Monica and Ripon were by now very familiar with this hope that Gilly, her son, would be able to get away from his work in London to join them at Christmas. By many broad hints Mrs Hopkin-Griffiths implied that Ceinwen must be especially anxious for his presence; Monica and Ripon were happy enough to fall in with this notion on the part of their hostess. The young are usually, out of sheer good nature, ready to indulge the sometimes clumsy romantic ideas of their elders.

If it was idyllic to hang the Christmas greens, it was Dickensian to drive the twelve miles to Trallwm and buy Christmas gifts. The rule at Neuadd Goch was that gifts exchanged among guests and family must not cost more than a shilling. It was on Christmas Eve that they made the journey, Monica, Ripon and Ceinwen in the Squire’s serviceable Humber.

“The sheer bliss of this robs me of speech,” said Ripon. “Here we go, on Christmas Eve—get that, Christmas Eve—to buy Christmas presents. If I were at home, I would have finished my Christmas shopping a full two weeks ago; I would have wrapped everything in elaborate paper, and tied it with expensive plastic twine. I would approach the great festal day prepared for everything but a good time. But here I go, prepared to squander ten shillings at the utmost on the very eve of the day of giving; for the first time in my life I have got Christmas into focus. Tomorrow I shall worship, I shall feast and, quite incidentally, I shall give and receive. And that’s how it ought to be. It’s Dickensian. It’s Washington Irving-like. It’s the way Christmas ought to be.”

They spent all day making their purchases, for the shilling rule had been made in a time when a shilling bought a bigger variety of possible gifts than it does now. But Ripon persuaded a bookseller and stationer to let him rummage among some old stock, and produced a wonderful variety of paper transfers, Victorian post-cards, and works of edification which had once been sold as Sabbath School prizes. And in an outfitter’s he got a dicky for ninepence, and an almost forgotten oddity—a washable “leather” collar—which he said would be just the thing for Mr Hopkin-Griffiths. Monica, who did not want to be outdone, turned up some cards of pretty old-fashioned buttons in a woolshop and, after much pondering, bought another copy of Welsh in a Week to give to Ripon, who had been mercilessly teased by their hosts and Ceinwen about his earlier adventures with that work. At mid-day Ripon took the two girls to lunch at The Bear, where they ate fat mutton with two veg. following it with prunes doused with a custard of chemical composition, and some surly cheese. But even this did not crush their spirits.

Driving back to Llanavon, Monica and Ripon agreed that it had been one of the happiest days they had ever known. Their protestations of pleasure made Ceinwen shy at first, then effusive, and the drive ended in an atmosphere which a cruel observer might have described as maudlin, but which was in truth full of genuine, warm, though possibly facile feeling.

They rushed into the house in time for tea, hungry from the asperities of The Bear, and hungry too as only emotion can make one. Mrs Hopkin-Griffiths scampered out of the drawing-room to meet them.

“Oh darlings, it’s too, too wonderful. He’s been able to come! I never quite dared to hope but he’s here. Gilly’s come! It’s going to be a perfect Christmas!”

Swept forward by her excitement they burst into the room. There, before the fire, stood Giles Revelstoke.

That night, having made herself ready for bed; Monica went to the bathroom to clean her teeth, a maiden; in slightly less than fifteen minutes she returned to her room, her teeth clean, and a maiden no more.

There was only one bathroom at Neuadd Goch. It had formerly been a bedroom, and was a chamber of considerable size, in a corner of which was a very large and deep bath, encased in mahogany and standing on a dais; there was also a large and ornate marble basin, a full-length cheval-glass with candle-brackets, an armchair and a side chair, and a set of scales upon which it was possible to weigh oneself by sitting on a large, padded seat. There was a couch of the type familiar in the best-known picture of Madame Recamier, with one arm and a partial back. The two large windows were richly curtained to the floor. This splendid chamber was for ablutions only; the water closet was housed in mahogany splendour in a smaller room nearby: it had a bowl in the agreeable Willow pattern.

If Monica had not been a North American her fate might have been very different; in each bedroom was a washstand, with ewer and basin, and night and morning a copper pitcher of boiling water. But she had been accustomed all her life to clean her teeth in running water, and so she went to the bathroom in her dressing-gown, her toothbrush and a tube of paste in her hand. She would only be a minute, thought she, so she pushed the door around, but did not bolt it. It was not quite closed, and less than a minute later Giles Revelstoke, towel in hand and in his dressing-gown, pushed it open.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said he.

And then, because Monica looked so attractive with her hair brushed out, and her mouth foaming slightly with pink dentifrice, and because the lamplight in the bathroom was so charming, and because the couch was so conveniently at hand, and probably also because it was Christmas—because of so many elements so subtly combined, Monica returned to her bedroom in just under a quarter of an hour, much astonished and even more delighted.

As always when something important had happened, she wanted a time of quiet in which to think about it. But that was not to be hers just yet. As she was opening her door, a figure hastened to her side out of the darkness of the stairs. It was Ripon.

“Want to talk to you for a minute,” said he, and hurried into the room after her.

Monica’s bedroom was large, and as the electricity at Neuadd Goch—a private system—operated only on the ground floor, it was lit with a large oil lamp by the bed. She and Ripon were in a rich gloom, but it was plain that he was excited.

“You get into bed and keep warm,” he said. “I’ll sit here. Listen; Ripon the sleuth has done it again! I just got the lowdown on this whole situation from Ceinwen; she’s a bit put out that this chap Revelstoke has turned up—she was hoping against hope that he wouldn’t, and Mrs H.-G. was aching that he should. We’ve been misled by Mrs H.-G.; Ceinwen does not look on this Giles as Prince Charming. And do you know why? It’s a fantastic deal among the older generation. Ceinwen is to marry Revelstoke: Mrs H.-G. wants it because she is keen for him to settle down, live a quiet life in the country, and be a good boy. It appears that he isn’t a very good boy in London. She’s got quite a bit of money, you see, left her by her first husband, who was a stock-broker, of all things. And the Squire wants the marriage because he will then leave this house and estate to Ceinwen, on condition that they change their name from Revelstoke to Hopkin-Griffiths, thus continuing the name at Neuadd Goch. And Ceinwen’s father, Professor Griffiths, wants it because he wants her to have Neuadd Goch, which he thinks ought to be in his part of the family anyhow, and the marriage will make him retroactively county gentry, instead of just a well-known scholar. Did you ever hear anything like it?”

“No,” said Monica. “But surely it all depends on what Ceinwen and Giles want?” It was fortunate that it was dark in the room for it was the first time she had ever called him Giles, and she blushed deeply.

“Ah, that’s what you’d think, and what I’d think, but it’s not what these people think. And that’s what makes it fascinating. It’s like finding oneself in a Victorian novel. I’ve got to re-adjust all my thinking about the set-up here. You see, I had it all worked out on the Hamlet-theme; I asked myself why Mrs H.-G. was so wild to have her son come home, when there seemed to be so much doubt about it. I mean, nobody ever said he couldn’t come; they just said he mightn’t. Well—it was plain as a pike-staff. Revelstoke was a Hamlet-figure, unconsciously jealous of the Squire, identifying himself strongly with the late Revelstoke, and bitter against his Ma. It sees itself, doesn’t it? I was crazy for him to come home, because I’ve never had a chance to observe a man in the Hamlet-situation at close quarters. But how wrong I was!”