nice, honorable young fellow, with no much worse faults than a
pedantically correct pronunciation of the unaccented vowels; in the
second place, he was considerably taller than the race of curates
usually runs; and in the third place, he had a handsome allowance from
his mother, and "expectations" on a very grand scale indeed. Miss
Wedmore, if she were to decide in his favor, might well aspire to be the
wife of a bishop some day. And what could woman wish for more?

He was no laggard in love either. On the very morning after the arrival
of Max and Dudley, Mr. Lindsay called soon after breakfast to make
inquiries about the amount of holly and evergreens which would be
available for the decoration of the church, and was shown into the
morning-room, where most of the great work of preparation for Christmas
was taking place.

Mrs. Wedmore and all the young people were there, Max and Dudley having
been pressed into the service of filling cardboard drums with sweets for
what Max called "the everlasting tree." The tree itself stood in a
corner of the room, a colossal but lop-sided plant with a lamentable
tendency to straggle about the lower branches, and an inclination to run
to weedy and unnecessary length about the top.

Max was a hopeless failure as an assistant. He was always possessed with
a passionate desire to do something different from what he was asked to
do; and when they gave way and indulged his fancy, the fancy
disappeared, and he found that he wanted to do something else.

"It's always the way with a man!" was Queenie's scornful comment on her
brother's failing.