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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77821 ***
+
+
+
+
+  The Man Who Found
+  Christmas
+
+
+
+
+Books By
+
+Walter Prichard Eaton
+
+  “The Idyl of Twin Fires”
+  “In Berkshire Fields”
+  “Green Fields and Upland Pastures”
+  “Skyline Camps”
+  “Penguin Persons and Peppermints”
+
+  _Copyrighted, 1927_
+  W. A. WILDE COMPANY
+  _All rights reserved_
+
+  THE MAN WHO FOUND CHRISTMAS
+
+  MADE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+  The Man Who Found
+  Christmas
+
+  By
+  Walter Prichard Eaton
+
+  Frontispiece by
+  Walter King Stone
+
+  W. A. Wilde Company
+  Boston   ::   Massachusetts
+
+
+
+
+The Man Who Found Christmas
+
+
+A new generation has come into the world since what is here recorded
+took place. There has been a mighty war, when “peace on earth” seemed
+very far away. The automobile has conspired mightily to change our ways
+of life, possibly our ways of thinking and even feeling. You will find
+in this story, dear Reader, mention of forgotten things--sleighbells!
+We today, and especially our young people, are supposed to be more
+sceptical of sentiment than we were of old; so therefore we are
+presumably more sceptical of Christmas, which is the feast and holiday
+of sentiment. But unless this story grievously errs--and how can
+that be, since it took place as set forth just about twenty years
+ago?--young people have been sceptical of sentiment before; and if
+Christmas could prove them wrong then, perhaps it can again. If you and
+I can learn to drive a motor car, surely St. Nicholas can. Maybe the
+old world doesn’t change so much as we little, self-important mortals,
+proud each in our generation, fondly suppose. We may, as we elegantly
+phrase it, have “debunked” a lot of things since good Victoria went to
+her rest and Henry Ford and the Kaiser conspired against ours. But
+here is one bet still laid on Christmas!
+
+Life, of course, may not have been so lively twenty years ago.
+The life of a young bachelor in New York twenty years ago, at any
+rate, was humdrum and conventional. It was not popularly supposed
+to be, but it was. (It certainly isn’t popularly supposed to be
+today, but probably it is.) Wallace Miller was a young bachelor in
+New York, the New York when taxi cabs were a novelty and motion
+pictures cost a nickel, and the only unconventional thing in his
+life was the To-Hell-with-the-Merry-Yule-Tide Association, which
+met every Christmas Eve, and dined. And, alas, even that dinner was
+conventional,--Delmonico’s and dress coats! His profane association
+numbered six members. There was Mercer, who had organized it and
+supplied the original profanity; he was city editor of a daily paper,
+and had to work on Christmas day, so perhaps may be forgiven. There was
+Jack Gleason, formerly one of Mercer’s reporters but now a playwright,
+who supplied most of the good spirits, which Mercer said was no
+wonder, since he had an income of $20,000 a year. There was Gilsey, a
+short, dark, thick-set, scowling man with an astonishing vocabulary of
+invective and all the instincts of a born iconoclast, who by day was
+sub-editor of a mild religious weekly. There were Smith and Stedman,
+brokers and club mates of Miller’s, who resembled closely their kind,
+even to the angle at which they pushed back their hats when sitting in
+the club before dinner. Finally there was Wallace Miller himself, who
+had begun his New York career after leaving college as a reporter under
+Mercer, like Gleason, but, being blessed--if it was a blessing--with
+a small inherited income, had abandoned journalism for “letters,” and
+sought to create literature in a littered apartment down a side street
+not too far from his club and the magazine offices.
+
+When Mercer had broached to him the idea of the To-Hell-with-the-Merry-
+Yule-Tide Association, he had fallen in eagerly with the scheme.
+
+“Fine!” he cried. “I loathe Christmas. The club is always so desolate
+on that day, and the service so bad! Every year you have to subscribe
+to an employees’ Christmas fund, and then when the day arrives half
+the employees are missing and the rest act as if they wish they were.
+There’s nobody to dine with. You have to sit at the general table,
+with men you don’t know, and every last one of ’em eats as if his food
+choked him. It’s worse than Sundays in August. Besides, I’ve got an
+aunt in Somerville, Mass., who always sends me a present! You bet I’m
+for the association!”
