The year ended gloomily for Jinny. December was cold. In the mornings the fields looked almost snowy with hoar-frost, but the actual snow did not come till near Christmas. Her grandfather refused to be moved from his bedroom—one was safer from thieves up there, he now urged—so a fire upstairs every evening was added to her work. But the monotony of existence and of the struggle therefor was broken by two letters and an episode, albeit all interconnected.

Both letters were from Toby, the naval gunner, Dap’s eldest son, and the one for her grandfather was enclosed in hers, as Toby was not sure the old gentleman was still alive, one of his sisters having heard that there was a piece in the paper about his death at the age of a hundred and five. He had only found her own address after the funeral, he wrote, a packet of letters from her having come to hand in the clearing up. For although his poor father with his last breath had asked that his telescope be given to little Jinny Boldero as a token of love and remembrance, he had died without telling them where to send it. It would now be forwarded in due course. For two months he had borne much pain with Christian resignation, she learnt with sorrow and respect. The other letter, addressed “Mr. Daniel Quarles,” she had no option but to hand over, but did so with anxiety, for she had not yet broken the news of Dap’s death, and whether he received it with regret or with unchristian satisfaction, it would assuredly agitate him. As she watched him open it, she saw a piece of paper flutter from it, and she caught it in its fall.

“That’s mine!” he cried, snatching it from her fingers. “Pay the person naimed——” he read out dazedly. “What’s that?”

“That must be a money order,” she explained, though with no less surprise.

“A money order?” he repeated.

“You’ve seen post-office orders, surely,” she said, not realizing that they had only become common a decade ago with the introduction of penny postage, and that nobody—not even his children—had ever sent him one before. “’Tis a way of sending money—you can send as much as two pounds for threepence. How much is yours for?”

Overlaid memories of his late eighties struggled to the surface. “Oh, ay,” he said, not answering her. “That was a blow for the carriers—that and the penny post. Folks began to write to the shops; dedn’t matter so much here, but the Che’msford carriers complained bitter as the tradesmen sent out their own carts with the goods.”

“But how much is it for?” repeated Jinny impatiently.

He studied it afresh, holding it away from her like a dog with its paw on a bone. “Three pound!” he announced with rapturous defiance. “Ye took away my foiver. But this be for the person naimed on the enwelope, and that’s Daniel Quarles.”

“But what’s it for?” she asked.

“It’s for me,” he said conclusively, and was going up to his room like a magpie with its treasure.

“Yes, but read the letter,” she urged.

He consented to sit down and study it. “Good God!” he blubbered soon. “Poor Dap’s dead.”

“Dead?” echoed Jinny mendaciously.

“You read it for yourself, dearie. An awful pity, a man in the prime of life. ’Tis from his boy in the Navy as he ast to send me three pounds what he owed me. That was wunnerful honest of him, to remember, seein’ as Oi don’t, aldoe Oi count the Lord put it into his heart, knowin’ Oi wanted money terrible bad. But Oi allus felt he was a good chap underneath: ’twarn’t his fault he had a glass eye. That made him look at the nose, like, and git frownin’ and quarrelsome. Three pound! That’s a good nest-egg.”

“Yes,” said Jinny, glad the death was passing off so peacefully, “and he’s sending me his telescope.”

“He don’t say that,” he said, peering at the letter again.

She turned red. “I had a line too—didn’t you notice yours had no stamp? I’ll change your order for you at the post office,” she went on hurriedly. Mentally she had worked out that two of the pounds represented the price of the new gravestone the Commander had never purchased, and the third his idea of interest for all these years. Doubtless he had been too tactful to send them back in his lifetime. Anyhow she agreed with her grandfather that it was really all the Lord’s doing, for nothing could be timelier. Even her poultry was now being steadily sacrificed, and this great sum would get her beautifully over Christmas and New Year and start that with a handsome balance in hand. But she had counted without her grandfather.

“No, you don’t!” The Gaffer’s hand closed grimly on the precious paper. “That’s a nest-egg, Oi’m tellin’ ye.”

“But what are you going to do with it?” she inquired in distress.

“That’s for Annie.”

“Mr. Skindle’s mother! But he’s rich as rich.”

“He don’t never buy her nawthen. He come here and told me sow out of his own mouth, the hunks. Oi had to pay for her packet o’ hairpins.”

“Well, anyhow she’ll have her Christmas dinner, and that’s more than you’re sure of,” she risked threatening.

“You’ve got the telescope, hain’t ye?” he urged uneasily.

“I can’t sell that. That’s for remembrance.”

