Mr. Chambers was moving away from the fireside group and stopped beside her.

“We will be decorating the house tomorrow?” he asked.

“Decorating?” She looked blankly at him.

“For Christmas.” He raised his eyebrows. “With holly and ivy and pine branches and mistletoe and all that.”

“Oh,” she said.

“And a kissing bough.”

Harriet had just finished playing. At the same moment a lull had fallen on the conversation by the fire. His words were generally audible.

“A what?” Lady Templar asked, looking up from her cards.

“A kissing bough, ma’am,” Mr. Chambers repeated. “And other decorations to make the house festive for the season. Have you made no plans, Elizabeth?”

“We have never used Christmas decorations,” she said. She had sometimes wished they had. The assembly rooms in the village at home had been decorated one year for a Christmas ball. They had looked gloriously festive, and they had smelled richly of pine.

“Then we will this year,” he announced.

There was an audible stirring of interest from the direction of the pianoforte.

“A kissing bough,” young Sukie said, and there was a titter of self-conscious male laughter and the higher trill of girlish giggles.

“I always did like a few tasteful Christmas decorations in a house,”

Aunt Martha said with an apologetic glance at Lady Templar. “We had some one year when we remained at home for the holiday. Do you remember, Randolph? But never a kissing bough, I must admit. I believe that might be vulgar.”

“There will certainly never be one in this house,” Lady Templar said in the voice her family recognized as useless to argue with. “Such bourgeois vulgarity would not be tolerated in this family. I will direct the servants tomorrow, Lizzie, to bring in some greenery, if it is Mr. Chambers’s wish, but I will give strict instructions about what is suitable.”