped to eke 
 out the scholarship upon which he tried to maintain 
 himself at one of the least-distinguished colleges in 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 243 
 
 Oxford — a dependent at the beginning of his career, a 
 pauper when he married. 
 
 Sir John had remembered how, in the heyday of his 
 youth, he had crushed down and conquered his k^ve for 
 a girl of humble origin^how, adoring her, he had yielded 
 to his father's sentence that for him such a marriage 
 could never be — that the future head of the Penlyon 
 family had duties and obligations, which must go before 
 the romantic love of youth. He had bowed to that 
 decree, and he had sacrificed the happiness of his early 
 manhood. The landed gentry of Cornwall are a proud 
 race. The roots of their family trees go down into the 
 dark night of British history, when Mark was king and 
 Tintagel was a place of royal revelry. 
 
 Old as Sir John was, and in spite of the progress that 
 Liberal opinion had made since Bossiny was disfranchised, 
 he still believed in the obligations which his ancient race 
 had imposed upon him ; and when his daughter married 
 the grocer's son, he had told himself that he would never 
 forgive her. 
 
 During the five years that followed her marriage he 
 
244 The Christmas Hirelings 
 
 held no communicatioii with her, direct or indirect, knew 
 nothing of her whereabouts. Letters, pleading pas- 
 sionately for pardon, came to him one after another in 
 the first year of her married life ; but they were torn and 
 flung into the waste-paper basket, unread, and by and by 
 they ceased to come. 
 
 A paragraph in a Plymouth paper told him of her 
 husband's death in a remote province of Upper India, 
 where he had been working as a missionary under the 
 R.P.G. He had died of consumption, leaying a widow 
 and two children. 
 
 Sir John sent the paragraph to his family solicitor, and 
 requested him to communicate with Mrs. Morland, and to 
 arrange for the payment of an annuity of two hundred 
 and fifty pounds, on the understanding that she was 
 never to molest her father either by letter or otherwise. 
 He was to hear nothing and know nothing about her, 
 except that the quarterly allowance was paid. 
 
 And this was all he had ever known until Danby's 
 folly had brought her children besid§ his hearth, and 
 had betraved him into loving his unforgiven daughter's 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 245 
 
 child. Gradually, slowly, the secret of the children's 
 identity had been revealed to him. Little looks and 
 words of Danby's, Moppet's unmistakable likeness to the 
 Reynolds picture, the fact of their Indian birth— one 
 thing after another had brought about the revelation, 
 and he knew that the innocent little creature who had 
 clambered on to his knee and clung about his neck was 
 Sibyl Morland's child. Well, the situation had been 
 cleverly brought about by his friend Danby ; but Danby's 
 treachery should make no difference. He might be 
 tricked into loving his granddaughter ; but he would 
 not be tricked into forgiving. his daughter. 
 
 So soon as Moppet should be well and strong again, 
 mother and children would have to leave Penlyon Place ; 
 and in the mean time it was far better that he should be 
 away. There must be no opportunity for siu-prises — no 
 chance meetings between father and daughter. 
 
 Sir John saw his Plymouth solicitor, signed a lease, 
 spent a night at the Grand Hotel, smoked a morning 
 cigar on the Hoe, and went to London by the afternoon 
 express. He stayed at a sleepy family hotel in Albemarle 
 
246 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 Street which the Penlyons had patronized for over a 
 century, and he bored himself exceedingly next day at 
 the Old Masters, where every Eeynolds, Gainsborough, 
 Eomney, or Hopner served to remind him of the Shrimp 
 Girl at Place, and of the little convalescent who resembled 
 that famous picture. 
 
 In the evening he dined with two or three friends at 
 the Carlton, and discussed the prospects of the approach- 
 ing session, which were pronounced of the gloomiest. 
 He walked back to his hotel through a wintry mist 
 which just escaped being a fog, and he wished him- 
 self back in the clear brightness of the Cornish coast, 
 where the Atlantic surges make solemn music all 
 night long. 
 
