Her pleasure in the forbidden breakfast and its hurried bolting before her husband came back made Mrs. Freyne too busy to hear Darby's murmur of "It was the messenger's cart, not Lancelot's."
"Dearest George gets quite faddy, you know," she apologized, "about everything, and we never spend our income--at least, I don't think so. Gheena, Mrs. Keefe thinks that last year's 'Unto Us' is in the attic here, and ought to do in a war year with fresh holly. She is not sure if the 'Hallelulias!' were used to stuff the cat pin-cushions for the bazaar, or if some of them came back as they were. What do you think, Gheena?"
"A cart-load of them came back," said Gheena, "and everyone can just put on holly-berries and save pounds of trouble."
"It is not in the lofts or the coach-houses; then where is it? for I must know." George Freyne drove Naylour and Maria the housemaid into the room before him. "A bath-chair in perfect order, which Mrs. Freyne's mother used."
"Unless they broke it up for firewood, sir," suggested Naylour, looking anxious.
"I lent it to Andy Cassidy's mother two years ago," said Mrs. Freyne, "and I think she died in it; and I would not have it back; she had something unpleasant, I know. Then I think it got broken. Tell the messenger, Naylour, that Mrs. Keefe has an excellent bath-chair and quite new. Oh, I did not ask you about lending it, Dearest, because probably you weren't here, or perhaps I thought you might have objected and one wheel was quite bad."
The days before Christmas were always feverishly occupied at Castle Freyne. Chunks of cow had to be distributed among the work-people, with tea and sugar and flour. Everybody the Freynes ever did anything for had to receive a goose or a turkey or game.
Mrs. Freyne agreed to the necessity for economy with a resolution which melted as wax at the faintest idea of putting it into practice.
"Everything died just as usual," she said placidly to her husband; "and as they were dead, it would be waste not to give them away, especially in war-time, Dearest, would it not?"
Mounds of parcels had been secreted by Gheena and sent to every acquaintance she had in France--cakes, sweets, plum-puddings and mince-pies, tobacco and socks. No man from the village missed having a parcel.