“But if you can’t help him?”

“I can.  If I couldn’t do anything else, I could make a little corner of home for him, and he will need it.  He needs me.  We have been together always, till just this last year when he had to go away, and now I’m not going to leave him to shift for himself.”

“Do you know what you are undertaking, Cicely?” he asked her gravely.

“I think I do,” she answered quite as gravely.  “We shall have to go into a horrid little flat, somewhere in the wrong end of town, and pinch and scrimp to get along.  I hate it, hate the very idea of it, and I wish I could stay here; but it is all out of the question.  If papa ever needed the good of a daughter, it’s now, and I must meet him when he lands.  I must go, Cousin Will, so please don’t make it any harder for me than it is anyway.”

And Billy, as he watched her face and heard her words, forbore to urge, even though he dreaded for Cicely the future of which she spoke so bravely.  The crash had been more disastrous and final than he had been led to suppose from the earlier reports.  Both he and Theodora would have been only too glad to keep Cicely in their home; but they knew the girl was right, her place was with her father.  Accordingly, they ceased to oppose; and only did their best to make the rest of her stay with them as happy as possible and to help her in her plans for her future home.  Together with the McAlisters, they chose their Christmas gifts for her carefully, wisely, even merrily, for fun had a large share in Christmas at The Savins; but only Theodora knew that Billy had bought a small annuity for Cicely, and that the papers were to be given to her, not in the basket on Christmas eve, but when she was quite alone, on Christmas morning.

“I’ve a good deal more than we are likely to use,” Billy had said rather apologetically, one night; “and even if it doesn’t support her, it may as well help along a little.  Cicely is a good girl, and I wish there were more like her.”

And Theodora’s assent was a hearty one.

“Phebe, how long is Mr. Barrett going to stay up here?” Theodora asked, a day or two before Christmas.

“I don’t know.”

“I thought he was going, to-morrow morning.”

“Well, is he?”

“Probably not, inasmuch as I heard him ask you to go to drive with him, in the afternoon”

“Well, what difference does it make?  He’s free to stay at the hotel as long as he likes; isn’t he?”

“Yes, if he doesn’t starve in the meantime.  But it seems to me it would be well to ask him here to Christmas dinner, if he is going to be in town.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Why not?” Theodora asked, in some surprise.

“Christmas is no day to ask strangers here.”

“But Mr. Barrett isn’t a stranger.  Besides, he has been so good to Cicely that I think we owe him a little hospitality.”

“You must do as you like, then,” Phebe said curtly, and she marched away out of the room, leaving Theodora to knit her brows m anxious perplexity.