+
+The other four members had been carefully selected from a host of
+possible candidates, each one on the basis of his genuine contempt for
+this particular holiday. Gilsey had declared that he, personally, would
+support Christmas as soon as anybody he knew really gave Christianity
+a trial, but under the circumstances felt safe in taking out a life
+membership. So the new association was assembled, and held its first
+dinner on Christmas Eve, whereat plans for the next summer’s vacation
+were discussed. The dinner was followed the ensuing year by a second,
+and again by a third, for there had been no defections from the
+ranks. They seemed, indeed, matrimonially and Christmas-spiritually
+impregnable. December of the fourth year had come, and with it a
+snowstorm. Wallace Miller still lived in his littered apartment, down a
+side street, a little more prosperous than of old, but even more wedded
+to his habits.
+
+He was digging in the bottom drawer of an old secretary one afternoon,
+hunting for a long-buried manuscript (after the fashion of authors),
+when he came upon a bundle of ancient souvenirs, dusty and forgotten.
+Dropping all other tasks, as one will when suddenly confronted by
+visible tokens of one’s past, he untied the parcel and began going
+through it. It was a motley collection--the program of his preparatory
+school Class Day exercises; the class prophecy he had read on that
+occasion, full of names many of which he could not now connect with the
+forgotten faces; a dance card, equally full of disembodied initials;
+a photograph of the old, square house amid its apple trees where
+he had lived as a boy, and which he tenderly laid aside; another
+photograph of a face between parted strands of heavy hair, a face once
+loved with the chivalric passion of seventeen. Wallace looked at this
+picture a long time, as the memories crowded back upon him, and laid
+it back with a wistful smile. Then he resumed his inspection of the
+package. Next came a blank book full of quotations copied in a boyish
+hand--and mostly sentimental--and another blank book labeled “story
+plots.” He remembered that one; it was compiled when he was “trying
+for” the preparatory school literary monthly. The plots were amusingly
+melodramatic. Below these books came souvenirs of still earlier years,
+which must have been saved by his mother--childish compositions, a
+letter he had written home when he went on his first visit without his
+parents, and finally a big Christmas card.
+
+As he turned this card to the light, to see it better, a sudden wave
+of memories swept in over the threshold of his consciousness and he
+sat quite still while they had their way with him. The card, in color,
+depicted a small boy in a long nightie standing before a big fireplace
+with his hands stretched to the blaze. The warm red glow of the fire
+illumined his face and nightie. From the mantle hung a stocking. Behind
+him was a window, with small leaded panes, and through this window you
+saw a church roof, white with snow, and a cold moon riding high. Below
+the picture, in Old English type, were the words
+
+  Merry Christmas
+
+Long, long ago, in the forgotten, dim years of childhood, he had loved
+that card. Once, he recalled, he had taken it to bed with him. The cold
+moonlight in contrast to the warm red fire had fascinated him, and the
+great, wallowing flames, and the jolly stocking. Dimly there came back
+to him the awareness of white roofs visible from his own window in the
+moonlight, of his own stocking hung up, of wallowing flames and his
+father’s big, hearty voice, and a Christmas tree in the morning, with a
+red sled under the branches and a star on the top.
+
+He sat on the floor with the card in his lap, still and silent. Outside
+the snow was falling steadily. It was growing dim in the room. The
+steam pounded suddenly in the radiator. Wallace looked up angrily.
+The place was certainly gloomy, lonely, oppressive. He put the card
+hastily back into the package, slammed the drawer shut, and set off
+for his club, without lighting the lamps. Outside, the streets were
+already sloppy with the snow, and horses were falling down. Wallace
+vaguely recalled his boyhood delight in the first snow fall, his dash
+out into the drifts, upturning his face to meet the soft sting of the
+descending flakes. He turned his face up now, and snow went down his
+collar. He looked down again, and saw that the bottoms of his newly
+pressed trousers were getting draggled. Stepping off the curb into an
+apparently firm drift, he sank ankle deep in gutter slosh. He swore
+crossly to himself, as he stamped and shook the snow from his feet and
+garments and entered his club.
