“What are you doing, Cathy?”

“Musha, it’s to Mass I’m going, to ask the Mother of God to give ye many happy Christmases the like of this, Miss Honora.”  And Catherine’s arms were about her.

“Oh, it’s Christmas, Cathy, isn’t it?  How could I have forgotten it!”

“Now go to sleep, honey.  Your aunt and uncle wouldn’t like it at all at all if ye was to make noise in the middle of the night—­and it’s little better it is.”

Sleep!  A despised waste of time in childhood.  Catherine went to Mass, and after an eternity, the grey December light began to sift through the shutters, and human endurance had reached its limit.  Honora, still shivering, seized a fleecy wrapper (the handiwork of Aunt Mary) and crept, a diminutive ghost, down the creaking stairway to the sitting-room.  A sitting-room which now was not a sitting-room, but for to-day a place of magic.  As though by a prearranged salute of the gods,—­at Honora’s entrance the fire burst through the thick blanket of fine coal which Uncle Tom had laid before going to bed, and with a little gasp of joy that was almost pain, she paused on the threshold.  That one flash, like Pizarro’s first sunrise over Peru, gilded the edge of infinite possibilities.

Needless to enumerate them.  The whole world, as we know, was in a conspiracy to spoil Honora.  The Dwyers, the Cartwrights, the Haydens, the Brices, the Ishams, and I know not how many others had sent their tributes, and Honora’s second cousins, the Hanburys, from the family mansion behind the stately elms of Wayland Square—­of which something anon.  A miniature mahogany desk, a prayer-book and hymnal which the Dwyers had brought home from New York, endless volumes of a more secular and (to Honora) entrancing nature; roller skates; skates for real ice, when it should appear in the form of sleet on the sidewalks; a sled; humbler gifts from Bridget, Mary Ann, and Catherine, and a wonderful coat, with hat to match, of a certain dark green velvet.  When Aunt Mary appeared, an hour or so later, Honora was surveying her magnificence in the glass.

“Oh, Aunt Mary!” she cried, with her arms tightly locked around her aunt’s neck, “how lovely!  Did you send all the way to New York for it?”

“No, Honora,” said her aunt, “it didn’t come from New York.”  Aunt Mary did not explain that this coat had been her one engrossing occupation for six weeks, at such times when Honora was out or tucked away safely in bed.

Perhaps Honora’s face fell a little.  Aunt Mary scanned it rather anxiously.

“Does that cause you to like it any less, Honora?” she asked.

“Aunt Mary!” exclaimed Honora, in a tone of reproval.  And added after a little, “I suppose Mademoiselle made it.”

“Does it make any difference who made it, Honora?”

“Oh, no indeed, Aunt Mary.  May I wear it to Cousin Eleanor’s to-day?”

“I gave it to you to wear, Honora.”