What quality was it in Honora that compelled Bridget to stop her ironing on Tuesdays in order to make hot waffles for a young woman who was late to breakfast?  Bridget, who would have filled the kitchen with righteous wrath if Aunt Mary had transgressed the rules of the house, which were like the laws of the Medes and Persians!  And in Honora’s early youth Mary Ann, the housemaid, spent more than one painful evening writing home for cockle shells and other articles to propitiate our princess, who rewarded her with a winning smile and a kiss, which invariably melted the honest girl into tears.  The Queen of Scots never had a more devoted chamber woman than old Catherine,—­who would have gone to the stake with a smile to save her little lady a single childish ill, and who spent her savings, until severely taken to task by Aunt Mary, upon objects for which a casual wish had been expressed.  The saints themselves must at times have been aweary from hearing Honora’s name.

Not to speak of Christmas!  Christmas in the little house was one wild delirium of joy.  The night before the festival was, to all outward appearances, an ordinary evening, when Uncle Tom sat by the fire in his slippers, as usual, scouting the idea that there would be any Christmas at all.  Aunt Mary sewed, and talked with maddening calmness of the news of the day; but for Honora the air was charged with coming events of the first magnitude.  The very furniture of the little sitting-room had a different air, the room itself wore a mysterious aspect, and the cannel-coal fire seemed to give forth a special quality of unearthly light.

“Is to-morrow Christmas?” Uncle Tom would exclaim.  Bless me!  Honora, I am so glad you reminded me.”

“Now, Uncle Tom, you knew it was Christmas all the time!”

“Kiss your uncle good night, Honora, and go right to sleep, dear,”—­from Aunt Mary.

The unconscious irony in that command of Aunt Mary’s!—­to go right to sleep!  Many times was a head lifted from a small pillow, straining after the meaning of the squeaky noises that came up from below!  Not Santa Claus.  Honora’s belief in him had merged into a blind faith in a larger and even more benevolent, if material providence:  the kind of providence which Mr. Meredith depicts, and which was to say to Beauchamp:  “Here’s your marquise;” a particular providence which, at the proper time, gave Uncle Tom money, and commanded, with a smile, “Buy this for Honora—­she wants it.”  All-sufficient reason!  Soul-satisfying philosophy, to which Honora was to cling for many years of life.  It is amazing how much can be wrung from a reluctant world by the mere belief in this kind of providence.

Sleep came at last, in the darkest of the hours.  And still in the dark hours a stirring, a delicious sensation preceding reason, and the consciousness of a figure stealing about the room.  Honora sat up in bed, shivering with cold and delight.

“Is it awake ye are, darlint, and it but four o’clock the morn!”