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her hostess with her eyes on Florrie’s child’s eyes⁠—Christmas is a very different thing to what it was breathed Mrs. Philps sitting back with folded hands from her finished meal.⁠—Oh, I don’t know aunt corrected Grace anxiously⁠—aren’t you going to have your toast and marmalade? You lived in the North all your young Christmases. It’s always colder there. Take some toast aunt⁠—⁠We used to burn Yule logs flickered Mrs. Philps, plaintively refusing the toast. Miriam waited imagining the snow on the garden where the frilled shirts used to hang out to bleach in the dew⁠ ⁠… the great flood, the anxiety in the big houses⁠—Yule logs would look funny in this grate, laughed Florrie⁠—Oh, I don’t know, pressed Grace.⁠—We had some last year. Haven’t we got any this year aunt?⁠⸺⁠I ordered some wood; I don’t know if it’s come⁠—Miriam could not imagine the Brooms with burning logs. Yes, she could. They were nearer to burning logs than anyone she knew. It would be more real here; more like the burning logs in the Christmas numbers. The glow would shine on to their faces and they would see into the past. But it was all in the past. Yule logs and then, no yule logs. Everyone even the Brooms were being pushed forward into a new cold world. There was no time to remember⁠—they don’t build grates for wood nowadays, ruled Mrs. Philps. Who could stop all this coming and crowding of mean little things? But the wide untroubled leisure of the Brooms breakfast-table was shut away from the mean little things.⁠ ⁠… Are you coming to church Miriam?⁠—Miriam looked across the doomed breakfast-table and met the watchful eyes. Behind Florrie very upright in her good, once best stuff dress, two years old in its features and methodically arrived at morning wear, the fire still blazed its extravagant welcome, the first of Christmas morning was still in the room. When they had all busied themselves and gone, it would be gone. She glanced about to see that everyone had finished and put her elbows on the table.⁠— Well she said abundantly. There was an expectant relaxing of attitudes⁠—I should like to go very much. But ⁠—Grace fidgeting her brooch had flung her unrestrained burning affectionate glance⁠—when I saw Mr. La Trobe climbing into the