CHAPTER XVIII.
"It was told me I should be rich by the fairies."-- _A Winter's Tale._ January is always a long, flat month: the Christmas festivities are over, the bills are waiting to be paid, the weather is very often of the dreariest, spring is yet far distant.

With February, hope and the snowdrops begin to spring, but January is a month to be _warstled_ through as best we can.
This January of which I write Jean felt to be a peculiarly long, dull month.

She could not understand why, for David was at home, and she had always thought that to have the three boys with her made up the sum of her happiness.

She told herself that it was Pamela she missed.

It made such a difference knowing that the door would not open to admit that tall figure; the want of the embroidery frame seemed to take a brightness from the room, and the lack of that little gay laugh of Pamela's left a dullness that the loudest voices did nothing to dispel.
Pamela wrote that the visit to Champertoun had been a signal success.
The hitherto unknown cousins were delightful people, and she and her brother were prolonging their stay till the middle of January.