“‘Christmas, 1893.’ Those last two figures are a bit crooked; aren’t
they, Dol?” said a tall, soldierly fellow, who was no longer a boy, yet
could scarcely in his own country call himself a man.
He read the date critically, having fixed it as the centre-piece in a
festive arch of holly and bunting, which spanned the hall of a mansion
in Victoria Park, Manchester.
“I believe that’s better,” he added, straightening a tipsy “93,” and
bounding from a chair-back on which he was perched, to step quickly
backward, with a something in gait and bearing that suggested a cavalry
swing.
“‘Christmas, 1893,’” he read musingly again. “Goodness! to think it’s
two years since we laid eyes on old Cyrus, and that he has landed on
English soil before this, may be here any minute—and Sinclair too. I
guess”—these two words were brought out with a smile, as if the speaker
was putting himself in touch with the happiness of a by-gone time—“I
guess that ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ will look home-like to them.”
And Neal Farrar, just back for a short vacation from Sandhurst Military
College, twice gravely saluted the gay bunting with which his Christmas
arch was draped, where the Union Jack of old England kissed the
American Stars and Stripes.
“I say!” he exclaimed, turning to a tall youth, who had been inspecting
his operations, “that Liverpool train must be beastly late, Dol. Those
fellows ought to be here before this. The Mater will be in a stew. She
ordered dinner at five, as the youngsters dine with us, of course,
to-day, and it’s past that now.”
“Hush! will you? I’ll vow that cab is stopping! Yes! By all that’s
splendid, there they are!” and Dol Farrar’s joy-whoop rang through the
English oaken hall with scarcely less vehemence than it had rung in
former days through the dim aisles of the Maine forests.
A sound of spinning cab-wheels abruptly stopping, a noise of men’s feet
on the steps outside, and the hall-door was flung wide by two pairs of
welcoming hands.
“Cyrus! Royal! Got here at last? Oh! but this is jolly.”
“Neal, dear old boy, how goes it? Dol, you’re a giant. I wouldn’t have
known you.”
Such were the most coherent of the greetings which followed, as two
visitors, in travelling rig, their faces reddened by eight days at sea
in midwinter, crossed the threshold.
There could be no difficulty in recognizing Cyrus Garst’s well-knit
figure and speculative eyes, though a sprouting beard changed somewhat
the lower part of his face. And if Royal Sinclair’s tall shoulders and
brand-new mustache were at all unfamiliar, anybody who had once heard
the click and hum of his hasty tongue would scarcely question his
identity.
The Americans had steamed over the Atlantic amid bluster of elements,
purposing a tour through southern France and Italy. And they were to
take part, before proceeding to the Continent, in the festivities of an
English Christmas at the Farrars’ home in Manchester.
“Oh, but this is jolly!” cried Neal again, his voice so thickened by
the joy of welcome that—embryo cavalry man though he was—he could bring
out nothing more forceful than the one boyish exclamation.
Dol’s throat was freer. Sinclair and he raised a regular tornado in the
handsome hall. Questions and answers, only half distinguishable, blew
between them, with explosions of laughter, and a thunder of claps on
each other’s shoulders. When their gale was at its noisiest, Royal’s
part of it abruptly sank to a dead calm, stopped by “an angel
unawares.”
A girl of sixteen, with hair like the brown and gold of a pheasant’s
breast, opened a drawing-room door, stepped to Neal’s side, and
whispered,—
“Introduce me!”
“My sister,” said Neal, recovering self-possession. “Myrtle, I believe
I’ll let you guess for yourself which is Garst and which is Sinclair.”
“Well, I’ve heard so much about you for the past two years that I know
you already,
all but your looks. So I’m sure to guess right,” said Myrtle Farrar,
scrutinizing the Americans with a pretty welcoming glance, then giving
to each a glad hand-shake.
Royal’s tongue grew for once less active than his eyes, which were so
caught by the golden shades on the pheasant-like head that for a minute
he could see nothing else. Even Cyrus, who was accustomed to look upon
himself as the cool-blooded senior among his band of intimates, tingled
a little.
“You’re just in time for dinner—I’m so glad,” laughed Miss Myrtle. “A
Christmas dinner with a whole tribe of Farrars, big and little.”
“But our baggage hasn’t come on yet,” answered Garst ruefully. “Will
Mrs. Farrar excuse our appearing in travelling rig?”
“Indeed she will!” answered for herself a fair, motherly-looking
English woman, as pretty as Myrtle save for the gold-brown hair, while
she came a few steps into the hall to welcome her sons’ friends.
Five minutes afterwards the Americans found themselves seated at a
table garlanded with red-berried holly, trailing ivy, and pearl-eyed
mistletoe, and surrounded by a round dozen of Farrars, including
several youngsters whose general place was in schoolroom or nursery,
but who, even to a tot of three, were promoted to dine in splendor on
Christmas Day.
“Well, this is festive!” remarked Cyrus to Myrtle, who sat next to him,
when, after much preparatory feasting, an English plum-pudding,
wreathed, decorated, and steaming, came upon the scene. Fluttering amid
the almonds which studded its top were two wee pink-stemmed flags. And
here again, in compliment to the newly arrived guests, the
“Star-Spangled Banner” kissed the English Union Jack.
“Say, Neal!” exclaimed Cyrus, his eyes keenly bright as he looked at
the toy standards, “wouldn’t this sort of thing delight our friend Doc?
By the way, that reminds me, I have a package for you from him, and a
message from Herb Heal too. Herb wants to know ‘when those gamy
Britishers are coming out to hunt moose again?’ And Doc has sent you a
little bundle of beaver-clippings. They are from an ash-tree two feet
in circumference, felled by that beaver colony which we came across
near the _brûlée_ where you shot your bear and covered yourself with
glory. Doc asked you to put the wood in sight on Christmas Night, and
to think of the Maine woods.”
“Think of them!” Neal ejaculated. “Bless the dear old brick! does he
think we could ever forget them and the stunning times we had in camp
and on trail?”