Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.
The old mill-house.
"Noel's Christmas Tree" Frontispiece
NOEL'S
CHRISTMAS TREE
BY
AMY LE FEUVRE
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
LONDON, MELBOURNE AND CAPE TOWN
MADE IN ENGLAND
Printed in Great Britain by
BILLING & SONS LTD.
GUILDFORD AND LONDON
H2942
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
IX. THE COMING OF THE HOLIDAYS
XV. TO THE BORDERLAND AND BACK
NOEL'S
CHRISTMAS TREE
CHAPTER I
Their Unknown Brother
"Dinah, do hurry up!"
A small boy with close-cropped brown head and dark eager eyes wasdrumming with his fingers on the windowpane. He turned his head overhis shoulder as he spoke, and his tone was impatient.
Dinah, or Diana as she was really called, lay flat on her chest bythe schoolroom fire. Big sheets of paper were before her, and with agood deal of sucking of her pencil she was writing rapidly. She wasvery thin and pale; her nurse said she was wiry, and her fair hair wasbobbed in the usual fashion.
"How do you spell alarming, two l's and two m's?" she asked, withoutraising her head.
"Hurray! Here's the taxi! Such a lot of luggage! You're too late; youcan't see it now."
Diana had dashed to the window. They were at the top of a high Londonhouse, in one of the quiet roads of South Kensington, but try as theycould, they could neither see the cab nor its occupants now, and thewindows were too heavy to be raised.
"Aha!" shouted the boy, dancing round the room. "I saw, and you didn't!"
"What did you see?"
"A monkey, and a parrot, and a black, and a huge bunch of coco-nuts!"
"I don't believe you. Did you see—Mother?" She added the last word inan awed whisper.
He looked at her, then impishly shook his head.
"I dare say she hasn't come. P'r'aps she's drowned in t