"Ole Marse, he say it is mos' fou' o'clock, an' you mus' come in an' have Christmas dinner with Miss Betty an' him."
Fortescue demurred a little, meaning all the while to accept. His riding clothes were hardly suitable, he said. But Betty clinched the matter by saying to Uncle Cesar:
"Tell the Colonel that Mr. Fortescue will stay to dinner, and hopes his riding clothes will be excused."
There was just time for Betty to skip upstairs and jump into a little gown of a pale and jocund yellow, with an open neck, around which she hung the Colonel's Christmas gift, the little locket. The elbow sleeves showed her dimpled arms, and with deliberate coquetry she put in her shining hair one of the white roses Fortescue had brought her, and another over her innocent and affectionate little heart. When she entered the sitting-room, which served also as a dining-room, Betty was justly triumphant. She knew that she was looking her best.
There was not much money at Holly Lodge, but Christmas dinners were ridiculously cheap, and some of earth's choicest products lay almost at the door of the little house. Fortescue thought he had never seen so noble a turkey or such captivating oysters, and when the plum pudding was brought in with a sprig of holly stuck in it and surrounded by a sea of fire, he hypocritically pretended he had never before seen anything like it.
He settled the question of his absence from Rosehill and his guests, by saying debonairly:
"Those fellows at Rosehill will get along all right. With a soldier, one must catch pleasure on the wing. And every one of the fellows would stay, just as I do, if they had half a chance."
"That was the way the youngsters talked in my time," said the Colonel, laughing. "War and the ladies, eh?"
The Colonel grew reminiscent of past Christmas days.
"I recollect one in particular," he said grimly: "the Christmas of '64 in the trenches at Petersburg, when it was snowing and freezing and hailing, and we had nothing to eat, and death and defeat stalked with us. Don't you remember that Christmas, boy?" asked the Colonel of Uncle Cesar.
"God knows I does," responded Uncle Cesar fervently.
"That boy," continued the Colonel, indicating the gray-haired Cesar, "was my body-servant during the whole war. He is an arrant coward, and would run away if he thought there was a Yankee within five miles."