 He had received no letter from Cornwall since he left ; 
 but he had no right to be surprised or offended at that. 
 He had asked no one to write to him. He had not left 
 Place till Moppet was pronounced out of danger ; and 
 he had given Danby full power to deal with the mother 
 and her children. His plan was not to return to his 
 house until after they had all left. He thought some- 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. "247 
 
 times, almost with a shudder, how deadly quiet the 
 rambling old house would seem when those young voices 
 and those busy little feet should be heard in the corridors 
 no more. 
 
 He bored himself in London for another day, and went 
 to a small dinner-party in Grosvenor Square, where the 
 talk was all of the session and where its prospects were 
 pronounced of the brightest. Somebody remarked upon 
 the pleasantness of town at this after-Christmas season, 
 before the opening of Parliament had brought many 
 people back, the only time in the London year when 
 small snug dinners and general conversation were possible. 
 Sir John remained mute, and thought that there could 
 be no place more dismal than London in January. 
 
 It was nearly a week after he left Penlyon Place that 
 he received the following telegram as he was dressing in 
 the morning : — 
 
 " Moppet has asked for you very often, and has fretted 
 
 at your absence, not without danger to her health. Pray 
 
 come back. 
 
 " Danby." 
 
248 The Cheistmas Hirelings. 
 
 Danby again ! A trick of Dauby 's to lure liim back to 
 liis house and force on a reconciliation. He was vexed 
 and angry with Danby ; but he read that telegram 
 twenty times over, making now very much, now very 
 little of it ; and he left London by the morning express 
 from Waterloo, after telegraphing for his carriage to 
 meet him at Launceston. In those days Launceston 
 was the nearest station for Boscastle and Tintairel. 
 
 A long journey, throughout which — in spite of the 
 mental occupation afforded by every newspaper that 
 could be bought — his thoughts were haunted by the 
 image of that sick child at Place, and could concentrate 
 themselves on nothing else. The news of this wide busy 
 world was nothing to him — foreign or domestic, rumours 
 of war, earthquakes, cataclysms, a general upheaval, 
 weighed as thistledown compared with the existence of 
 one small child. She had asked for him, loving little 
 creature ; and he had not been there to respond to her 
 tender yearning. Those little arms had been stretched 
 out in vain. And she had been sorry — sorry even to 
 sickness — a creature so delicate — so frail. He hated 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 249 
 
 himself for the iron pride that had made him leave his 
 house rather than brook the presence of his disobedient 
 daughter. 
 
 It was after dark when he arrived at Place. Mr. 
 Danby and Adela were in the hall to receive him when 
 he alighted from his carriage. It was too late for any 
 reasonable man to expect to see children about ; yet he 
 felt a pang of disappointment because there was no 
 sound or sign of a child's presence. 
 
 " Well," he said fretfully, addressing himself to Danby, 
 after bestowing an automatic kiss upon Adela, "your 
 telegram has brought me back, you see. If the child 
 wants to see me I am here to be seen ; but no doubt she 
 is fast asleep and happy— dreaming of her doll." 
 
 "I don't know that. It is the want of happy sleep 
 that has told upon her. She was doing wonderfully well, 
 the lungs getting quite sound again, and her strength 
 picking up, when she began to fret at not seeing you. 
 She was always asking to see you. Where was Sir John ? 
 Where was the kind old gentleman ? Why wouldn't he 
 
250 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 come to see her ? Was he angry with her for being ill ? 
 We explained that you were in London, would be back 
 soon — but it was no use. However, I attached little 
 imj)ortance to the matter. She was Avell cared for ; 
 she had her nearest and dearest. She would soon be 
 strong enough to travel. We all talked to her cheerily 
 of the return home. Children are so fond of change of 
 any kind. It was only yesterday that I began to get 
 anxious, and that NichoUs began to fear a brain 
 attack. She had slept badly for two or three nights — 
 had awakened, frightened and crying bitterly. Yesterday 
 evening she became very feverish, and in the night she 
 was delirious, and we weve all uneasy about her. Hence 
 my telegram. I hope I did not do wrong." 
 
