we all joined in wondering how the time had gone, and what lots of fun Christmas would bring with it.  I had my own particular share of delight, for was there not a certain prospect of papa and mamma coming to the Park to take me home?  My little cousins, too, were looking forward to home directly after Christmas; but their mamma could not come and fetch them.  She had been well enough to travel, and would be in England very soon now; that is, in the little island down in the south, you know, where the invalids go.  She would get a nice home ready for them there and then, as she said in her letters, “have the delight of calling back all the chicks under her wings again!”

Well, it was just all these things that we were talking about over our lesson-books at the school-room, when our attention was caught by two figures coming up the drive in the mist.  Such a foggy afternoon as it was, all the dead leaves hanging yellow and dripping from the trees!  It was not till they got quite up to the house that we saw that the two men were going to give us some music.  One had some bagpipes and the other a kind of horn, and, of course, all thought of lessons went out of our heads when we heard them begin.  What fun it was to listen, and to watch their queer grimaces and antics, as they danced about to their own music!

But we had not been enjoying this long when a terrible thing happened.  Oh, little reader, it makes me shudder now!

You must understand that our school-room was on the ground-floor, but raised a good way from the ground; a separate room built out from the house, the roof sloping out under the windows of the day-nursery.

[Illustration:  GIVE US A COPPER!]

The first thing we thought of was calling the little ones to hear the music; but when I proposed it, Alick said he was sure they knew all about it, he could hear their voices.  Lottie declared that that was impossible; we never heard anything from the nursery unless the window was open.  Just then the men began to beg, and Alick ran off to get some pence.  Grandmamma said they were to have a cup of the servants’ tea, and Alick went to the kitchen to ask for it.  When he came back, he told us that Susette was down there getting baby’s supper, and that Jane was teazing her about her “brothers the players!”

“Oh, Alick!” cried Lottie, “then that’s it!  Murray and Bertie have got the window open to hear better, and in all this fog and wet!”

Alick was just going to laugh at her for being such an “old fidget,” when we were startled by a loud cry, and the sound of something falling down the roof.  At the same moment we saw Harry rushing up to the house—­he was just home from his lessons at the curate’s—­throwing his arms about in the most excited way.

“Oh, it’s Murray tumbled out of window?” cried Lottie.  And away we all rushed to the front door, feeling sick with fear.