Our Christmas in a Palace Author:Edward Everett Hale Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. SNOW-BOUND—NAHUM BARROW'S REVENGE. AND so came to the ladies the full announcement of what had been clear enough to the men long before, but wha... more »t had not been formally proclaimed in the palace, in the confusion of the loss and the rescue. With this long detention, now counting seven or eight hours, there was no chance whatever of reaching Council Bluffs at four o'clock on Christmas eve, or the afternoon of Christmas eve, as the schedule time proposed. Lucky, indeed, if they were at Council Bluffs at midnight. Still, Mary Van Sandfoord was clear that they could run out by a morning train to Hastings, and that the Corneaus would meet them at the station. Hopeful Mary ! As for Theodora Bourn, she was more indifferent to the Corneaus. The through passengers in a well-arranged Pullman grow to a feeling of possession in it, akin to the feeling of a passenger on a well-arranged White Star packet. One is more at home with Cassar or with John, the porter, than he is with the bumptious or the ignorant waiter at the Hag-daggery-dag Hotel, whom he never saw before, and never will see again. The Corneaus's house was not the Hag-daggery-dag Hotel, but it was a new place for poor Theodora. It meant one more set of new faces to be seen, new names to be learned, andthe girl had had—oh, so much of that experience in this last year, that she shrank from it. While in the palace, she knew where she was, and could call it, if she chose, her home. At this moment, too, Mr. Decker at her side, having made eveiy inquiry about her health, and having been thanked most prettily for his help, was boldly and skilfully turning the subject from the accident and rescue, as if it were the most insignificant affair. He caught at the hint which the word " Thanksgiving" gave, and made s...« less