“Well, I think not,” said Mrs Dale, “we are better, perhaps, as we are.”

At this moment the squire and his sister-in-law were on much more friendly terms than had been usual with them, and he took her reply in good part, understanding her feeling.  Therefore, he pressed his request, and succeeded.

“I think you’re wrong,” he said, “I don’t suppose that we shall have a very merry Christmas.  You and the girls will hardly have that whether you eat your pudding here or at the Great House.  But it will be better for us all to make the attempt.  It’s the right thing to do.  That’s the way I look at it.”

“I’ll ask Lily,” said Mrs Dale.

“Do, do.  Give her my love, and tell her from me that, in spite of all that has come and gone, Christmas Day should still be to her a day of rejoicing.  We’ll dine about three, so that the servants can have the afternoon.”

“Of course we’ll go,” said Lily; “why not?  We always do.  And we’ll have blind-man’s-buff with all the Boyces, as we had last year, if uncle will ask them up.”  But the Boyces were not asked up for that occasion.

But Lily, though she put on it all so brave a face, had much to suffer, and did in truth suffer greatly.  If you, my reader, ever chanced to slip into the gutter on a wet day, did you not find that the sympathy of the bystanders was by far the severest part of your misfortune?  Did you not declare to yourself that all might yet be well, if the people would only walk on and not look at you?  And yet you cannot blame those who stood and pitied you; or, perhaps, essayed to rub you down, and assist you in the recovery of your bedaubed hat.  You, yourself, if you see a man fall, cannot walk by as though nothing uncommon had happened to him.  It was so with Lily.  The people of Allington could not regard her with their ordinary eyes.  They would look at her tenderly, knowing that she was a wounded fawn, and thus they aggravated the soreness of her wound.  Old Mrs Hearn condoled with her, telling her that very likely she would be better off as she was.  Lily would not lie about it in any way.  “Mrs Hearn,” she said, “the subject is painful to me.”  Mrs Hearn said no more about it, but on every meeting between them she looked the things she did not say.  “Miss Lily!” said Hopkins, one day, “Miss Lily!”—­and as he looked up into her face a tear had almost formed itself in his old eye—­“I knew what he was from the first.  Oh, dear! oh, dear! if I could have had him killed!” “Hopkins, how dare you?” said Lily.  “If you speak to me again in such a way, I will tell my uncle.”  She turned away from him but immediately turned back again, and put out her little hand to him.  “I beg your pardon,” she said.  “I know how kind you are, and I love you for it.”  And then she went away.  “I’ll go after him yet, and break the dirty neck of him,” said Hopkins to himself, as he walked down the path.