"I met him on purpose," said Honoria calmly; "perhaps he prefers to be met by accident." "Do you think he and Mr. Burton have quarrelled?" Mrs. Drew asked gravely. "I don't think he is the kind of person to quarrel. He might hate in an inward way; but he would never get it out comfortably. I don't know, however, that it would be the less disagreeable to be hated by him on that account." 66 Honoria, you are talking very wildly, my child," began Mrs. Drew gently. "She is talking in a very unladylike manner," came icily from Mrs. Moxon. Honoria looked from one to the other of them. "You both mean the same thing, I suppose,' ," she said; "but I must try to endure your reproaches, because you'll see I shall turn out to be quite right. Mr. Behrens has simply felt a slight shock, and it will take a good big wave to knock him over. As for Mr. Frederic Temple, he is already swallowed up and done for, and we shall not see him here again." "Are you sure, Honoria?" "No, I am not sure. How can I be sure when I have not been told anything? But I have eyes, and I can use them. I believe," she turned upon Mrs. Drew, you are going to begin to be sorry for the young man. " "No," said Mrs. Drew, with some spirit. "I'll wait until I have some cause." "Well," said Honoria, "you've been sorry for the other one-the cousin-so long, that it is quite time the cousin's cousin had a turn. As for Mr. John Temple, I fancy we shall see him here very soon, and you won't be required to sigh any more on his account." She would say no more, and it must be admitted that her guesses, if they were unaided, were pretty shrewd; but on one point she was in error: Mr. John Temple was never again received as a guest at Yarrow House. After a day that dragged itself away in a slow monotony of discomfort, the morning broke a little more cheerfully. Tilly, at least, assured herself that Fred Temple was not worth a second day of grief: her feeling towards him was one of abiding indignation and hot scorn, and she caught herself now and then thrilling with an exultant sense of freedom which was immediately quenched in shame when she looked at her uncle. "He cared for him," she said to herself, "and I did not, and that makes all the difference. If I had loved him, perhaps I'd have expected less of him; perhaps even have made excuses for him now." But that view of the question seemed so impossible, that in a sudden revolt she fed the flame of her anger till it glowed anew. Mr. Burton looked as if he had slept badly, and his face was lined and seamed; but he talked without reference to yesterday's events, and he seemed to suffer a faint revival of interest in his breakfast. The day was sunny and warm, and he noticed its brightness. "I think I'll go along to the house," he said; "there's plenty to see to." "You will let the workmen go on?" she said, with a fear at her heart. It concerned her pride and her anger against Fred that the house should be finished, and that his desertion should make no difference in their plans. "Do you want to live in it?" he asked. "Yes. I think we can't do better than get into it as soon as possible." She had shrunk from the thought of the big, dreary mansion before; now she was eager to inhabit it. If she could rouse him to the old interest in his wealth, part of the score against Fred would be wiped out. "Well, they can finish it, and, if we don't care about living in it, we can let it be. It won't hurt to keep it shut up awhile." "We'd better get it all ready, at any rate," she said, speaking with determined cheerfulness. "I've set my heart on giving a house-warming in that big drawing-room; I've even had thoughts of coaxing Cousin Spencer up to town-think of that!" He looked at her in a dull kind of wonder. Lass," he said, "I believe you had no real love for him in your heart? "No," she assented, hanging her head. "I have searched it, and I find I had none. I thought I had; but it isn't there." "Well," he said, as if the thought had struggle to be clear, struggle to be clear, "that makes it easier.' a "Yes; easier and harder. A great deal harder to forgive him." "I've been thinking," he went on, "that maybe he was counting on that money?" Undoubtedly," she said, with a renewal of scorn, "he was counting on the money, though he was willing to take me with it. But," she went on, reading the struggling thought in his face, "there isn't any way of giving him any, even to help him out of difficulties that his marriage was to smooth away. He couldn't take it now, and, even if he could, I wouldn't let you give it, dear. We must leave him alone. He has left us each other. We want nothing more but just to be together, you and I." He seemed to acquiesce. He got up out of his chair, moving stiffly. "I'll just daunder along by myself," he said. He reached out a hand and felt along the mantelpiece for his pipe. She filled it and gave it to him. "You'd better leave word that, if Behrens should call, he'll find me there, if I'm not back before he comes. And you'll come, my lass, when ye're ready?" "Oh yes, I'll come," she said. "Do you think I'm going to let you choose the papers alone? We were to settle the decorations to-day, and it's most important that I should be there." "I'll just take a look round," he said, "and I'll fix on nothing till you come." She saw that he wished to go alone, and she went with him to the door to see him set out. The day had ripened into brilliant sunshine, and its cheer insensibly comforted her. Her heart was following him very tenderly as she watched him down the quiet street. He walked slowly, and the spring gaiety