Thanks all for reading and/or reviewing, and the support that poured unexpectedly forward for the move. The opinionated cat and I are now settled, and I am a qualified expert in international moves. Should this ever be a scenario in which you find yourself, I'm here and waiting with advice. Also with an unintentionally long chapter! Hopefully it makes for easier reading than it did writing.

The last of the Swallowgate Christmases was a quiet one. They trimmed the house with holly and ivy, recruiting Alastair to weave it into the hard-to-reach places, and scrounged the ingredients for if not all their habitual Christmas treats then a respectable number.

'I can't believe it's almost at an end,' said Poppy as they took turns stirring a Christmas pudding. ' If this term was any indication, the spring term will fly by. Where do you think we'll be this time next year?'

'I was going to say home,' said Nan, who was threading a paper chain over the scrubbed pine table, 'but we'd talked of teaching, Di and I, and the Glen school has almost certainly been placed by now, so perhaps it will be elsewhere after all.'

'You'd go back for Christmas though,' said Mara, taking the pudding from Poppy, who made no effort even to pretend she was in control of this operation.

'You'll find a way back together,' said Alastair placidly, 'the odd thing would be if you didn't.'

That bolstered them and they went on with their allotted chores humming snatches of Christmas music until Poppy finally despaired of her role in the making of the pudding, sat down at the harp and said, 'Shall we have a proper sing then?'

They lingered late into the winter that year, absorbing, or so they said to one another, as much of the remaining time at Swallowgate as they could and on what Donne had once called 'the year's midnight' they exchanged gifts quietly over the crackling of the fire and the wailing of the wind down the chimney. Faith had sent a sheaf of papers that proved once unrolled to be a series of sketches because, ran her Christmas greeting, I hadn't the time for watercolours. These captured the girls who pinned hopes at the stray, even incidental moments of their Swallowgate years. Here they sat rapt at Nan's feet as she unfolded an economy, her arms outstretched and fingers splayed as she narrated things unknowable to the viewer; there Mara fed a fire with flowers as the girls indulged in civil revelry around the flames. In Which a Pilgrim Comes to Call was homage to an October morning so long ago as to have been almost forgotten. There was Poppy saucer in hand, Pilgrim half-in the door, and there too was Mara's look of unbelief at the sight of the cat, Faith's impish eyes bright with entertainment, and the twins at the scrubbed pine table, tacitly thriving, so the sketch hinted, on this tableau for girls and cat. But the unanimous favourite showed them sewing; the blue dachshunds watching over them from the mantle, Mara with her mouth full of pins, the shepherdesses on the table, Di poring over a pattern book, Faith on the window seat, her needle dangling forgotten from the spine of a French Grammar, and Nan and Poppy labouring over some indeterminate project. Faith had captioned it in her unruly hand, The Girls who Pin Hopes.

For the rest there was more restraint even than in previous years. Excepting –for old time's sake –that bit of carving from Mara to Nan (it was salt and pepper cellars this year, done to look like ink bottles) their gifts to one another were comprised largely of possessions that they had seen the others admire. Poppy began it, with her gift of a gilded copy of Persuasion to Nan, embellished only by the inscription on the fly-leaf. 17/12/17 For Catkin at Christmastime, with apologies for my own imperfect letter writing and with the promise it will be well short of 7 years before we meet again. Mouse

'As a memento,' said Poppy, 'and so that you can pour over it at leisure without worrying about getting it back to me.'

Such overt sentiment might have reduced them to teariness had the room not been seized with laughter at the revelation they had all had the same thought.

'I was going to say much the same, Mouse,' said Nan, handing her a clumsily wrapped packet that proved to be the drop-spindle of her childhood.

'You'll miss it, surely,' said Poppy, wide-eyed and owlish as ever.

'Not half so much as I'll miss you,' Nan said.

