A Yuletide Treasure by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

hours until midnight and the arrival of Stir-up Sunday, Mrs. Lamsard in the kitchen and Mr. Samson have persuaded me to stretch a point so that our guests might participate. Tinarose, will you ask Miss Grayle to bring down your sisters?”
    “Yes, Mother. They’ll be so happy.”
    * * * *
    The kitchen looked very different from Camilla’s first visit there. Someone had hung ribbon-tied swatches of dried herbs and flowers from the ceiling beams, giving the whole room the mysterious, exciting smell of an apothecary’s shop. The cold glow of moonlight on snow that came through the high windows met the golden gleams of candles that burned lavishly on tabletop and counter, on windowsill and barrel.
    Camilla heard whispering and perceived in the shadows of the large room that others had come for the ceremony. She felt her own strangeness. Everyone belonged to the Manor in some way, whether they served it in house or field, or lived under its roof and cared for it. For she’d known from her first conscious step in this house that it was well loved.
    When she hesitated on the doorstep, knowing herself to be an outsider, Dr. March was behind her. “Is something wrong?”
    “No, I... What is Stir-up Sunday?”
    The doctor looked at her with surprise. “You don’t know?”
    “No, sir.”
    “And you do live in England?”
    “Not a day’s journey from here. Is this custom so universal? I have never heard of it.”
    The doctor tilted his head to one side in a motion that might have been a shrug. Whatever hilarity had affected him at dinner seemed to have faded. “Usually it is done among the lower classes; servants and so on seem fond of it.”
    “Perhaps that’s why I’ve not heard of it. We keep only one servant, and she is unusually taciturn. Some weeks she hardly speaks at all.”
    “You must find the Manor a most remarkable change,” he said with a lowered voice. “It’s an interesting house, nearly as interesting as the people who live in it. As for the pudding,” he said, in a more normal tone, “my father would no more miss stirring the Christmas pudding than he’d refuse to go out on an emergency visit.”
    “But a doctor isn’t of the lower classes.”
    “Perhaps not in such an enlightened place as you come from, Miss Twainsbury. What is the name of your place of residence?” She told him, and he nodded. “You wouldn’t happen to be in need of a doctor’s services there?” he asked with his quick smile. “Well, no matter; I can’t leave Bishop’s Halt while my father needs me.” He fell silent.
    “And Stir-up Sunday?” Camilla prompted.
    “Oh, yes. Pray excuse me. This is the time when every member of the household, oldest to youngest, gives the Christmas pudding three stirrings. Each person is to make three wishes, one of which is certain to come true before next Christmas.”
    “What will you wish for, Dr. March?”
    “The usual sort of thing, I suppose. Riches beyond avarice, long life, and a pair of warm slippers.”
    “Warm slippers? Among such grand wishes, you wish for warm slippers?”
    “I did say that only one wish would come true, didn’t I? Wealth and health may come or not, but my housekeeper always makes my father and me warm slippers for Christmas.”
    “Perhaps if you didn’t wish for slippers, one of your other wishes would come true,” Camilla said.
    He laughed. “I’ve never been one to take mad risks,” he said. “Unlike some I could name.”
    “You mean Sir Philip? He hardly seems like the reckless sort.”
    “Didn’t you hear what I told you at the table? I don’t know what happened in Paris, but I do know that wasn’t the only time I found him in mysterious circumstances. I used to know him so well. We were always friends. Lately, though, I feel as if I only know the outer man, this gentle squire pose he’s adopted since coming back to the Manor.”
    “You think he is playacting?” Camilla asked.
    “Can a man change so much? He was a wild boy,