+
+It was that hour preceding dinner when the club was full. Young men
+like himself were sitting in groups in the grill room, their hats
+tipped back on their heads, canes across their laps, highball glasses
+before them. He could hear confused scraps of their conversation--“...
+took a tumble today, all right. If it goes much lower it’ll wipe out
+my margins”; “--you bet, it’s some show, and that girl on ...”; “--no,
+you should have made it no trumps.” In corners men were absorbed in
+the asinine game of dominos. Wallace suddenly reflected that the amount
+of domino playing which goes on in New York clubs is a good argument
+for woman’s suffrage. Several men hailed him with the usual “What’s
+yours?” but he passed them by and went up to the squash courts. There,
+at least, men were getting exercise, he thought. The courts were full,
+so that he could not play. They smelled sweaty and stale. He went back
+downstairs, and found Smith and Stedman, just up from downtown, joining
+them in the inevitable cocktail.
+
+“About time we began to plan our To-Hell-with-the-Merry-Yule-Tide
+feast, isn’t it?” Stedman asked. “I noticed today that all the shops
+were crowded, and a poor gink in our office showed me a ring he’s had
+to buy for his wife. The silly season is upon us.”
+
+“I suppose it is,” said Wallace, suddenly reminded of their
+association. “Hope I sha’n’t be out of town for Christmas.”
+
+“What’s that?” cried the others.
+
+Wallace was rather surprised himself at his words, for he hadn’t the
+slightest intention till that moment of being out of town. But the card
+had made him unconsciously long for Christmas, for a real Christmas
+such as his childhood knew.
+
+“I might be taking a trip soon,” he replied. “I’m a bit stale on the
+town.”
+
+“Nonsense,” said Smith. “You’re the most confirmed New Yorker of the
+bunch. You’ll be here. Where on earth could you go?”
+
+Wallace made no reply. He didn’t know where he could go, to find
+a welcome, and the thought somehow hurt him. They went out to the
+dining room and consumed the usual dinner, every item of which could
+be predicted. After dinner they went to the theatre, to a new musical
+comedy every song and dance and joke of which could be predicted with
+equal certainty. Then Wallace went home to his apartment, after the
+usual half hour at the club for a nightcap. It was cold and dismal
+in the apartment. “Also as usual,” he suddenly reflected. The next
+morning it was still dismal. Rather than work, he went out into the
+streets, through Madison Square which showed some traces of yesterday’s
+snow, and up the Avenue. The shops were gay. A toy store window
+attracted him. He saw many children going inside, with radiant faces of
+expectancy. One of them smiled at him.
+
+“I’d like to give somebody something,” he suddenly thought. “It would
+seem rather nice.” He walked on. The pavements and walks were sloppy,
+but all faces were cheerful. Christmas seemed to be in the air. Wallace
+felt curiously aloof from the life about him, isolated, lonely. Why had
+he hated Christmas? Was it not, perhaps, just because he _was_ lonely,
+isolated? Was not the fault with him rather than Christmas? This was a
+disconcerting reflection. He put it away from him, and went to the club
+for lunch. Gilsey was there, holding forth “agin the government,” as
+the old phrase had it.
+
+“Christmas!” he was saying. “Christmas is now degenerated into a season
+when most people have to study out how they can afford to give useless
+presents to all the people who have given useless presents to them.
+They can’t afford it, but they do it. Getting generous by calendar is
+almost as spontaneous as kissing your wife--if you’re so unfortunate as
+to have one--by the clock. It’s ...”
+
+“It’s something rather nice, as I remember it,” Wallace interrupted.
+
+“What?” roared Gilsey. “_Et tu?_ You’d better consult a doctor!”
+
+“Gilsey,” the other answered, “did you ever try the band wagon instead
+of the scorner’s seat on the brownstone steps?”
+
+Gilsey looked at his friend with a comical expression of quite genuine
+grief. “I--I don’t know what you mean, Wallie,” he said.
+
+“Never mind,” said the other, contritely, “doubtless I don’t mean
+anything. I’ve been a bit upset by a memoir of my dead life, that’s
+all.”