“Ye can remember him without a telescope. And ef he had his faults, ’tain’t for you to remember ’em, seein’ as ye’d never a-bin here at all ef he’d done his duty by Emma and King Gearge. But Oi reckon he couldn’t see everythink with that glass eye, and Oi ought to ha’ carried silks and brandy myself ’stead o’ parcels and culch. Did, Oi’d a-got a stockin’ like Sidrach’s and not had to deny myself bite and sup for your sake.” And he hobbled stairwards, the post-office order clutched in his skeleton claw. “Do ye write to Dap’s buoy-oy and thank him for payin’ his dues, and say as Oi hope he won’t put no fooleries on his father’s stone, and he’d best copy what Oi had put on your father’s and mother’s.”

Jinny duly wrote, if not in these terms. But when the telescope came, she felt anything but thankful. For, welcome as it was in itself, it came by the coach. She had been too distraught to foresee this, though she recognized that it was the natural way. And apart from the sting to her own pride, it agitated her grandfather profoundly. He had been nodding at the hearth, but the clamour of the coach aroused him, and ere she could get to the door he had sprung up with an oath.

“Don’t let him over my doorstep!” he cried, pursuing her. “He’s got to come in on his hands and knees.” He jostled her aside and seized the bolt, but his hand trembled so, he could not shoot it.

“How can he crawl in, if you bolt the door?” she said tactfully.

He was staggered: the possibility of the opposition obstinacy relaxing had never even occurred to him. Recovering, he urged that the enemy would try to rush over the sill.

“No fear, Gran’fer. He’ll never cross our threshold unless you carry him in!”

She spoke with unconscious admiration of Will’s tenacity. Indeed the image of the young man crawling to her grandfather or even to herself would have been repellent, had it been really conceivable.

“Carry him in!” the Gaffer laughed explosively, and that burst of derision made him almost good-humoured. He let himself be pushed gently towards the inner room, while Jinny, with her pulse at gallop, opened the door.

The tension and friction of nerves proved sheer waste. The long narrow parcel was brought to the door by the hobbledehoy guard, and the driver remained, imperturbably important, on his box, looking almost as massive as an old stager in his new, caped greatcoat and coloured muffler, though the face under the broad-brimmed festively sprigged hat was very different from the mottled malt-soused visages of the coaching breed. It seemed but an idle glance that Jinny cast at it, or at the Christmas congestion of the coach, overflowing with passengers and literal Christmas boxes, and with hares pendent even from the driver’s seat. Nevertheless, as ever when they met, long invisible messages passed between Jinny and Will, and not all her defiance could disguise her humiliation at this second triumph of the coach, coming as it did when the fortunes of the cart were at their blackest. For the Gaffer refused sullenly to part with his piece of paper—she did not even know where he had hidden it—and with Uncle Lilliwhyte too poorly to forage for her, she was almost tempted to apply for the Christmas doles that were by ancient bequest more abundant at Mr. Fallow’s church than applicants for them. But her instinct of “uprightness” saved her: better that the last of her poultry should be sacrificed for the sacred repletions of the season. She did indeed dally with the notion of keeping Christmas not with, but from, her grandfather—possibly his failing memory might for once prove an advantage—but she had a feeling that apart from the profanity of ignoring it, the festival was too ingrained in the natural order to be overlooked, for did not Christmas mark the pause in the year, when with the crops in the ground and the little wheat-blades safely tucked under the snow, and the beer brewed and the pigs killed and salted, the whole world rests and draws happy frosted breath? No, the old man’s instinct would surely trip her up, if she tried to run Christmas as an ordinary day.

She might, of course, as he had originally suggested, sell or at least pawn her telescope, but even if she could have brought herself to that, she could not have got it away from him, for he had annexed it from the first moment and sat peering out of it from the vantage-point of his bedroom lattice. He was at his spy-glass the moment he woke, enchanted when he could descry people or incidents far-off—it was as if his long seclusion from the outer world was over—and he would call out like a child and tell Jinny what he had seen. Sometimes it was Master Peartree and his dog, sometimes Bidlake ferrying on the Brad or a couple seeking warmth in a cold lane; now a woodman cutting holly branches with his billhook, anon Bundock bowed by his bag or Mott with his fishing-rod, and once he cried out he could see Annie coming out of Beacon Chimneys, though Jinny suspected that the tall figure with the “wunnerful fine buzzom” was really Farmer Gale’s new wife. Particularly protected did her grandfather now feel against thieves, whose stealthy advent he would henceforward detect from afar. Delighted as she was in her turn with the new toy that kept him happy even on a reduced diet, she had to keep his fire going all day now, and to be up and down closing the window through which he would stick the telescope. Sometimes he directed his tube heaven-ward, though not for astronomical purposes. “Happen Oi’ll see Sidrach coming down for a gossip,” he said.

Just before Christmas he informed her he had decided that the right thing to do with the nest-egg was to purchase Sidrach a gravestone with it, and he instructed her to write a letter of inquiry to Babylon. But although this seemed to her a more logical use of it than he knew, she disregarded his instruction. The nest-egg was too precious. The time might come when he would ask for bread, and was she to give him a stone?