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"'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?"