"Oh yes," said Molly, adding after a little pause, "I would like to see that house."

Aunty smiled. "Few things are more probable than that you will do so," she said, "provided you can make up your mind to cross the sea again."

"Why? how do you mean, aunty?" said Molly, astonished, and Ralph and Sylvia listened with eagerness to aunty's reply.

"Because," said aunty,—then she looked across to grandmother. "Won't you explain to them, mother?" she said.

"Because, my darlings, that dear old house will be your home—your happy home, I trust, some day," said grandmother.

"Is my father thinking of buying it?" asked Ralph, pricking up his ears.

"No, my boy, but some day it will be his. It is your uncle's now, but he is much older than your father, and has no children, so you see it will come to your father some day—sooner than we have thought, perhaps, for your uncle is too delicate to live in England, and talks of giving it up to your father."

"But still I don't understand," said Ralph, looking puzzled. "Did my uncle buy it?"

"No, no. Did you never hear of old Alderwood Grange?"

"Alderwood," said Ralph. "Of course, but we never speak of it as 'The Grange,' you know, and I have never seen it. It has always been let since I can remember. I never even heard it described. Papa does not seem to care to speak of it."

"No, dear," said aunty. "The happiest part of his life began there, and you know how all the light seemed to go out of his life when your mother died. It was there he—Captain's master—got to know her, the 'Mary' of my little adventure. You understand it all now? He was a great deal in the neighbourhood—at the little town I called East Hornham—the summer we first came to Alderwood. And there they were married; and there, in the peaceful old church-yard, your dear mother is buried."

The children listened with sobered little faces. "Poor papa!" they said.

"But some day," said grandmother, "some day I hope, when you three are older, that Alderwood will again be a happy home for your father. It is what your mother would have wished, I know."

"Well then, you and aunty must come to live with us there. You must. Promise now, grandmother dear," said Molly.

Grandmother smiled, but shook her head gently.

"Grandmother will be a very old woman by then, my darling," she said, "and perhaps——"

Molly pressed her little fat hand over grandmother's mouth.

"I know what you're going to say, but you're not to say it," she said. "And every night, grandmother dear, I ask in my prayers for you to live to be a hundred."

Grandmother smiled again.

"Do you, my darling?" she said. "But remember, whatever we ask, God knows best what to answer."



CHAPTER XIV.

HOW THIS BOOK CAME TO BE WRITTEN.

"Ring out ye merry, merry bells, Your loudest, sweetest chime; Tell all the world, both rich and poor, 'Tis happy Christmas time."

"Grandmother," said Ralph, at breakfast on what Molly called "the morning of Christmas Eve," "I was going to ask you, only the story last night put it out of my head, if I might ask Prosper to spend to-morrow with us. His uncle and aunt are going away somewhere, and he will be quite alone. Besides he and I have made a plan about taking the shawl to the old woman quite early in the morning. You don't know how pleased he was when I told him you had got it for her, grandmother—just as pleased as if he had bought it for her with his own money."

"Then he is a really unselfish boy," said grandmother. "Certainly you may ask him. I had thought of it too, but somehow it went out of my head. And, as well as the shawl, I shall have something to send to Prosper's old friend. She must have a good dinner for once."

"That'll be awfully jolly," said Ralph. Sylvia and Molly listened with approval, for of course they had heard all about the mystery of Ralph's wood-carrying long ago.

"At Christmas time we're to try to make other people happy," said Molly, meditatively. "I thought of something that would make a great lot of people happy, if you and aunty would do it, grandmother dear?"

"I don't think you did all the thinking about it, Molly," said Sylvia, with a slight tone of reproach. "I do think I did some."

"Well, I daresay you did. We did it together. It couldn't be for this Christmas, but for another."

"But what is it?" asked grandmother.

"It is that you and aunty should make a book out of the stories you've told us, and then you see lots and lots of other children would be pleased as well as us," said Molly. "Of course you'd have to put more to it, to make it enough. I don't mind if you put some in about me, grandmother dear, if you would like to very much."

