Excerpt
T was getting very near to 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 at 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 home-sick 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....