'We'll have to be sure and see lots of each other,' Di said, 'but in the meantime, these will have to make up the difference.' She handed Mara a ream of what proved to be the pictures that the previous years' theatre-excursions had occasioned. Like Faith's sketches, these too were unframed, and vouched not for set pieces but those heartbeat moments an outsider might have overlooked. Poppy poised between stairs looking elegant as was possible with Pilgrim draped around her like a fur stole, Nan radiant, her hair half-pinned for an evening out. There was Faith on the window seat with no thought for the creases her gown would incur looking impatient to be off, the circlet of pearls on her hand resplendent in the moonlight that haloed her. Nan and Poppy again, arms linked and eyes creased in laughter over a joke the camera couldn't record. Unlooked for emerged one of Mara, hair loose and chin raised in defiance, the fire of her Beatrice discernable even through the photograph.

'There are none of you,' Mara said to Di, even as she hugged the pictures close.

'There will be time enough for that,' said Di with a shrug, 'another year, when Jem's come home and demanded the camera back. Remind me.'

'I'll hold you to that,' said Mara.

'Good,' said Di impishly, 'after all, we're bound to see each other again.'

'Yes, I expect one way or another you're right,' said Mara then shielded the photos and ducked as Di threw a pillow her way with expert aim.

The journey to Ingleside was fraught. The hard winter meant the train didn't arrive at Kingsport until half an hour after its departure time. The knowledge that this was well in excess of the statutory eleven minutes that allowed travellers to reclaim their fare was tempered by the further knowledge that the red tape and postage involved in reclaiming it would likely exceed the fare in the first place. It was tempered still further by the sight of Halifax Harbour, ruined and black, the boat standing like skeletons among the debris.

'To think we were headed into this,' said Di.

'Don't,' Nan said emphatically. Thereafter she was heard to observe that she had never seen the little boat to P.E. I. so crammed with people.

'Hardly surprising though,' said Mara as they fought their way on board, tickets clutched tight in mittened fists. 'Everyone who possibly can go is going, and no wonder.' Easterly wind notwithstanding she leaned against the rail and waved the wrack of the harbour out of sight.

The crossing was an uneven one and when the boat finally came in at the Charlottetown Harbour the sun was sinking into the water. Not liking the idea of walking through the gloaming to the train station, Alastair secured a carriage and they drove, only to discover that P. E. Island's winter had been no less hard than the one they had endured in Kinsport and this train too was delayed. They stood in anxious hopefulness on the platform until the cold sunk into their bones and drove them into the waiting room, where at intervals an increasingly dispirited station master appeared to announce dolefully, 'You're train is now expected at…' the time stretching ever later until the little party grew to dread his appearance. At seven o'clock by the station clock, as Alastair was beginning to suggest trying the nearby booth for sandwiches in lieu of supper, the signal flashed green, a lone blinking eye in the veiled landscape. Hopefulness rose up in them like bubbles and then in booming voice, 'The train now at Platform 1 is the Northbound train for New London, calling at Warrander Chase, Milton Station, Miltonvale Park, Hunter Ford, Wheatly, Wheatly Cross…'

On it went, all 40 stops, some of them ones that the Ingleside twins had forgotten existed. At seven o'clock though, hungry, headachey and exhausted with the efforts of the day, the fact that the Northbound train for New London was clearly the late-night milk train diminished their elation not a bit. They hastened outside and clambered eagerly onto the train, gratified to find that the lateness of the hour and the nature of the stopping train had rendered the coaches nearly empty. They secured a compartment and braced themselves to add another two and a half hours onto the day. In the end it was nearer three hours. There was signal failure at Springfield.

The sight of Ingleside lit up in warm invitation was more than compensation for their trials though. They descended the hill to the house and it seemed all the lights must be on in glad expectation of their arrival. Then, best of all, the riotous, jocund war-whoop that had so influenced Jem's, and there was Mother running to meet them, arms outstretched and hair billowing streamers of silver and amber in the lamplight.

