“When I was a little girl,” she explained, when Hare had taken a chair on the hearth and she had chosen another with, a high, carved back, in which she sat with her silken ankles crossed and the tips of her slipper toes resting on a leopard-skin which the Admiral had brought back from India—­“when I was a little girl we always spent Christmas Eve in this house by the sea instead of in town.  We were all here then—­mother and dad and dear Aunt Pet, and we hung our stockings at this very fireplace—­and now there is no one but Miss Danvers and me, and uncle, who lives up aloft in his big house across the way, where he has a lookout tower.  I always feel like calling up to him when I go there, ‘Oh, Anne, Sister Anne, do you see anybody coming?’”

She was talking nervously, with her cheeks as white as a lily, but with her eyes shining.  The Admiral glanced at Hare.  The young man was drinking in her beauty.  But suddenly he frowned and turned away his eyes.

“It was very good of you to ask me over,” he said, formally.

That steadied Petronella.  Her nervous self-consciousness fled, and she was at once the gracious, impersonal hostess.

The Admiral glowed with pride of her.  “She’ll carry it off,” he said to himself; “it’s in her blood.”

“Dinner is served,” announced Jenkins from the doorway, and then Miss Danvers came down and greeted Justin, and they all went out together.

There was holly for a centerpiece, and four red candles in silver holders.  The table was of richly carved mahogany, and the Admiral, following an old custom, served the soup from a silver tureen, upheld by four fat cupids.  From the wide arch which led into the great hall was hung a bunch of mistletoe; beyond the arch, the roaring fire made a background of gleaming, golden light.

To the young surgeon it seemed a fairy scene flaming with the color and glow of a life which he had never known.  He had lived so long surrounded by the bare, blank walls of a hospital.  Even Petronella’s soft green gown seemed made of some mystical stuff which had nothing in common with the cool white or blue starchiness of the uniforms of nurses.

They talked of many things, covering with, their commonplaces the tenseness of the situation.  Then suddenly the conversation took a significant turn.

“I love these stormy nights,” Petronella had said, “with the snow blowing, and the wind, and the house all warm and bright.”

“Think of the poor sailors at sea,” Hare had reminded her.

“Please—­I don’t want to think of them.  We have done our best for them, uncle and I. We have opened a reading-room down by the docks, so that all who are ashore can have soup and coffee and sandwiches, and there’s a big stove, and newspapers and magazines.”

“You dispense charity?”

“Why not?” she asked him, confidently.  “We have plenty—­why shouldn’t we give?”

“Because it takes away from their manhood to receive.”