"No," said Sylvia, "that would be very stupid. Grandmother couldn't make a book about us. We're not uncommon enough. We couldn't be heroines, Molly."

"But children don't care about heroines," said Molly. "Children like to hear about other children, just really what they do. Now, don't they, grandmother dear? And isn't my plan a good one?"

* * * * *

Will you answer little Molly's question, children dear? For dear you all are, whoever and wherever you be. Boys and girls, big and little, dark and fair, brown-eyed and blue-eyed, merry and quiet—all of you, dear unknown friends whose faces I may never see, yet all of whom I love. I shall be so glad—so very glad, if this little simple story-book of mine helps to make this Christmas Day a happy and merry one for you all.

THE END.



* * * * *



Macmillan's Prize Library

A Carefully Selected Series of Illustrated Books suitable for Presentation.

Baker, Sir Samuel W. Cast up by the Sea.

Besant, Sir Walter. Life of Captain Cook.

Bradley, A. G. Life of Wolfe.

Buckland, Frank. Curiosities of Natural History. Vols. I.-III.

Buckley, A. B. Through Magic Glasses.

Butler, Sir William. General Gordon.

Cooper, J. Fenimore. The Last of the Mohicans. The Deerslayer. The Pathfinder. The Pioneers.

Corbett, Sir Julian. For God and Gold. Sir Francis Drake.

Creasy, Sir E. The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World.

Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. The Old Curiosity Shop. Christmas Books. Barnaby Rudge.

Edgeworth, Maria. Lazy Lawrence and other Stories.

Eliot, George. Scenes of Clerical Life.

Finny, Violet Geraldine. Revolt of the Young MacCormacks.

Fowler, W. Warde. A Year with the Birds. Tales of the Birds. More Tales of the Birds.

Fraser, Edward. Famous Fighters of the Fleet.

Gilmore, Rev. John. Storm Warriors; or Life-Boat Work on the Goodwin Sands.

Grimm, The Bros. Household Stories.

Henley, W. E. Lyra Heroica. A Book of Verse for Boys.

Hooper, G. Life of Wellington.

Hughes, T. Tom Brown's School Days. Alfred the Great.

Keary, A. and E. Heroes of Asgard.

Kingsley, Charles. Hereward the Wake. Westward Ho! The Heroes. The Water-Babies. Madam How and Lady Why. Glaucus.

Kipling, Rudyard. Selected Stories.

Laughton, Sir J. K. Life of Nelson.

Marryat, Captain. Newton Forster. The Pirate and the Three Cutters. Peter Simple. Japhet in Search of a Father. Mr. Midshipman Easy. Masterman Ready. The Phantom Ship.

Metelerkamp, Sanni. Outa Karel's Stories.

Mitchell, S. Weir. The Adventures of Francois.

Molesworth, Mrs. Carrots. Tell Me a Story. The Tapestry Room. The Cuckoo Clock. Grandmother Dear. Herr Baby. Us. The Rectory Children. Two Little Waifs. Four Winds Farm. The Ruby Ring. Mary. Nurse Heatherdale's Story. The Woodpigeons and Mary. The Story of a Year. Edmee. A Tale of the French Revolution.

Morier, James. The Adventures of Hajji Baba.

Norton, H. E. A Book of Courtesy.

Oman, Sir C. W. Warwick the Kingmaker.

Perry, W. C. The Boy's Iliad. The Boy's Odyssey.

Scott, Sir Walter. Kenilworth. Count Robert of Paris.

Sharp, Evelyn. Micky. The Children Who Ran Away. The Other Boy. The Youngest Girl in the School.

Thackeray, W. M. Henry Esmond.

Yonge, Charlotte M. Little Duke. The Prince and the Page. Unknown to History. The Dove in the Eagle's Nest. The Chaplet of Pearls.

THE END