The wood was growing darker every minute, but the sparkles of frost were glittering still, and lit my way. At the end of the scrub I saw Father coming to meet me, swinging down the road with such long steps that he looked like a kindly big giant. He had guessed where I had gone, and he was so pleased to find me that he forgot to say I mustn't explore any more without him, as I was afraid he would. He took my hand, and we both ran; it was lovely at home by the fire.
I meant to have told him about Queen Titania while we were having tea, but Nancy had made such scrumptious cakes that there wasn't time at first, and before I had finished he began to open the letters that had come just after he left that morning. They seemed to be all bills, and Father sighed as he looked them over, his forehead puckered into rucks and lines. Presently he came to a big blue envelope, and he turned this round and round as if he thought there might be something horrid inside. The paper crackled like anything as he drew it out, and when it was unfolded he sat looking at it for a long time, though there didn't seem to be much writing. At last he gave an odd kind of gasp, and took my face between his hands. He pressed it so hard that he made me say "O!" though I didn't want to do this, and I wondered what had happened.
"Your great-aunt Helen is dead, Chris," he said at last, as he let me go. "I haven't seen her for years and years.... She was not over kind to me when I was a lad, though I believe she meant well.... And now she's left us all her money. We shan't be poor any more."
This was the beginning of ever so many surprises. First, Father and I had warm new overcoats, with woolly stuff inside them that felt like blankets, only much more soft and fluffy, and Nancy had the blue silk dress she always vowed that she should buy when her ship came home. There was a fire every night in Father's study, and I had one in my bedroom. More patients came up for soup than they did for medicine, and they said "God bless you, Sir!" to Father so often that he wanted to run away. The children in the hospital had the biggest tree that the ward would hold, and all the old men and women in the workhouse had a big tea, and shawls and mufflers.