little hearts with smudgy fingers, the butler entrusted them to some one
to see to the due performance of their good intention, and he himself
sought the cook, who, next to himself, was Livingstone's oldest servant.
She was at the moment, with plump arms akimbo on her stout waist, laying
down the law of marriage to a group of merry servants as they sorted
Christmas wreaths.

"Wait till you've known a man twenty years before you marry him, and
then you'll never marry him," she said. The point of her advice being
that she was past forty and had never married.

The butler beckoned her out and confided to her his anxiety.

"He is not well," he said gloomily. "I have not see him this a-way in
ten years. He is not well."

The cook's cheery countenance changed.

"But you say he have had no dinner." Her excessive grammar was a
reassurance. She turned alertly towards her range.

"But he won't have dinner."

"What!" The stiffness went out of her form in visible detachments. "Then
he air sick!"

She made one attempt to help matters. "Can't I make him something nice?
Very nice?--And light?" She brightened at the hope.

"No, nothink. He will not hear to it."