She was, however, aroused on the blessed morning of Christmas Day by something that was very real.

‘A merry Kismas, sister Freda,’ shouted a sharp little voice into her ear, and before her eyes were half opened brisk little feet were stamping at her bedside, and the same voice authoritatively enouncing, ’Put me up, Dane, I ‘ull be put up.’

‘I beg your pardon, miss,’ said the nurse, who stood in the doorway, ‘but Master Harold would come, and my lady isn’t up, and—­’

‘Never mind, let him in,’ said Freda, sitting up in bed, and opening her arms to receive the rosy, wilful, handsome child, who did not know how he had supplanted her.

‘A merry Kismas!’ he repeated, returning Freda’s kisses by pulling off her night-cap, and letting down her long hair before she knew what he was about.  ’Now, I’ll dive ‘ou to Tewey.’

‘Master Harold! don’t, sir!’ said the nurse.

But Master Harold was jumping on the pillow behind his sister, making reins of her hair and horses of her head in no very gentle fashion.

‘I sha’n’t give you what I brought you from London if you pull my hair,’ said Freda, catching the bare, firm, sturdy leg of the small tyrant who called her sister.

‘Is it soldiers?’ asked the child, suddenly tumbling down before her.

She caught the little fellow in her arms, and told him that if he would go away whilst she dressed he should have the present.  After some demur he consented, having first informed Freda that ’’ittle Minnie, and Winnie, and Dot, and baby’ were all coming to dinner.

‘A family party!’ groaned Freda, when the child was carried away by its nurse, ’myself the only rightful member of the family, and probably the only one who will feel as if she doesn’t belong to it.’

Freda got up and looked out upon the fine park and the hills beyond.  She sighed involuntarily.

‘Why should I sigh,’ she said.  ’I am happier than when it was my home,—­happier, and, I hope, more useful.  My father doesn’t want me,’—­here she paused.  Perhaps that father really did want her, for she, at least, loved him, and his wife did not; and she was beginning to be conscious, daily more and more conscious, of the exceeding preciousness of love.

Breakfast passed, with the same effort to feel at home on her part, and attempt to keep up a conversation on that of Lady Mary, as had the dinner of the previous day.

Harold made a diversion by bursting into the room to ask for his soldiers.  He, at least, was quite natural, and entirely spoilt.

Immediately after breakfast they drove to church.  It was delightful to Freda to see the good vicar in the reading-desk, and his wife in the pew beneath.  She felt at home again for the first time.  For the first time, also, she really listened to the worthy man’s somewhat dry sermon, and strove to feel ‘in charity with all men’ on that blessed day.  She thought once or twice of a sermon Rowland