CHRISTMAS DAY again; but a white, white Christmas this time—a Christmas Day in bonnie Scotland.

In the sitting-room of an old-fashioned house in Edinburgh a little brown-haired, brown-eyed girl is dancing about in an immense state of excitement. She is a merry-looking little creature, with rosy cheeks, and wears a scarlet frock, which sets off those same cheeks to perfection.

“Can’t you be still even for a moment, Ruby?”

“No, I can’t,” the child returns. “And neither could you, Aunt Lena, if you knew my dear Jack. Oh, he’s just a dear! I wonder what’s keeping him? What if he’s just gone on straight home to Greenock without stopping here at all. Oh dear! what if there’s been a collision. Dad says there are quite often collisions in Scotland!” cries Ruby, suddenly growing very grave.

“What if the skies were to fall? Just about as probable, you wild little Australian,” laughs the lady addressed as Aunt Lena, who bears sufficient resemblance to the present Mrs. Thorne to proclaim them to be sisters. “You must expect trains to be late at Christmas time, Ruby. But of course you can’t be expected to know that, living in the Australian bush all your days. Poor, dear Dolly, I wonder how she ever survived it.”

“Mamma was very often ill,” Ruby returns very gravely. “She didn’t like being out there at all, compared with Scotland. ‘Bonnie Scotland’ Jenny always used to call it. But I do think,” adds the child, with a small sigh and shiver as she glances out at the fast-falling snow, “that Glengarry’s bonnier. There are so many houses here, and you can’t see the river unless you go away up above them all. P’raps though in summer,” with a sudden regret that she has possibly said something not just quite polite. “And then when grandma and you are always used to it. It’s different with me; I’ve been always used to Glengarry. Oh,” cries Ruby, with a sudden, glad little cry, and dash to the front door, “here he is at last! Oh, Jack, Jack!” Aunt Lena can hear the shrill childish voice exclaiming. “I thought you were just never coming. I thought p’raps there had been a collision.” And presently the dining-room door is flung open, and Ruby, now in a high state of excitement, ushers in her friend.

Miss Lena Templeton’s first feeling is one of surprise, almost of disappointment, as she rises to greet the new-comer. The “Jack” Ruby had talked of in such ecstatic terms had presented himself before the lady’s mind’s eye as a tall, broad-shouldered, handsome man, the sort of man likely to take a child’s fancy; ay, and a woman’s too.

But the real Jack is insignificant in the extreme. At such a man one would not bestow more than a passing glance. So thinks Miss Templeton as her hand is taken in the young Scotchman’s strong grasp. His face, now that the becoming bronze of travel has left it, is colourlessly pale, his merely medium height lessened by his slightly stooping form. Ay, but his eyes! It is his eyes which suddenly and irresistibly fascinate Miss Lena, seeming to look her through and through, and when Jack smiles, this young lady who has turned more than one kneeling suitor from her feet with a coldly-spoken “no,” ceases to wonder how even the child has been fascinated by the wonderful personality of this plain-faced man.

“I am very glad to make your acquaintance, Miss Templeton,” Jack Kirke says. “It is good of you to receive me for Ruby’s sake.” He glances down at the child with one of his swift, bright smiles, and squeezes tighter the little hand which so confidingly clasps his.

“I’ve told Aunt Lena all about you, Jack,” Ruby proclaims in her shrill sweet voice. “She said she was quite anxious to see you after all I had said. Oh! Jack, can’t you stay Christmas with us? It would be lovely if you could.”

“We shall be very glad if you can make it convenient to stay and eat your Christmas dinner with us, Mr. Kirke,” Miss Templeton says. “In such weather as this, you have every excuse for postponing your journey to Greenock for a little.”

“Many thanks for your kindness, Miss Templeton,” the young man responds. “I should have been most happy, but that I am due at Greenock this afternoon at my mother’s. She is foolish enough to set great store by her unworthy son, and I couldn’t let her have the dismal cheer of eating her Christmas dinner all alone. Two years ago,” the young fellow’s voice softens as he speaks, “there were two of us. Nowadays I must be more to my mother than I ever was, to make up for Wat. He was my only brother”—all the agony of loss contained in that “was” no one but Jack Kirke himself will ever know—“and it is little more than a year now since he died. My poor mother, I don’t know how I had the heart to leave her alone last Christmas as I did; but I think I was nearly out of my mind at the time. Anyway I must try to make it up to her this year, if I possibly can.”