'You,' she said, engulfing them all in one swift bone-crushing hug, her children, children's sweethearts, and friends at once, 'are a sight for sore eyes, all of you. Was the train declassified? Your father thought it must be when word came that the train was delayed. And when you still weren't here by nine we rang again and heard about the signal failure –there is nothing more stressful than finding yourself at the mercy of an idle train in the middle of nowhere. I've experienced it more often than I care to remember. What about the boat crossing? They can be awful this time of year. No,' raising a hand and fending off their answers deftly, 'don't tell me. Come into the warm first. You're like russet-apples, all of you, and you must be starving. Susan has a feast waiting worthy of Borden himself, though you mustn't tell her I say so. She's put out with him this week because the flour ration has increased. Also the newspaper is reporting the possibility of an introduction of something it's calling 'Daylight Savings Time' in the New Year and she thinks it's a terrible idea.'

'We've had that for years,' said Mara as laughing, Anne led them into the house.

'Have you?' she asked as she went, 'and there hasn't been seething opposition to the unnatural meddling with God's Time? That's Susan-speak, by the by, not my name for it.'

There was more laughter from her children, their breath puffing before their noses like smoke-dragons.

'Not that we've noticed,' said Nan. 'Tell her I'm for it. I think it's strange that there are parts of the year where you and I run different clocks, mums.'

Then they were inside, shucking their coats, the very walls of Ingleside welcoming them. There was the usual signal-to-noise static as three or four greetings went forth into the breech at once, all of them bell-bright and jocund.

'Hallo the house!'

'We've come home!'

'Gilbert, Susan, Rilla, they're here!'

In answer, over the inevitable tangle of scarves, dropping of gloves, the wrangling with hats and hatpins, and the thrumming and ankle-weaving chaos of a cat that was most definitely Jekyll that day, 'Are they here?'

'Have they arrived?'

'Won't be a minute –must just finish –' whatever further salutation might have emanated from one Dr. Blythe's office was abruptly curtailed by a wail announcing the arrival of Jims on the harried arms of Rilla. She came tearing into the hall to meet her sisters, arms brimful of recalcitrant war-baby and half a knitted sock. These hindrances notwithstanding she pulled both Nan and Di into as much of a hug as was feasible and in the ensuing chaos Anne, who had run out without a coat in her jubilation, rubbed warmth back into her fingers and watched them gloatingly. It had been a long time since Ingleside had felt this full.

'This,' said Rilla into her sisters' shoulders, 'is every reason I never wanted to go to university.'

More laughter and Nan said, 'Nonsense Spider, you haven't lived until you've been stranded for at least half an hour in an empty field miles from civilization.'

'The tea, Mrs. Dr. dear,' said Susan serenely and with no notice for the merry riot occurring in her hall, 'is ready whenever the children want to have it. I've laid it all out on the coffee table in the parlour. They'd better have it sharpish though, or that cat might take a notion to eat it himself. He's Jekyll today and you know how he loves milk.'

In the event though, none of the girls who pinned hopes touched the milk, a fact missed by the chattering Inglesideans until Gilbert appeared and took stock of the tea tray.

'What,' he said, elbowing his way between the twins and helping himself to tea, 'no milk for any of you? Didn't Susan say, ours is most eminently drinkable.'

'We couldn't possibly!' said Mara, startled.

'Not without Mouse,' amplified Nan.

'It wouldn't be right,' Di said.

Gilbert nodded, made show of adding a generous dollop of milk to his own tea and said on consideration, 'Should I take it on that basis that Faith is abstaining from milk too, wherever she is?'

'Gracious no.'

'I shouldn't think so.'

'I hope not –she'll have quite enough to put up with as it is.' This last from Mara.

'Girls,' said Gilbert in tones of affected despair, 'that makes absolutely no sense.' Then his eyes crinkled and his mouth broadened into the Blythe smile, flashing teeth and good humour. 'I'd expect nothing less,' he said to them.

