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300 sketch of Miss Bracely at her piano, which I want to give her on Christmas Day. But it’s so difficult. I wish I had brought it round to ask your advice, but you would only have screamed with laughter at it. It’s a dreadful failure: much worse than those I gave you for your birthdays. Fancy your keeping them still in your lovely music-room. Send them to the pantry, and I’ll do something better for you next."

Lucia, try as she might, could not help being rather touched by that. There they all were “Golden Autumn Woodland,” “Bleak December,” “Yellow Daffodils,” and “Roses of Summer.”...

“Or have them blacked over by the boot-boy,” she said. “Take them down, Georgie, and let me send them to be blacked.”

This was much better: there was playfulness behind the sarcasm now, which peeped out from it. He made the most of that.

“We’ll do that presently,” he said. “Just now I want to engage you and Peppino to dine with me on Christmas Day. Now don’t be tarsome and say you’re engaged. But one can never tell with you.”

“A party?” asked Lucia suspiciously.

“Well, I thought we would have just one of our old evenings together again,” said Georgie, feeling himself remarkably clever. “We’ll have the Quantocks, shan’t we, and Colonel and Mrs Colonel, and you and Peppino, and me, and Mrs Runbold? That’ll make eight, which is more than Foljambe likes, but she must lump it. Mr