_very_ odd; but even now that I am old enough to know better, I never
want so much to talk as just when I ought to be quiet. I wonder how it
is? Anyhow, it seemed quite impossible to hold one's tongue that
afternoon. Alick was as busy and quiet as could be, working out a hard
sum on his slate, but even he looked up when Lottie started that
wonderful idea about Christmas; and then we all joined in wondering how
the time had gone, and what lots of fun Christmas would bring with it. I
had my own particular share of delight, for was there not a certain
prospect of papa and mamma coming to the Park to take me home? My little
cousins, too, were looking forward to home directly after Christmas; but
their mamma could not come and fetch them. She had been well enough to
travel, and would be in England very soon now; that is, in the little
island down in the south, you know, where the invalids go. She would
get a nice home ready for them there and then, as she said in her
letters, "have the delight of calling back all the chicks under her
wings again!"

Well, it was just all these things that we were talking about over our
lesson-books at the school-room, when our attention was caught by two
figures coming up the drive in the mist. Such a foggy afternoon as it
was, all the dead leaves hanging yellow and dripping from the trees! It
was not till they got quite up to the house that we saw that the two men
were going to give us some music. One had some bagpipes and the other a
kind of horn, and, of course, all thought of lessons went out of our
heads when we heard them begin. What fun it was to listen, and to watch
their queer grimaces and antics, as they danced about to their own
music!

But we had not been enjoying this long when a terrible thing happened.
Oh, little reader, it makes me shudder now!