“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 be 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 faire 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 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 northwest 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 stupid—­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.”

“And the only house you can remember is the house on the cliff?”

“Where 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 very surprising?” he asked, smiling down at her.

“It seems rather surprising you should ever have been born,” replied Moppet, frankly:  “you are so veway 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 Christmas 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!”

“HOW BRIGHT SHE WAS, HOW LOVELY DID SHE SHOW”

From ‘Mohawks’

To be a fashionable beauty, with a reputation for intelligence, nay, even for that much rarer quality, wit; to have been born in the purple; to have been just enough talked about to be interesting as a woman with a history; to have a fine house in Soho Square, and a mediaeval abbey in Hampshire; to ride, dance, sing, play, and speak French and Italian better than any other woman in society; to have the finest diamonds in London; to be followed, flattered, serenaded, lampooned, written about and talked about, and to be on the sunward side of thirty; surely to be and to have all these good things should fill the cup of contentment for any of Eve’s daughters.