“Was Wat like you?” Ruby asks very softly. She has climbed on her long-lost friend’s knee, a habit Ruby has not yet grown big enough to be ashamed of, and sits, gazing up into those other brown eyes. “I wish I’d known him too,” Ruby says.

“A thousand times better,” Wat’s brother returns with decision. “He was the kindest fellow that ever lived, I think, though it seems queer to be praising up one’s own brother. If you had known Wat, Ruby, I would have been nowhere, and glad to be nowhere, alongside of such a fellow as him. Folks said we were like in a way, to look at; though it was a poor compliment to Wat to say so; but there the resemblance ended. This is his photograph,” rummaging his pocket-book—“no, not that one, old lady,” a trifle hurriedly, as one falls to the ground.

Ruby clambers down to pick it up. “Mayn’t I see it, Jack?” she petitions.Jack Kirke grows rather red and looks a trifle foolish; but it is impossible to refuse the child’s request. Had Ruby’s aunt not been present, it is possible that he might not have minded quite so much.

“I like her face,” Ruby determines. “It’s a nice face.”

It is a nice face, this on the photograph, as the child has said. The face of a girl just stepping into womanhood, fair and sweet, though perhaps a trifle dreamy, but with that shining in the eyes which tells how to their owner belongs a gift which but few understand, and which, for lack of a better name, the world terms “Imagination.” For those who possess it there will ever be an added glory in the sunset, a softly-whispered story in each strain of soon-to-be-forgotten music, a reflection of God’s radiance upon the very meanest things of this earth. A gift which through all life will make for them all joy keener, all sorrow bitterer, and which they only who have it can fully comprehend and understand.

“And this is Wat,” goes on Jack, thus effectually silencing the question which he sees hovering on Ruby’s lips.

“I like him, too,” Ruby cries, with shining eyes. “Look, Aunt Lena, isn’t he nice? Doesn’t he look nice and kind?”

There is just the faintest resemblance to the living brother in the pictured face upon the card, for in his day Walter Kirke must indeed have been a handsome man. But about the whole face a tinge of sadness rests. In the far-away land of heaven God has wiped away all tears for ever from the eyes of Jack’s brother. In His likeness Walter Kirke has awakened, and is satisfied for ever.

“How do you do, Mr. Kirke?” says Ruby’s mother, fluttering into the room. Nowadays Mrs. Thorne is a very different woman from the languid invalid of the Glengarry days. The excitement and bustle of town life have done much to bring back her accustomed spirits, and she looks more like pretty Dolly Templeton of the old days than she has done since her marriage. “Will is just coming. We have been out calling on a few friends, and got detained. Isn’t it a regular Christmas day? I hope that you will be able to spend some time with us, now that you are here.”

“I have just been telling Miss Templeton that I have promised to eat my Christmas dinner in Greenock,” Jack Kirke returns, with a smile. “Business took me north, or I shouldn’t have been away from home in such weather as this, and I thought it would be a good plan to break my journey in Edinburgh, and see how my Australian friends were getting on. My mother intends writing you herself; but she bids me say that if you can spare a few days for us in Greenock, we shall be more than pleased. I rather suspect, Ruby, that she has heard so much of you, that she is desirous of making your acquaintance on her own account, and discovering what sort of young lady it is who has taken her son’s heart so completely by storm.”

“Oh, and, Jack,” cries Ruby, “I’ve got May with me. Your dolly, you know. I thought it would be nice to let her see bonnie Scotland again, seeing she came from it, just as I did when I was ever so little. Can’t I bring her to Greenock when I come? Because, seeing she is called after you, she ought really and truly to come and visit you. Oughtn’t she?” questions Ruby, looking up into the face of May’s donor with very wide brown eyes.

“Of course,” Jack returns gravely. “It would never do to leave May behind in Edinburgh.” He lingers over the name almost lovingly; but Ruby does not notice that then.

“Dad,” Ruby cries as her father comes into the room, “do you know what? We’re all to go to Greenock to stay with Jack. Isn’t it lovely?”

“Not very flattering to us that you are in such a hurry to get away from us, Ruby,” observes Miss Templeton, with a slight smile. “Whatever else you have accomplished, Mr. Kirke, you seem to have stolen one young lady’s heart at least away.”

“I like him,” murmurs Ruby, stroking Jack’s hair in rather a babyish way she has. “I wouldn’t like never to go back to Glengarry, because I like Glengarry; but I should like to stay always in Scotland because Jack’s here.”