struggle, but never so heavy and dragging a pain as she knew that
Christmas Day.

She had been trying in many unsuspected ways to relieve her father's
grim misery,--a misery of which his gaunt face told the tale,--and
although he had said that he wished for "no flubdub about Christmas,"
she really could not resist making some recognition of a day which found
all other homes happy. When the doctor came in for his midday meal, Kate
had a fire leaping in the old grate with the marble mantel and a turkey
smoking on a table which was set forth with her choicest china and
silver. She had even gone so far as to bring out a dish distinctly
reminiscent of her mother,--the delicious preserved peaches, which had
awaked unavailing envy in the breasts of good cooks in the village.
There was pudding, too, and brandy sauce, and holly for decorations. It
represented a very mild excursion into the land of festival, but it was
too much for Dr. Barrington.

He had come in cold, tired, hungry, and, no doubt, bitterly sorrowful at
the bottom of his perverse heart. He discerned Kate in white--it was
the first time she had laid off her mourning--and with a chain of her
mother's about her neck. Beyond, he saw the little Christmas feast and
the old silver vase on the table, red with berries.

"You didn't choose to obey my orders," he said coldly, turning his
unhappy blue eyes on her.

"Your orders?" she faltered.

"There was to be no fuss and feathers of any sort," he said. "Christmas
doesn't represent anything recognized in my philosophy, and you know it.