+
+But after lunch he returned to his apartment and took the memoir from
+the drawer again, looking tenderly at the little chap in the fire-lit
+nightie. “My dead life--yes,” he reflected, sentimentally touched by
+the memories. “That Christmas spirit of those days, can it not be found
+again? Is one foolishly seeking a lost Eden to search for it? Moonlight
+on a white world, a Christmas tree, the merry screams of children--of
+children--”
+
+His reflections trailed off into incoherence, and chiefly he was
+aware of an oppressive sense of loneliness. The thought of his
+club bored him. Gilsey, with his eternal knocking, bored him, the
+To-Hell-with-the-Merry-Yule-Tide Association struck him as rather a
+farce, not to say a pose. He wanted Christmas, that was the size of it.
+He wanted something he did not possess and in his present surroundings
+could not possess. He was living outside of Christmas.
+
+“I’m a sort of a man without a country,” he suddenly thought. “Gilsey,
+Smith, Gleason--we all are. We are single men in New York. I’m going to
+find Christmas! I’m going to find moonlight on white roofs! I’m going
+to find that kid in the white nightie!”
+
+He rose abruptly, and began to pack his bag and steamer trunk. He had
+no idea where he was going, but he was very cheerful. He felt like
+whistling, and found himself whistling a long-forgotten tune which his
+father had sung to him twenty years before. It was the ancient carol of
+Good King Wenceslaus.
+
+That evening he did not go to the club to dine. The next morning,
+early, he was at the Grand Central Station, where he selected various
+time tables and hotel guides, and retired with them to the waiting
+room. He might have gone to the town of his birth and childhood, but
+for many reasons he did not care to. A trolley, he knew, ran past the
+big house where he had lived. Perhaps the house no longer stood there!
+The spawn of the city had by now reached the village; it would be no
+longer country, but suburb. He did not want a suburb. Neither did he
+desire to hazard enjoying Christmas in the shouts of children whose
+mother’s picture now reposed in his dusty drawer amid the souvenirs
+of his buried youth. So he ran through lists of stations till his eye
+chanced upon North Topsville, Massachusetts. The name pleased him.
+There was a South Topsville also, though Topsville itself did not exist
+so far as the railroad was concerned. South anything, he reflected,
+is usually the part of the community which has the mills and motion
+picture theatre--just why nobody has satisfactorily explained; so he
+cast his lot with North Topsville, and purchased a ticket for that
+place. An hour later he was sitting in a Pullman car and leaving New
+Rochelle behind.
+
+By the time the train was well up into the New England hills, it had
+begun to snow again. Wallace looked out of the car window fascinated by
+the panorama of reddish gray hillsides seen through the white storm. As
+station after station was passed, each taking its quota of passengers
+from the train, each passenger met on the platform by welcoming friends
+or relatives, the Pullman began to be almost empty. Wallace felt
+lonely. There would be nobody to welcome _him_ at North Topsville. He
+felt rather sorry he had come when he reflected on this. After all,
+his search was probably hopeless. He ate luncheon, and became more
+cheerful, for the train was passing out of the storm into a glittering,
+white world of broad valleys and lovely hills and snug farmhouses on
+the roads between tidy New England villages where beautiful naked elms
+arched the streets. At South Topsville, sure enough, there was a big
+mill, and down the street from the station a motion picture theatre.
+Wallace grinned at the correctness of his intuition (“Almost feminine!”
+he thought), and began to put on his coat. The train ran into snowy
+meadows, into a strip of woodland and swamp, and then emerged into a
+gentle intervale where graceful vase elms fringed a stream, and came
+to a stop at the North Topsville station. Wallace alighted--the only
+passenger to do so--and the train moved on. He stood with his grip
+beside him and looked about. The station was a small one. Beyond it a
+road stretched across the meadow to the village street, where he saw a
+white steeple. On the other side of the tracks lay a snowy field, then
+a road with two or three farmhouses upon it, then the steep wall of a
+mountain. The station agent was up the platform examining his trunk.
+Beside the platform stood a pung of ancient vintage, and in it was
+seated a young man swinging his arms against his chest for warmth.
+
+Wallace took a step toward him, and the youth nodded. “Be you goin’ ter
+the hotel?” he said.
+
+“I am if there is one, and you are,” Wallace answered.
+
+“I be ef you be,” the youth replied, “and there is. Hev ter come back
+agin fer the trunk,” he added. “Most folks as come here in winter is
+drummers, an’ they travel light--sample case an’ tooth brush an’ a copy
+of the Saturday Evenin’ Post. What’s your line?”
