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“Mayhap if I laugh enough in sober London I shall grow too giddy and forward in foolish France,” returned Annis, gayly; “unless—-“

“Unless what, dear heart?”

“Unless while I am safe in Paris you are fighting the battles of the king in England. Then tears will come easier than laughter, as in truth they have done of late.”

“Wherever I may be, your prayers will prove my bulwark,” said Captain Breton, confidently. “It would take more than a silver bullet to find its way to my heart while you are besieging heaven’s doors in the tumultuous fashion that only women can attain. I bear a charmed life as long as you remember your petitions.”

Annis answered with a look, and Cicely, nestling by her mother’s chair, watched her sister with wide, serious eyes. To the child standing on the threshold of womanhood the presence of love carries with it an intoxicating flavor of mystery. It is something that fills her alike with envy and a vague resentment, with wonder and an indefinable desire. Its commonest expression is a perverse antipathy to one of the lovers, with an irrational increase of affection for the other; and in this case Captain Breton came in for his full share of Cicely’s smothered anger and disdain. He, meanwhile, in happy unconsciousness, chancing to meet the brown eyes lifted dreamily to his own, and noting the upward curve of the short, sweet lip, thought within himself that this elfish little Cicely was growing almost as pretty as her sister–a judgment which proves conclusively the blindness of love; for Annis, though fair and comely to look upon, came no nearer to her young sister’s beauty than does the pink-tipped daisy to the half-opened rosebud uncurling slowly in the sun. At present, the girl, seeing that she was watched, turned away her head pettishly and eyed the leaping flames.

“Annis said to-night there was but one thing lacking to her Christmas cheer,” she remarked, after a pause, and with the too evident intention of saying something vexatious.

“And that was I!” interposed the cavalier, with the ready assurance of a lover.

“It was not you at all,” returned Cicely, “but the mistletoe. We gathered the other greens ourselves, but there was no mistletoe to be found within or without the gates of London.”

“By a happy chance we can proceed as though we had it,” said Captain Breton, contentedly, while Annis crimsoned like a rose. “It is a welcome little plant, and carries a merry message; but if it be banished in these saintly days, we obstinate sinners must kiss without its sanction.”

“But the maid who is not kissed on Christmas-night beneath the mistletoe will never be a wife during the coming year,” persisted Cicely, who had laid down her line of attack and was not to be driven therefrom.

“Now, will you wager your ring or your new ear-drop on that, little sister?” said the captain, laughing at the threat. “Or have you a trinket that you value less to risk in such a cause?”

Cicely, deeply affronted, puckered up her brow and drew closer to her mother; but Annis, far too happy to be vexed, leaned over and kissed the pouting lips. With her, joy meant thanksgiving, and her heart was singing–singing the song of the angel of Judea: “In Excelsis Gloria!”

A Norseman’s Saga.

“As he sat there with a sou’wester down over his ears, in a long pilot coat, his figure appeared to assume quite supernatural proportions, and you might almost imagine that you had one of the old Vikings before you.”

Asbjoernsen.