 "You should have telegraphed sooner," said Sir John, 
 warming his feet at the hall fire, with his back to Danby, 
 " that's where you did Avroug. I should like to see the 
 child at once, if she is awake." 
 
 "I'll run and see," said Adela. "j\Ir. Kicholls went 
 up to her room ten minutes ago, so I dare say she is 
 awake." 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 251 
 
 " Is she so bad that NichoUs thinks it needful to see 
 her in the evening ? " asked Sir John, gloomily. 
 
 " One cannot be too careful in such a case ; and Nicholls 
 is always careful. That child's brain is like touch-paper." 
 
 xidela came running downstaii's. Moppet was wide 
 awake and dying to see him, she told Sir John. 
 
 He waited for no further in^itation, but hastened to 
 that stately room where so many notable men and women 
 of the AVest country had been entertained, and which was 
 now occupied by a little figure which seemed absurdly 
 small in the great carved four-post bed, an antique piece 
 of furniture that looked like a Buddhist temple enshrining 
 a very small idol under a tall and splendid canopy. 
 The satin curtains of that ponderous four-poster had been 
 embroidered by the women of the Penlyon family when 
 homely Anne was queen. 
 
 There was a young woman sitting on the further side of 
 Moppet's pillows, almost hidden by the curtain, and Mr. 
 Nicholls was leaning against the tall, carved column at 
 the foot of the bed, looking down at the little creature 
 with the flushed face and over-bright eyes. 
 
252 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 She turned her head at the opening of the door as 
 quickly as a bird. 
 
 " Sir John ! Sir John ! Sir John ! " she cried, clapping 
 her feverish hands. 
 
 He Avas beside her in a moment. He leant over the 
 bed — not even looking at the face on the other side — 
 and clasped the tiny form to his breast. 
 
 " My darling ! " he murmured, " my darling child ! " 
 
 "Why did you go away just when I began to get 
 well ? " asked the innocent voice, so pure and true in its 
 silver-sweet sound, that it seemed like the very spirit 
 of truth itself, a something supersensuous and divine. 
 " Why did you go away ? I wanted you so badly." 
 
 " What, Moppet," he asked hoarsely, " when you had 
 your mother ? " 
 
 " Ah, but I wanted you too. I told you at Christmas 
 I love you next to mother. And I wanted you very 
 much, and it made me dream and cry in the night because 
 you wasn't here." 
 
 " Ah, Sir John, you can't play any tune you like upon 
 such fiddle-strings as those," said NichoUs, gravely. 
 
BY HIS SIDE AS HE MADE HIS MORNING ROUND OF THE GARDENS 
 OR THE HOME FARM. 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 255 
 
 " My darling ! my darling ! " 
 
 That was almost as much as the old man could say- 
 He sat down on the bed, and jMoppet nestled into his 
 waistcoat, as she used to do beside the library hearth, 
 in the dusky hour before bedtime. She nestled there, 
 and patted his strong hand Avith her tiny paw, and 
 lauo-hed and cried in a breath. 
 
 " Why did you go away ? " she asked. 
 
 " God. knows. Because I was a fool, perhaps." 
 
 " This is mother," said Moppet, plucking the curtain 
 aside, and revealing a pale sweet face, with timid ques- 
 tioning eyes. " You don't know mother ? " 
 
 Sir John stretched his hand across the bed, and the 
 mother's hand clasped it, and the fair pale face bent down 
 over it, and a daughter's lips kissed it again and again, 
 fondly. 
 
 " Now you know mother," said Moppet. " You wouldn't 
 have never known her if it hadn't been for me, but I 
 didn't be ill on purpose, you know," explained Moppet. 
 