+
+“Christmas,” Wallace answered with a laugh, as the pung moved across
+the meadows in the cold, crisp country air.
+
+“Wall, I reckon now’s the time ter sell that,” the young man answered
+imperturbably. “Quite a brisk demand fer it these days. My little gel,
+she’s writ a letter ter Santa Claus thet’s goin’ ter nigh bust him, I
+reckon, him bein’ me.”
+
+“Have you a little girl?” Wallace asked in surprise.
+
+“Gol, I got two of ’em, but t’other’s only six months, and ain’t very
+good at spellin’ yet,” the driver replied. “Why not? I bin married more
+’n five years. I’m twenty-six.”
+
+Wallace made no reply. He was thirty himself, and felt curiously
+ashamed.
+
+At the door of the Mansion House he gave the driver a dollar. “Keep
+the change--for the little girl,” he said. The other looked rather
+surprised, but finally put back his little bag of change into his
+pocket.
+
+“Wall, seein’ yer put it thet way, I will,” he said. “But I don’t jest
+like it.”
+
+“I _am_ a long way from New York!” thought Wallace, as he entered the
+hotel.
+
+The Mansion House of North Topsville was a relic of past generations.
+Large Doric pillars in front gave it an air of dignified antiquity; but
+the interior was surprisingly neat and clean, though darkened by the
+protecting portico. That it should remain open during the winter months
+surprised Wallace at first, but he learned later that most of the
+business visitors to the South Topsville mills stayed here, attracted
+by the superior accommodations and a rather famous kitchen, while a
+certain number of health seekers could always be relied on. He signed
+the register, and was escorted to his room, a large, old-fashioned
+chamber with a broken pediment, like a highboy top, over the door, and
+an open fireplace. He ordered a fire laid at once, and began to unpack
+his bag. Outside, on the village street, he could hear sleighbells
+jingling, and presently the shouts of children going home from school.
+As soon as his trunk had come, he put on a woollen cap which pulled
+down over the ears (purchased the day before in New York), and hastened
+out of doors.
+
+The village street was packed hard by the sleigh runners. There were
+half a dozen old-fashioned stores here in the town centre, a white
+church, a small stone library, a bank, a town hall. The town hall was
+built of brick, a simple rectangular block with white stone trimmings,
+and looked very cheerful over the snow. Out of the town centre, in
+either direction, the main street led beneath graceful arches of bare
+elm boughs into the white country. Wallace turned west, following a
+crowd of children with sleds and toboggans. For a quarter of a mile
+the street was lined with substantial old houses, several of them
+of considerable architectural beauty, and nearly all, apparently,
+surrounded in summer by lawns and gardens. North Topsville was
+evidently still a good specimen of a too rapidly disappearing type of
+aristocratic New England village. It seemed to the man as he walked
+along behind the children that he was less a stranger here than in New
+York. He felt as if he were coming back home. He walked with memories
+of his own childhood in such a town, and the intervening years faded
+from his consciousness. He half expected to meet somebody whom he
+should recognize, and once, indeed, seeing a girl’s figure coming down
+the path from a Doric porch behind guarding evergreens, his heart
+gave a startled bound, for it appeared to his excited imagination the
+figure of her whose picture he had so recently unearthed. Most people,
+probably, know that curious sensation of false recognition. If we have
+been thinking much of a person, we will often see him a score of times
+in a single day, ahead of us in the crowd, perhaps, or sitting across
+the theatre. At any rate, the shock of this sensation accounted for
+Wallace Miller’s pronounced stare at the girl’s face, when they met
+at her gate. Her eyes returned his gaze for a second, as if she, too,
+were appraising him, and then she passed quickly by, leaving behind on
+the keen winter air the faintest of perfumes, not the perfume which
+comes in bottles, but which comes from garments kept in lavender, from
+soap and health. The man drew a long breath, rather astonished at the
+acuteness of his nasal sense, long unused to subtler perfumes, and
+pleasurably warmed by the encounter. He looked sharply at the house
+from which the girl had come, to fix it in his memory. There were
+plants at several of the square, small-paned windows, and the tracks
+of a sled and toboggan all over the lawn. Behind it he could hear
+children screaming and laughing. He walked on more briskly.