seemed to flow past him as if he were an alien and had no share in it. At the corner he turned and waved a hand to the girl standing out on the pavement, heedless of Mrs. Moxon and the proprieties. She waved back again, both hands fluttering out to him. The day looked even brighter when he turned the corner and vanished, as if his forlorn, bent figure were somehow a reproach to its radiance. all is the last Monday, because on this day Judas Iscariot was born. In the two calendars from which these days are selected, both the fifteenth and seventeenth are marked as fatal; but, in addition, the sixth, seventh, ninth, sixteenth, and twenty-second are equally bad, according to one or other calendar. Fortunately the remainder of the month is allowed to run its course without danger. Notwithstanding the ill-luck with which the course of the month is marked, it is gratifying to note that If cold December gave you birth- The stone prescribed to be worn in this month, in order to ensure success in all undertakings, is the ruby, which is said to "discover poison, and ensure the cure of all evils springing from the unkindness of friends." Following births, in the natural order of things, we have marriages, and it may interest those who wish to marry to know that the luckiest day and month for marriages is by superstitious people held to be the thirty-first of December. This superstition is specially prevalent in Scotland, and some years ago, as the result of researches, it was ascertained that, while in the eight principal towns in Scotland the number of marriages averaged twenty-five per day, on the thirty-first of December there were, as a rule, as many as five hundred. Probably, this may be accounted for by the fact that "Advent, marriage doth deny," and the season being ended, enthusiastic couples make up for lost time. In the time of Romulus December was the tenth month of the year, hence is derived the portion of the word "Decem" (ten); it was under the protection of the goddess Vesta. By Romulus December was assigned thirty days; this was reduced to twenty-nine by Numa, and increased to thirty-one by Julius Cæsar. Winta Monath was the name by which it was known to the Saxons, until their conversion to Christianity, when they gave to it the name of Helig, or Holy Month, with reference to the celebration of the Nativity on the twenty-fifth. They also termed it Guil Erra, which means the former or first guil. The feast of Thor, which was celebrated at the winter solstice, was called guil from "iol" or "ol," which signifies ale, and is now corrupted into yule. The festival in former times appears to have been continued through part of the next month. Of the weather to be expected at this season of the year we are told as follows: Bright Christmas, light wheatsheaf; Dark Christmas, heavy wheatsheaf. "A green Christmas makes a fat churchyard," though, as a Cumberland newspaper sagely observed, "Even a green Christmas is not half so black as it is painted." We are getting used nowadays to green Christmases, and the mortality certainly does not appear to be singularly heavy. I know nothing about Saint Barbara beyond the fact that she is well known and properly revered in Russia. Her day is the fourth of December, and the Russians have a saying that "Saint Barbara makes bridges of ice." One of the most curious customs anciently observed in connection with the anniversary of a saint's death was that which on Saint Nicholas's Day, December the sixth, was formerly observed at Salisbury Cathedral, or Old Sarum, as it is called. This consisted of the choice of a boy Bishop from among the choristers, whose term of office lasted from this date until Innocents' Day, twenty-two days later. The boy was invested with the full authority of a genuine prelate, dressed in episcopal robes and mitre, and carried also the pastoral crozier. His fellow choristers, for the time named, acted as prebendaries, and were obliged to render due homage and respect as such. The evening before Innocents' Day there was a special service, attended by the juvenile prelate and his equally juvenile clergy in solemn procession, chanting hymns as they marched solemnly up the aisle to the choir. There the little Bishop took his seat upon the episcopal throne, surrounded by his youthful clergy, when a service was rendered in remembrance of the massacre, by Herod, of "all the male children that were in Bethlehem." Multitudes used to assemble to witness the spectacle, and so great was the crush, that special enactments were passed to prevent any undue crowding of the little fellows. If the boy elected as prelate died during his term of office, his funeral was conducted with all the pomp and ceremonial observed on the demise of a veritable prelate, and he was buried in his full canonicals. There is still to be seen a monument to one who actually died during his brief period of official life, carved in stone, with mitre on his head, and crozier in his hand, while two angels The support a canopy over his head. custom was suppressed in England in July, 1542, but lingered for some time after. The statutes of Old Saint Paul's School (1518) direct that every Childermas, the pupils shall go to Saint Paul's to hear the Childe Bishop's sermons. They add that after he be at high mass, each of them shall offer a penny to the Childe Bishop. Formerly the distribution of holiday gifts, in Germany, took place on Saint Nicholas' Eve, but in order to invest the festival of Christmas with additional importance in the eyes of children, it was transferred to the Christmas tree. Saint