 No other word of peace or of forgiveness was ever 
 
256 The Christmas Hieelings. 
 
 spoken between Sir John Penlyon and his only surviving 
 child ; but from that hour Sibyl Morland assumed her 
 rightful position in her father's house. He was not a 
 man who liked long speeches or fuss of any kind ; and 
 he took no pains to explain to his kindred or his friends 
 how it was that the daughter who had been lost was 
 found again ; but assuredly that episode of the Christmas 
 hirelings drew him and his old friend Danby nearer to 
 each other than they had ever been yet, with a friendship 
 that neither time nor circumstance could weaken. 
 
 Mrs. Morland took her place as a daughter in her 
 father's house, but not the first place in her father's heart. 
 That was occupied. Moppet had crept into the citadel 
 by a postern gate, as it were, and reigned supreme there. 
 Sir John's affection seemed to have skipped a generation, 
 and the grandfather's love for his grandchild was \\armer 
 and deeper than ever the father's love had been. jMoppet 
 was his Benjamin, the child of his old age, who had come 
 to him when life was dull and barren for lack of love. 
 
 Whoever might ostensibly govern at Penlyon Place, 
 ]\loppet was the real master of the house, inasmuch as 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 259 
 
 she goTerned Sir John. Happily she was a beneficent 
 ruler, full of sweet carefulness and tender thought for 
 others, which increased with every year of her life. In 
 all his walks and rides Moppet was Sir John's favourite 
 companion, taking to her Shelty as a duckling to the 
 farmyard pool, or trotting with little untiring feet by his 
 side as he made his morning round of the gardens or the 
 home farm. Before she had been three months at Place 
 she knew the history, character, and capability of every 
 horse in the stable ; and she became a little wonder in 
 her capacity for remembering and pronouncing the Greek 
 or Latin names of tropical plants and flowers in the long 
 range of hot-houses. 
 
 Laddie was despatched to an excellent preparatory 
 school at Truro till such time as he should be old enough 
 to go to Eton ; and a governess was engaged to help Mrs. 
 Morland in the care of her two little girls, such a dear 
 old governess, warranted not to teach too much, and to 
 see that they changed their shoes, being no other than 
 that very Miss Peterson summarily dismissed by Mrs. 
 
260 The Christmas Hirelings. 
 
 Hawberkj and whose dowdy figure moving quietly about 
 the house and garden made Sir John Penlyon feel as if 
 he were twenty years younger, by recalling the days when 
 his motherless daughters were little children. 
 
 Visitors at Penlyon Place said that Lassie grew 
 prettier every day, and that young lady's stately manners 
 and graceful little airs were the subject of much admira- 
 tion from casual observers, while Moppet's personality 
 was disposed of off-hand as " interesting." 
 
 " I heard Lady St. Kew tell her husband that I 
 was a plain likeness of the Shrimp Girl," she told 
 her grandfather after an invasion of distinguished 
 visitors. " You don't mind my being plain, do you ? " 
 she asked Sir John, her deep-set eyes searching his 
 countenance. 
 
 " Mind ? Why in my eyes you are the loveliest little 
 woman in England." 
 
 Mrs. Hawberk, having made up her mind that her 
 eldest daughter was to inherit a fortune as Sir John's 
 only niece, was somewhat disappointed at the turn affairs 
 had taken ; but Adela's less worldly nature was incapable 
 
The Christmas Hirelings. 261 
 
 of any such imworthy feeling, and when her uncle helped 
 to bring about her marriage with the man she loved by 
 a gift of five thousand pounds she felt that she had every 
 reason to be satisfied and grateful. 
 
 And what of bachelor Danby, without kindred or 
 belongings in the world, drifting lightly down the river 
 of^life, like a withered leaf upon a forest stream ? Who 
 shall say that Mr. Danby has neither home nor home ties 
 when they see the welcome that awaits his coming, the 
 grief that attends his going, at Penlyon Place ? 
 
 THE END. 
 
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