On the twenty-second of December, in a certain year, I, Laura Berkeley, set out with my elder sister Mary, on a long journey.

We were then living on the western coast of England, or Wales rather; we had to cross the whole country, for our destination was the neighbourhood, a few miles inland, of a small town on the _eastern_ coast.

Our journey was not one of pleasure--we were not going to spend 'a merry Christmas' with near and dear friends and relations.

We were going on business, and our one idea was to get it accomplished as quickly as possible, and hurry home to our parents again, for otherwise their Christmas would be quite a solitary one.

And as former Christmases--before we children had been scattered, before there were vacant chairs round the fireside--had been among the happiest times of the year in our family, as in many others, we felt doubly reluctant to risk spending it apart from each other, we four--all that were left now! "'It is dreadfully cold, Mary,' I said, when we were fairly off, dear mother gazing wistfully after us, as the train moved out of the station and her figure on the platform grew smaller and smaller, till at last we lost sight of it altogether.