It wasn't until the following day that well-rested and stomachs heavy with food the Ingleside party finally divided naturally into pockets and groups as long-separated kindred spirits came together with outpourings of news and tried to cram a season's worth of sentiment into an afternoon. Thus after dinner found Gilbert and Alastair competing at chess under the watchful eyes of Gog and Magog because as reasoned by Gilbert, 'Much better not venture into the fray until they remember we're here. Otherwise you only make yourself dizzy keeping up with the turns in the conversation.'

Across the way, sitting in the window-seat of the Ingleside parlour's front window, Di and Rilla traded gossip over the sheet they were basting while a sleepy Jims wedged himself into the crook of Rilla's elbow and made grabs for their hair as the spirit moved him. Nan and her mother had forgathered by one of the inglenooks for what Mara thought must be a long-overdue catch-up if their mutual loquacity was any indication –to say nothing of the frequency of the letters they exchanged.

'That will be your vanishing trick Nan wrote about,' said Susan Baker appearing at her side with a mug of hot tea. This declaration failing to process, Mara raised her eyebrows in inquiry.

'She said you stepped into the background,' said Susan elaborating and pressing the mug on Mara. 'Which made it sound not remotely sensible. Seeing it's different though,' said Susan by way of a generous afterthought. Had it been one of the girls who pinned hopes the temptation would have been to invoke Doubting Thomas and the blessedness of people who believed without seeing. It was Shirley's Mother Susan though and Mara retreated to the security of truthfulness.

'I hadn't realised I did it,' she said, balancing the mug precariously on her knee and cupping both hands round it.

'No, well. Nan did wonder about that. You're not to mind the chip,' This appeared to be another apologetic afterthoughts, 'but I thought –well it's Shirley's favourite, that one. For the colour I think.'

'Do we interfere?' asked Nan, with a nod in the direction of Mara and Susan by the fire.

'No,' said Anne thoughtfully, 'no I rather think that's Susan's attempt at an olive branch. Besides,' this in conspiratorial whispers, 'I want a word with you, just us two, and I can't have it if you're helping ward off the Spanish Inquisition.'

Nan laughed, then tilting her head backwards the better to look up at her mother, said cosily, 'Oh? What about?'

Anne cut her eyes at Susan and Mara discussing animatedly things inaudible from the distance of the inglenook by way of an answer.

'You remember that letter you sent back in September?'

'Remind me,' said Nan, 'I feel I've done nothing but write letters –to schools mostly –in-between essays and counting the stitches on hospital gowns.'

Anne made a sympathetic noise somewhere behind her teeth, and abandoning her knitting, slid onto the floor the better to pull Nan's head onto her shoulder.

'This would have been at the start of term,' she said, smoothing Nan's hair. 'Full of lasts, you said, and how to make a fish stew without milk and fragments of half-remembered Medieval History.'

'Oh!' as memory came rushing back.

'You were right about blood sticking; Highland Sandy made it a marriage vow, to judge from the details. He said –'

'He what?' Nan shot upright like a lightning bolt, her chin narrowly missing her mother's nose as she whipped round to face her.

'I was getting to that. It involves bloodletting and a Gaelic rhyme that I won't attempt because I'll mangle it, and if the benevolent Ariel at Susan's elbow doesn't notice, her brother will. I gather it's a custom about as old as God.'

'It would be,' said Nan. 'But why call it temporary?'

'I think because, the way Highland Sandy talked about it, it didn't sound as if anyone would acknowledge it as such now, except to concede the tradition of it. You might get it, he thought, as an addendum to a church service among the families with deep enough running roots and Gaelic to remember it, but not usually on it's own. Though he did say he'd have credited it –his word not mine –were it up to him. Of course he also freely acknowledged that a broad survey would vouch for his subscription to any number of what he calls old ways.' Anne shrugged, smiled, and looked with interest at her daughter, whose face proceeded to register pleasure, surprise and that old-world awe she had written about in quick succession.

'Of course it would,' said Nan as her world settled back into normal orbit. 'I mean, of course he does. Fetches and waterhorses and probably selkies too –'

'Dare I ask?'

