Secret Santa Cadbury

Secret Santa Cadbury sprat in the mouth of a whale.” —_Pilgrim’s Progress_. "Ain't it too late, sir?","You jest," says Mona, full of calm reproach. "I mean how strangely people fall into one's lives and then out again!" She hesitates. Perhaps something in his face warns her, perhaps it is the weariness of her own voice that frightens her, but at this moment her whole expression changes, and a laugh, forced but apparently full of gayety, comes from her lips. It is very well done indeed, yet to any one but a jealous lover her eyes would betray her. The usual softness is gone from them, and only a well-suppressed grief and a pride that cannot be suppressed take its place.,Sir William now rose from the table and went to an armchair at the open window, upon the seat or ledge of which stood a jar of tobacco, some clay pipes, and a little machine for firing a match dipped in brimstone, a very ingenious contrivance as old as the days of the second Charles: namely, a little pistol-shaped fire-maker whose trigger struck a full and brilliant spark from the flint and kindled the tinder. He filled his pipe and lighted it, and sat in conversation with his son, in whom the particular humour or mood would have been extremely hard to settle by the most sagacious of critical observers. He was speedy in answering his father, and his language did not show much abstraction of mind; but even the Admiral noticed that there was an undercurrent of thought in his son which was pursuing a very different course from the stream as it appeared on the surface.,“He said—he said—that I must fill the station with honor; I didn’t understand exactly what that meant, but he said it because I am to have Kingthorpe. But I will not live there; they may all be sure of that.”,He looked into one or two of the cabins or sleeping berths, and examined a stand of arms affixed to a bulkhead just before the companion ladder.，"Oh, indeed!" says Mona; and then, with downcast eyes, "but I don't know, because you never told me before."，Patricia watched her disappear behind the big screen of the composition room, and then she turned excitedly to Elinor.，It was the family Bible. She had placed it there after reading her son Anson his evening chapter. Slowly she mastered herself and sank back into her chair.“What is it?” demanded the boy.

"Ha," cried a quavering voice, "and is ut the Prince av Darkness, himself, as spakes t' me? Thin it's no fit av the delirium tremens I've had at all, at all, but dead I am and in purgatory! Oh weary me, oh weary me! Such shnakes and evil eyed burruds have I never seen before. Och! could I be given wan taste av God's blissid air and sunshine ag'in, and never more would whiskey pass me lips.",The occupants of the skiff cast a contemptuous look at his old muzzle-loader, as they passed, and one of them laughed and said something in an aside to his companion.,Warm the heart with social zeal,,“If you find that the work is not as much fun as you expected, will you come back and tell me so? You won’t stick it out just as a matter of pride?”,"How splendid!" she cried. "Now we'll have a chance to give back a few of the kindnesses she showered on us last summer. Of course we can find a place, and we won't let her come except as our guest, and we'll give her the very best sort of a time we can, to show how glad we are to have her here.",He tidied himself, bade his mother good-bye, and followed the girls to rehearsal.,"Good as ever, Billy, dried out—and gone. Come into the house. I've got great news.",“Be at Las Cruces on June 20.”,"Well, well, wait for one moment," says Mona, showing the white feather at last, and holding out to him one slim little hand. He seizes it with avidity, and then, placing his arm round her waist with audacious boldness, gives her an honest kiss, which she returns with equal honesty.,But Patricia was too much absorbed to heed.,"Knowing that I collected curiosities, he came to sell it to me.",She is still wondering vaguely who he can be, when he breaks the silence..