Nicholas, whose day is thus celebrated, was created Archbishop of Myra in Greece, in the year 342 AD, and was marked by the benevolence of his disposition, which took the form of protecting orphans and seamen in distress, on which account churches near the sea are, in many instances, dedicated to him. The saint was also the patron of scholars, clerks, and robbers. The former is due probably to the fact that he was an educated man, but why the latter is a mystery which has never yet been explained satisfactorily. Saint Nicholas is credited with having proved a father to dowerless maidens, to whom he flung purses of gold though their chamber windows! once The eighth of December was observed with some ceremony by the Catholic Church, as the date of the conception of the blessed Virgin Mary. The fourteen days from the eleventh to the twenty-fifth of December used to be called Halcyon Days, and were supposed to be, from their calm and tranquil character, an exception to the season. The thirteenth is Saint Lucy's or Saint Lucia's Day, and commemorates a young lady saint, who obtained a high character for a devout and charitable life. She died in the year 304, and has always since been held in great veneration. Her name appears in the English and Romish calendars. The fifteenth is the first of the last three Ember Days of the year. The sixteenth, as those conversant with the calendar will no doubt be aware, is marked "O! Sapientia." As far as I have been able to gather, this refers to an anthem once sung in the English and Romish Churches on this day. December twenty-first brings us to the festival of Saint Thomas. This is a holy day in the calendars of both English and Romish Churches, and was formerly observed with due ceremonies. On this day, it was customary in the distant past for women to go about begging money, and in return to present the donors with sprigs of palm and bunches of primroses. This custom was termed "going a goading." In Warwickshire, the poor people were in the habit of begging corn from the farmers, which was termed "going a corning. going a corning." Both customs are now quite obsolete. There is an old weather saying, which tells us that a frost beginning on Saint Thomas's Day will last for three months. According to Herrick's "Hesperides," the Christmas festivities began with doling on Saint Thomas's Day, when the villagers went round for doles or contributions for the Yule feast, these being thrown into a common fund, and at the end of the day were apportioned or doled out by some responsible person, usually the clergyman. I now come to the feast of the year, and one which in some form is celebrated all over the world. I allude to Christmas, December twenty-fifth. The word Christmas is taken from Christ and the Saxon word Masse, signifying a mass and a feast. Thus we get the word Christmas, or Christ's mass, or the feast of Christ. The learned lexicographer, Dr. Johnson, says, the word is derived from Christ and Mass, "the day on which the nativity of our Blessed Saviour is celebrated by the particular service of the Church." The learned have long been at variance as to the precise day on which Christ was born, but that which has most generally been received as the correct one is the twenty-fifth of December. Christmas has always been a joyful and festive season, and the great time for all manner of games and fun, while amongst our ancestors every day until Twelfth Night, and often till Candlemas, was more or less a repetition of the same enjoyments. The first traces on record of the observance of the festival at Christmas are to be found about the second century, in the time of the Emperor Commodus, the man who desired to be called Hercules, fought with the Roman gladiators, and boasted of his dexterity in killing wild beasts in the amphitheatre. He was also in the habit of sprinkling so much gold dust on his hair and appearing bareheaded in the sunshine, that his head glittered as if surrounded with sunbeams, and gave him the appearance of a god. He was poisoned in the thirty-first year of his age by Martia, whose death he had prepared, and as the poison did not operate quickly he was strangled by a wrestler. Some writers, however, place the institution of the rites of Christmas prior to the reign of Commodus, and at the time of Antoninus, surnamed Pius. He it was who said with Scipio, "I prefer the life and preservation of a citizen to the death of one hundred enemies." In his reign it is said that Telesphorus (A.D. 137) ordered divine service to be celebrated and an angelic hymn to be sung on Christmas Eve. Diocletianus, the ferocious Roman Emperor, who rose from the position of a common soldier to the supreme sovereignty of the Roman Empire, leaves us proof sufficient of the existence of the festival during his time, for at Nicomedia, when he was holding his Court, he discovered a multitude of people gathered together in one of the churches celebrating Christ's nativity, and thereupon ordered that all the doors should be shut and the church set fire to. Thus the church and the people were reduced to ashes. This was the commencement of what was called the "tenth_persecution," which lasted ten years. By that one act alone six hundred persons perished. The first Christians solemnised Christmas on the first day of January; but on the day set apart to the Feast of the Tabernacles they decorated their churches and houses with green boughs, as Jennings, in his "Jewish Antiquities," affirms, as a memorial that Christ was actually born at that time. prevails. This custom of decoration still Father Chrysostom