'Seal-people, if I understood Poppy right. She knew of course –if you'd seen the look of her, mums…'

'You did think it was something of the kind.'

'Well I swithered,' said Nan, 'to use a Scots word if ever there was one. Mostly I thought it must be something like that but other times I thought that if it was, surely Mara would have said something about it.'

'Would you have done, if it were you I mean?'

'Well I –yes of course, I'd have said to you and Di.'

'And Faith?' Anne raised her eyebrows inquiringly and caught uncertainty flash across Nan's face as flickering as the fire in the nearby hearth.

'Oh well –I suppose that would depend,' said Nan, twisting her fingers together.

'On whether it involved a minister or an old-world superstition involving blood and a Gaelic prayer, you mean?'

'Apparently so.'

Briefly mother and daughter laughed. Then Anne eased her little girl's head back onto her shoulder and swapping gossip for mothering asked in spite of herself, 'Why so worried Kitten? When you wrote you said you hoped you were right, and you weren't far wrong, but there's a line just there,' Anne touched her index and middle fingers to the junction above Nan's nose, 'and another there,' repeating the gesture, 'that create an eleven and in the unforgettable words of Davey Keith, I want to know why. I've missed our talks.'

Nan shook her head in an effort to dislodge the eleven and smiled. 'I wouldn't say worried, exactly,' she said, 'and I am glad –I meant what I wrote to you about wanting Mara to be ours – I've just been thinking. You remember how upset I was when Jerry left without formalizing anything between us? He kept saying that he hated the idea of me standing still for the rest of my life if anything should happen to him, and I didn't understand. I couldn't have understood then, I think. The war was supposed to be over by Christmas, and it would be a great, glorious, triumphant and easy English victory. Jerry was wiser. The war went on and I began to catch him up by inches, this awful realisation that if something happened to him I didn't want to know how the next act of the play unfolded, and I shoved the knowledge into the far corner of my mind because the realisation was frightening and total. Then Shirley left and I'd catch Mara scanning the sky for aeroplanes or writing a letter last thing in the evening because it was the first spare moment she'd had all day, and…I don't know, have there ever been moments in your life where you've felt someone to be holding a mirror up to you?'

'We all feel like that in spots,' said Anne comfortably she hoped. A shiver that had no right being there though was tracking its way down her spine and into her soul. 'It's like that with you then, is it?'

'Mm. Suddenly I couldn't push the knowledge of Jerry and his importance into a corner anymore because it was always in front of me in Mara, knowing that if anything…happened…if for some awful reason Shirley didn't…couldn't… come back…that that was the one thing in the world that could take all the fire and energy out of her, and it frightened –still frightens – me, because I know I'd be just the same. If I stop to think on it too long I become afraid for her, and for them, and for me, who for most changes with the quarter hours. And suddenly the idea of waiting to formalise an engagement until the world has let out a collective breath of recovery and he's home makes the most sense of anything I've heard in four years –including all the literary theory I've had to imbibe.'

'I always hoped for that kind of love for you,' said Anne dreamily, 'for all of you. But I never imagined –never intended –when I built those castles in the air over your cradles, that you'd know the sting and ache of it as well as the joy. But then I blinked and you grew up and the world rushed in, my best efforts to stop it notwithstanding. We never do want hurt to reach people we care about, especially family –and somewhere in that space where I blinked Jerry and Mara have become that to you every bit as much as we are.'

'Mm. Mums, I've missed this.'

'You have?' Anne's effort to sound indignant was hampered by the fact she was threading an arm around Nan's shoulders even as she spoke. 'I feel distinctly left out, what with your letters full of analysis of radical revolutionary writers, fireside revelries, and economies, especially as I've somehow contrived to never yet hear one. Tell me one now?'

Nan laughed, crushed herself against her mother's side in an attitude she had long ago outgrown, and obliged. When she had finished there was a silence as downy and deep as the snow in which it emerged that not only Anne but the rest of the house had stopped to listen, even Dr-Jekyll-and-Mr-Hyde, who had ceased to be Hyde long enough to curl up on Mara's knee to her evident exasperation and Susan's equally discernible surprise.

