"Lucy!" he cries. "Harold!" she
gasps. The aunt says nothing, for she has swooned. At this point
the story stops to explain how Harold came to be in
knickerbockers. He had either been falsely accused or else he had
been a solicitor. Anyhow, he had by this time more than paid for
his folly, and Lucy still loved him. "Get in," she says, and
drives him home. Next day he leaves for New Zealand in an
ordinary lounge suit. Need I say that Lucy joins him later? No;
that shall be left for your imagination. The End.
So much for the first story. The second is an "i'-faith-and-stap-
me" story of the good old days. It is not seasonable, for most of
the action takes place in my lord's garden amid the scent of
roses; but it brings back to us the old romantic days when
fighting and swearing were more picturesque than they are now,
and when women loved and worked samplers. This sort of story can
be read best in front of the Christmas log; it is of the past,
and comes naturally into a Christmas number. I shall not describe
its plot, for that is unimportant; it is the "stap me's" and the
"la, sirs," which matter. But I may say that she marries him all
right in the end, and he goes off happily to the wars.
We want another story. What shall this one be about? It might be
about the amateur burglar, or the little child who reconciled old
Sir John to his daughter's marriage, or the ghost at Enderby
Grange, or the millionaire's Christmas dinner, or the accident to
the Scotch express.
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