observes that “it was but of a little while that Christmas (twenty-fifth of December) had been celebrated at Antioch, as a distinct feast from the Epiphany (sixth of January), and that the use thereof came from the West." The Armenians made but one feast of the two as late as the twelfth century, and the Greeks still keep Epiphany, with the birth of Christ, on Christmas Day. John, Archbishop of Nice, in an epistle on the subject, relates that, at the instance of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, Pope Julius procured a strict enquiry to be made into the day of our Saviour's birth, which being found to be on the twenty-fifth of December, the feast began then to be celebrated on that day. It is also reckoned that Christ's baptism by John took place on the sixth of January, when he was about thirty years of age. The English have always observed the time with great rejoicings, and in the early periods of Christianity in this country, when the devotions of the morning were over and the day declining, it was usual to light candles of large size and to bring to the fire the Yule log, or Christmas block. In the Tudor period the King, Nobles, Courtiers, everyone down even to the meanest beggar in the streets, went a-mumming in masks, representing the heads of goats, of stags, or of bulls, and sometimes dressed in skins after the manner of savages, and bearing no little resemblance to wild animals. In every parish a man was chosen, called the "Lord of Misrule," and he used to collect a large band of idle fellows who, dressed in various bright colours and covered with ribbons, went through the streets and lanes, beating drums and blowing trumpets. The Grand Captain of Mischief acted as Master of Revels at the houses of the great in the land, and was crowned with much solemnity. He commonly entered upon his duties by explaining to the company that he absolved them from all their wisdom while the reign of fun and folly should last. Hollingshead mentions a gentleman named George Ferrars, a lawyer, a poet, and an historian," who supplied the office well in the fifth year of Edward the Sixth, and who was rewarded by the young King with princely liberality. The festive season was observed by most lavish expenditure at the Inns of Court, where the Lord of Misrule was often termed the Christmas Prince or the King of Christmas. A continual round of applause runs its course through the twelve days forming the feast of Yule, though formerly, as before mentioned, the twelve days were prolonged to Candlemas Day, when, and not till then, the last remnants of Christmastide were pulled down and put away for another year. Some idea of the ceremony with which the Yule log was brought in may be gathered from Herrick's verses : Come, bring with a noise, The Christmas log to the firing; And drink to your heart's desiring. With the last year's brand Light the new block, and For the good success in his spending, On your psalteries play That sweet luck may Come, while the log is a-tending. Drink now the strong beer, Cut the white loaf here, The while the meat is a-shedding; To the rare mince pie, And the plums stand by, To fill the paste that's a-kneading. The Ancient Britons, Anglo-Saxons, Romans, Scandinavians, Greeks, and Egyptians all held a great feast at Christmas time, which was in no small degree similar to the Christmas feast of the present day. The Yule log was burnt, the mistletoe was cut down by the Druids with great solemnity, while feasting and rejoicing went on throughout the land. The dishes most in vogue at the Christmastide of our remote ancestors were, for the breakfast and supper of Christmas Eve, the noted boar's head, with an apple or orange in his mouth, and the remainder garnished most profusely with rosemary. Then there were the plum porridge or plum puddings, and the mince pies, originally constructed in a long shape to represent the manger which served for a cradle at Bethlehem. The breakfasts of the time were of a substantial kind, and brawn, mustard, and malmsey figured on the well-filled board, while those partaking of the abundance before them were entertained the while with music. Among the sports, which were formerly common at this joyous season, were those of gaming, music, juggling, dancing, hunting owls and squirrels, together with foolplomb, hot cockles, jack puddings, scrambling for nuts, apples, and other things; trying the chance at a stick moving on a pivot with an apple attached to one end and a candle at the other, and he who unfortunately missed his bite from the apple, burnt his nose at the candle. There were forfeits, interludes, blind-man's-buff, and mock plays. The strong beer was broached, and the black-jack went plentifully about with toast, sugar, nutmeg, and good Cheshire cheese. The hacken (great sausage) must be boiled by daybreak, or else two young men must take the cook by the arms and run her round the market-place till she was ashamed of her laziness. The small farmers provided "good drink, a blazing fire in the hall, brawn, pudding and souse, and mustard with all, beef, mutton, and pork, shred or minced pies of the best pig, veal, goose, capon, and turkey, cheese, apples, and nuts, with jolie carols." The English gentleman had all his tenants and neighbours to enter his hall by daybreak; all ate heartily, and were welcome. The Romans held their Saturnalia at this time of the year, in commemoration of the peaceful and happy period in which Saturn flourished, which the poets have celebrated as the Golden Age. The lowest slaves had a temporary equality with their masters, |