'That,' said Gilbert with satisfaction, 'is something like. Let's not go another year without hearing another.'

There was a chorus of agreement, as with this sentiment at least, the company unreservedly approved.

Christmas Eve dawned a white glare of snow, softened not at all by the feather-down of drifting flakes that swirled around the house and rendered Ingleside worthy of a snow globe. The people within spent it gathered by the fire. Having taken the day off from Red Cross work they sat mired in books, mugs of tea and over on the window seat an Othello tornement was in session.

Much later, the day long over and the fire smoored, Mara watched the Ingleside windows for signs and sounds of Christmas morning. Spot the difference, she thought wryly as a band of stars shimmered crystalline against the glass. They had been to church, had heard the Christmas story out of Luke, and had come away with the Merediths as noisome, chattery and full of good will as any deity could hope for. None of that lessened the watery feeling of being Elsewhere for over the holiday. She was just beginning to wish for Alec -how keenly he'd have enjoyed this adventure! -to evoke something of home for her, when there came a pattering of feet, and then the telling scent of apple-blossom as Nan scrabbled up onto the window seat and joined her in vigil.

'You couldn't sleep either?' she asked as she settled.

'It's that bit odd, not being home for Christmas.'

'It would be,' said Nan sympathetically. 'I think at least half the magic is in the traditions you observe.'

Mara tilted her head in inquiry and said, 'Was it like that then for you, the year it looked like you'd be stranded with us?'

'Oh well, not for any failing of yours,' said Nan flailing, 'only because…'

'It was out of your control?'

Nan nodded, then with one fine-boned finger, she traced the shadow of a scar where it gleamed faint but discernable in the moonlight, red and angular against the curve of Mara's wrist.

'Just there, is it?'

'Trust you to guess.'

'Researched more nearly,' said Nan with a smile. 'I wish you'd said.'

'There are limits,' said Mara with a shrug, though her fingers reached for Nan's and gave them a squeeze all the same.

'In believing in fairy stories? Not in this family; we grew up on them. You must have noticed by now.'

'I meant more about bringing people into your family.'

Nan's fingers closed tight around Mara's. 'You must know you'd be that whoever you married' she said softly but no less fiercely for that. 'You and Mouse both.'

At this juncture Di appeared in the doorway clad in a blue flannel dressing gown and arms wound tight around her torso for warmth.

'You do realise,' she said taking in the spectacle of the two girls curled like cats in front of the frosted window, 'that Susan never banks the kitchen fire Christmas Eve for exactly this reason?'

'Also,' said Alastair groggily as he appeared behind her, 'that it's getting on for three in the morning?'

'Because Mara has ever kept reasonable hours,' said Di very dryly.

Alastair shrugged. 'I thought maybe it would be different with strangers.'

'It may well be.' Di said.

'We couldn't possibly vouch for that,' said Nan.

Deftly she slipped off the windowsill, pulling Mara with her by the crook of one elbow. 'Com on,' she said, 'if Di's right it will be warmer in the kitchen and we can fortify ourselves with something warm to drink besides. Whoever built this house did it without much thought for foregathering by the windows when the snow was coming down like feathers on the wing.'

In the kitchen they crowded around the wood-burning stove where the embers of a dying fire were faintly visible. Di jostled around them opening cupboards and taking down mugs and chocolate powder while Nan rekindled the fire until it snapped and crackled with vim.

'What were you doing up anyway?' Alastair wanted to know, accepting a mug from Di in his turn. 'Come to see the oxen kneeling?'

'At this hour?' said Mara, amused, 'Hardly. It's at midnight that happens.'

'Of course it is,' Di said, as if discussions of kneeling oxen passed in her world for normal conversation starters.

