CHAPTER XIV.

CHRISTMAS EVE IN A PUNT.

OME people are never satisfied.

It would be too

S tedious, too laborious a task to enter into the why

and wherefore of this latent discontent in human nature, nor does the subject befit a festive season of the year.

It would not be altogether correct to say that Harvey Kype, of Kype Manor, Esquire, was never satisfied; but it is no libel to whisper that his fits of satisfaction were of the description of angels' visits-few and far between. He was especially displeased with his son and heir, Harvey junior. I am informed that in these days of juvenile precocity, when boys tell each other that "the governor is a jolly old chap," and girls vote parental lectures "awfully slow," it is no uncommon thing to find the head of the household in opposition to the young hopeful who will some day sit on the domestic treasury bench. But Harvey Kype, of Kype Manor, had really very little cause for dissatisfaction.

Harvey junior was quite a model boy. He never told a lie, nor tried his hatchet on the favourite pear tree; he was

innocent of tale-bearing and other amusements of the genus sneak, and he was a most lovable brother and son.

But

he seemed to have been born with a love for natural history. In the eyes of the pater that was a high crime and misdemeanour, for the old man, a month before the lad was born, had decided that, if he proved to be a boy, he should be a clergyman, a canon, a dean, and a bishop. But Harvey junior cared for none of these things: gun and fishing rod, butterfly net and botanist's box, were the things which he promised from the earliest days to make the articles of his life's creed; and Harvey Kype, of Kype Manor, Esquire, therefore lived and died a dissatisfied man,

Harvey junior, nevertheless, contrived to make a good many excellent friends. J. B. Thornbury, B.A., was one of them, and the very merriest Christmases of his life were spent at Kype Manor, over which Harvey junior in due time became titular lord. The young squire was a sterling fellow; even his father could not deny that. His master at Harrow would account for the pupil's backwardness by deploring his inordinate love for out-of-door studies, but would take the edge off the complaint by admiration of the lad's noble nature. His Cambridge tutors knew that the youth who was scouring the fens when he ought to have been poring over his books would never be a bright light of the University; but they would say there wasn't a fellow in his college with less vice. Yes, he was a sterling Englishman; and, after all, he was rich enough to survive any little scholastic shortcomings.

You grip a man's hand all the heartier after indulging in some such mental preface as the foregoing. So gripped Thornbury, B.A., on that memorable Christmas visit, to which the reader is being gradually led up. Let his delight at finding the train not more than two hours late; at spying

his friend and his dog-cart outside of the station; at being, after flying over ten miles of road in three-quarters of an hour, welcomed at Kype Manor-I say, let these be taken as matters of course. There he was, in the warmth and light, and there he meant to stay. The snow seemed to come down expressly to welcome him: it had been expected for days, but not a flake appeared until the dogcart turned into the avenue of elms by which the house is approached. The most sentimental of Harvey's daughters plucked a very sweet sonnet out of the circumstance, hailing the snow as at once a welcome guest and a welcoming host.

66

Quite an old-fashioned winter," said Harvey next morning as the friends stood together at the French window of the breakfast-room, looking out in that dreamy manner that people somehow always put on when the landscape has been newly whitened.

"Yes," Thornbury answered, "everybody seems to have discovered that this morning; but we have not had much downfall yet, and I see the thermometer only marks forty degrees in the hall.”

"All in good time," continued the host. "To-morrow morning we shall be below freezing point, and hard weather is a dead certainty; I told you so," he added, turning to his gentle wife.

"Yes," Mrs. Kype said, "Harvey is a very good weather prophet. He declares that the movements of the birds during the late autumn are as good as any barometers, terrometers, or meteorological departments. He certainly has, from Michaelmas to the present time, foretold a hard winter."

"That's a nuisance then," said Thornbury, "for there's an end of my sport."

"Ah," replied his friend, "I had forgotten that you are

fonder of the rod than the gun. We must take our chance when we can get it. Put Rory into the cart, Tom, and get a few baits. We must try Turnhill Broad before it gets frozen over."

Naturally, this was not a satisfactory scheme for the young folks, who were reckoning upon help in those delightful preparations that give Christmas Eve so much of its charm. But neither Harvey nor Thornbury, B.A., cared a great deal for church decorations, nor, indeed, for the long-legged, long-skirted curate, who had appointed himself commanderin-chief of the bevy of fresh-coloured girls. They made the best of it, quoted necessity (about the broadestshouldered victim for excuse-hunters the world ever knew), and promised to return very early.

"Do please come back before dark," Mrs. Kype entreated; "remember it's Christmas Eve, and we never fail in yule-log worship."

"And we have three of your favourite songs which must be sung to-night," said Alice the fair.

"And you owe me a game of chess," said Lina the gipsyeyed.

"Yes, Uncle Thornbury (the children had years before appointed him "uncle"), and you promised to give me twenty out of a hundred," said Tracy Kype, who actually had a taste and was destined for the church, and who would perhaps have satisfied even the grandfather, had that worthy not been a long resident of the family vault.

"As sweet a Christmas Eve programme as heart could wish; trust me not to fail," concluded Thornbury, in lightness of heart.

"I'll just bring my gun," said Harvey, coming out of the house with a workmanlike breech-loader in his hand; "you never know what may turn up at these times, and there's a

bird I've been looking for these three weeks. Ah! (glancing down at the cob's feet) they've frosted old Rory, but there's no need of that. There's only an inch of snow, and it looks a trifle clearer just now. Shouldn't be at all surprised if you get a good basket of pike to-day."

"So mote it be," was the response. Thornbury, B.A., had been so forced to the mill-round of town duties that since the close of the trout season he had never handled a rod; therefore was he at this moment very blood-thirsty in his intentions towards the ferocious denizens of the wellstocked expanses of water towards which they were driving. His friend was a better judge than he, and evidently thought little of the severity of the weather, but it seemed to him to be bitterly cold—that hard steely sort of cold against which there is no appeal. However, it would not be a long drive; they had rugs, wrappers, and Ulsters, and there is no better exertion in the world than the wielding of a supple spinning rod. Rory trotted without a slip over the ground, and soon brought the adventurers to Harvey's boat-house.

Said Thornbury, "You may talk of the joy-inspiring features of spring, laud the more matronly charms of summer, and paint and sing the beauties of mellow autumn; but, so long as it be thorough, give me a winter scene."

Here before the sportsmen lay an immense lake of oval shape, its waters, in the pure white setting of the snowcovered earth, dark almost to blackness. Beyond the further shore were seen the blue straight-rising smoke of a hamlet, the pointed spire of the church that to-morrow would ring a merry Christmas chime, the peeping chimneys of the cottages, and the long outstretched motionless arms of the windmills on the higher ground. The bared limbs of the larger trees were powdered lightly on the upper portions of the branches; the smaller boughs and the hedges were