A Christmas Party, by John Strange Winter.

It was getting very near Christmas-time, and all the boys at Miss Ware’s school were talking excitedly about going home for the holidays, of the fun they would have, the presents they would receive on Christmas morning, the tips from Grannies, Uncles, and Aunts, of the pantomimes, the parties, the never-ending joys and pleasures which would be theirs.

“I shall go to Madame Tussaud’s and to the Drury Lane pantomime,” said young Fellowes, “and my Mother will give a party, and Aunt Adelaide will give another, and Johnny Sanderson and Mary Greville, and ever so many others. I shall have a splendid time at home. Oh, Jim, I wish it were all holidays, like it is when one’s grown up.”

“My Uncle Bob is going to give me a pair of skates—clippers,” remarked Harry Wadham.

“My Father’s going to give me a bike,” put in George Alderson.

“Will you bring it back to school with you?” asked Harry.

“Oh, yes, I should think so, if Miss Ware doesn’t say no.”

“I say, Shivers,” cried Fellowes, “where are you going to spend your holidays?”

“I’m going to stop here,” answered the boy called Shivers, in a very forlorn tone.

“Here—with old Ware?—oh, my! Why can’t you go home?”

“I can’t go home to India,” answered Shivers. His real name, by the bye, was Egerton—Tom Egerton.

“No—who said you could? But haven’t you any relations anywhere?”

Shivers shook his head. “Only in India,” he said miserably.

“Poor old chap; that’s rough luck for you. Oh, I’ll tell you what it is, you fellows: if I couldn’t go home for the holidays—especially Christmas—I think I’d just sit down and die.”

“Oh, no, you wouldn’t,” said Shivers; “you’d hate it and you’d get ever so homesick and miserable, but you wouldn’t die over it. You’d just get through somehow, and hope something would happen before next year, or that some kind fairy or other would—”

“Bosh! there are no fairies nowadays,” said Fellowes. “See here, Shivers: I’ll write home and ask my Mother if she won’t invite you to come back with me for the holidays.”

“Will you really?”

“Yes, I will: and if she says yes, we shall have such a splendid time, because, you know, we live in London, and go to everything, and have heaps of tips and parties and fun.”

“Perhaps she will say no,” suggested poor little Shivers, who had steeled himself to the idea that there would be no Christmas holidays for him, excepting that he would have no lessons for so many weeks.

“My Mother isn’t at all the kind of woman who says no,” Fellowes declared loudly.

In a few days’ time, however, a letter arrived from his Mother which he opened eagerly.

“My own darling boy,” it said, “I am so very sorry to have to tell you that dear little Aggie is down with scarlet fever, and so you cannot come home for your holidays, nor yet bring your young friend with you, as I would have loved you to do if all had been well here. Your Aunt Adelaide would have had you there, but her two girls have both got scarlatina—and I believe Aggie got hers there, though, of course, poor Aunt Adelaide could not help it. I did think about your going to Cousin Rachel’s. She most kindly offered to invite you, but, dear boy, she is an old lady, and so particular, and not used to boys, and she lives so far from anything which is going on that you would be able to go to nothing; so your Father and I came to the conclusion that the very best thing that you could do under the circumstances is for you to stay at Miss Ware’s and for us to send your Christmas to you as well as we can. It won’t be like being at home, darling boy, but you will try and be happy—won’t you, and make me feel that you are helping me in this dreadful time.

“Dear little Aggie is very ill, very ill indeed. We have two nurses. Nora and Connie are shut away in the morning-room and to the back stairs and their own rooms with Miss Ellis, and have not seen us since the dear child was first taken ill. Tell your young friend that I am sending you a hamper from Buzzard’s, with double of everything, and I am writing to Miss Ware to ask her to take you both to anything that may be going on in Cross Hampton. And tell him that it makes me so much happier to think that you won’t be alone.

“Your Own Mother.

“This letter will smell queer, darling: it will be fumigated before posting.”

It must be owned that when Bertie Fellowes received this letter, which was neither more nor less than a shattering of all his Christmas hopes and joys, that he fairly broke down, and, hiding his face upon his arms as they rested on his desk, sobbed aloud.

The forlorn boy from India, who sat next to him, tried every boyish means of consolation that he could think of. He patted his shoulder, whispered many pitying words, and, at last, flung his arm across him and hugged him tightly, as, poor little chap, he himself many times since his arrival in England had wished someone would do to him. At last Bertie Fellowes thrust his Mother’s letter into his friend’s hand.

“Read it,” he sobbed.

So Shivers made himself master of Mrs Fellowes’ letter and understood the cause of the boy’s outburst of grief.

“Old fellow,” he said at last, “don’t fret over it. It might be worse. Why, you might be like me, with your Father and Mother thousands of miles away. When Aggie is better, you’ll be able to go home—and it’ll help your Mother if she thinks you are almost as happy as if you were at home. It must be worse for her—she has cried ever so over this letter—see, it’s all tear-blots.”

The troubles and disappointments of youth are bitter while they last, but they soon pass, and the sun shines again. By the time Miss Ware, who was a kind-hearted, sensible, pleasant woman, came to tell Fellowes how sorry she was for him and his disappointment, the worst had gone by, and the boy was resigned to what could not be helped.

“Well, after all, one man’s meat is another man’s poison,” she said, smiling down on the two boys; “poor Tom has been looking forward to spending his holidays all alone with us, and now he will have a friend with him. Tr............