'Someday,' said Nan, 'I'm going to find a superstition you don't subscribe to, Ariel.' She left the fire and joined them at the kitchen counter, bracing her elbows against the stone lip of it. Opposite her Alastair made a noise far back in his throat that conveyed simultaneously amusement and unbelief. 'That'll be a long day coming,' he said and elbowed his sister affectionately.

'If you want to know,' said Nan, 'we were dwelling on absences and ghosts. They're always more keenly felt this time of year.'

Alastair whistled softly and a ripple of unspoken agreement moved around the counter. It didn't help, that as Nan had said –was it really only days ago –to Mother, the war was meant to have ended four Christmases ago. The realisation seemed to strike them all in the same moment, exacerbating rather than diminishing their collective memories of the young men they had sent to war, not forgetting Faith, of course. She would have had a joke tucked at the corner of her mouth for just such an occasion as this. As it was they were saved by Rilla, who manifested in the kitchen door looking ghostly in a high-collared white flannel nightdress, a bristly and equally white blanket trailing impotently from her arms whence it had slipped in her flight downstairs. She was clutching a kettle in one hand and a child's hot water bottle in the other, but all she said as she took in the spectacle of them was, ' What have I got to do to get a name like that? I'm so very tired of 'Spider.''

She set the kettle boiling on the stove and muscled her way in-between her sisters and friends, her elbows at jutting angles to her person, the better to secure her place. Di reached across her for a mug off the rack and transferred the last of the chocolate into it before pushing it in front of her baby sister. Rilla took it, relaxing into her place and said over the lip of the stoneware with raised eyebrows, 'Well?'

'You've got to get reams of verse by rote first,' said Mara laughing.

'Oh yes,' said Nan, 'that too,' then ducked laughing to avoid the tea towel Mara threw at her. It caught Nan on the shoulder even so and Rilla laughed.

'Well a nighean, will you try it?'

'The poetry maybe,' said Rilla as she nursed her cocoa. She was on the verge of saying more when the kettle hissed to life and a high kittenish whimpering came from overhead.

'Jims!' said Rilla, snatching the kettle off the stove and filling the hot water bottle expertly. She was skittering out of the kitchen before Jims could work himself up to outright crying, disappearing out of the kitchen with a self-remonstrative 'I knew I ought to have brought him down!'

At the kitchen counter four faces disappeared into four sets of arms as they strove to stifle their amusement.

'I shouldn't laugh,' said Nan at last, 'but it gives me such a jolt to see Spider blossoming into this capable, competent young woman that if I don't laugh I'm liable to weep protestations against time for moving at a rate of knots.'

'It makes my soul glad,' said Anne Blythe, 'to know it isn't only me that feels that way about it.' Gracefully she slipped around the table bestowing kisses on the wakeful children, pink-eyed with lack of sleep , buoyed on hopefulness and so like the young women she and her own friends had once been, before taking the place her daughter had so lately vacated.

'We're into tomorrow,' she said warmly, 'and that wholly justifies me in wishing you Happy Christmas.'

It was. Much laughter was occasioned by an issue of Punch Gilbert had found and stuck in Di's sock sporting a poem that soundly derided the rail service -Alastair and the girls who pinned hopes asserting it to be by far the gift of the hour. Better than that Santa Clause came to call shortly after breakfast resplendent in red and sporting something of a lopsided beard. If Jims was scandalized to see him kiss Mrs. Dr. Blythe, no one else gave it a thought. They exchanged gifts and good-wishes, hushed but heartfelt, and rejoiced at seeing the dining room so full. They talked across and around one another and Mara afterwards said to Nan as they tidied the plates away, 'How you could possibly rival my tribe of harridans for noise is beyond me -but you've nearly done it.'

'Years of practice,' said Nan affectionately. 'You haven't seen it with the boys at home.'

They left with real regret, and promises on both sides to keep in touch and visit often.

'And bring Mouse next time!' said Gilbert as they leaned out the window for a final goodbye. They assured him they would do their utmost to secure this for him, and then they were hurtling -no declassified train on this journey -into 1918 and the term to come.