+
+The road soon passed into more open country, and to the right was
+a long, smooth field, ending in a hill slope. Field and slope were
+alive with sleds and children, their shouts making a shrill, ceaseless
+chorus, almost like spring frogs. The man climbed through the fence and
+ascended the slope, attracting a few curious glances from the coasters,
+and stood at the top watching the sport. He felt ridiculously shy. He
+wanted to coast, he wanted to join in the sport, but he did not know
+how to begin. Nobody spoke to him. There was a group of red-cheeked
+high school girls there, but his coming caused no flutter nor
+whispering among them, as he knew it would had he been younger. This
+made him feel uncomfortably and unreasonably old. The smaller boys were
+paying no attention to anybody except themselves. The smaller girls
+were timidly coasting on a gentler incline of their own, and doing a
+great deal of the screaming. Two busy small boys were industriously
+hauling up a big toboggan, and bumping down on it over the runner
+tracks, hard put to keep it from swerving and upsetting them. Presently
+two other toboggans appeared, and had the same difficulty on the
+smooth, uncharted hillside.
+
+The man finally plucked up his courage, smiling to himself at his own
+embarrassment, and asked the evident owner of the first toboggan why he
+didn’t build a slide.
+
+“Dunno,” said that young person. “What’s a slide?”
+
+“You don’t know what a slide is?” exclaimed Wallace, glad to see that
+his scorn made an evident impression. “The only real way to get speed
+and distance out of a toboggan is to have a slide. You use up half your
+speed now by the friction of steering. All you’ve got to do is to make
+two banks of snow a couple of feet apart, and keep the sleds out. Then
+the chute between the banks will get almost glare ice, you won’t have
+to bother to steer, and you can go a mile a minute clear to the other
+end of the pasture.”
+
+“Gee, let’s build one, Joe,” exclaimed the second small boy.
+
+“Ain’t got no shovel,” said the first.
+
+“If you’ll bring shovels tomorrow afternoon, I’ll help you,” said
+Wallace.
+
+“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” the boy replied, with some scorn.
+
+“So it is, I forgot,” Wallace laughed. “Well, how about nine o’clock
+tomorrow morning, then?”
+
+“You’re on, Judge,” said Joe, easily, as he kicked the toboggan around
+to face down the slope. “Want to try a ride?”
+
+Wallace sat down on the cushionless toboggan, between the two boys,
+and with a yell of warning they started off. The additional weight
+in the centre made the task of steering too much for the helmsman.
+Two-thirds of the way down the toboggan began to pivot, skidded madly
+to the left, upset, and rolled all three riders over and over in the
+snow. They picked themselves up, laughing, while other coasters shouted
+and jeered. The man’s wrists and neck were full of snow. His nose was
+scratched by a piece of crust. His eyes were weeping. But he laughed as
+he rose. “That won’t happen when we get the slide,” he said.
+
+“Ho, that’s fun,” the owner of the toboggan answered. “Want to try it
+again?”
+
+“I think I’ll wait till morning,” said Wallace. “Good-bye till
+tomorrow.”
+
+“So long,” said the boys, turning from him at once, as if he no longer
+existed.
+
+He went back to the road, digging snow out of his neck and sleeves,
+and feeling rather sore and wrenched. In front of the house with the
+Doric porch he now observed a toboggan standing. The girl was nowhere
+visible, but the toboggan was a hopeful possibility! He went back to
+the hotel and unpacked his trunk while the early twilight came on and
+his wood fire sparkled cheerfully. He felt cheerful again himself now,
+and sleepy with the unaccustomed country air, and pleasantly tired and
+hungry. Supper was announced by a big bell clanged in the lower hall,
+and it was an excellent meal, with real maple syrup to pour on piping
+hot griddle cakes. Still sleepier and more contented, Wallace went back
+to his room to read, nodded over the pages in front of his fire, and
+finally decided to go to bed at the unheard-of hour of nine. After he
+had undressed and turned out the light, he suddenly became aware of
+moonlight outside. Going to the window, he saw it gleaming palely on
+the white roof of the church. The village street was still and almost
+deserted. The stores were closed. Save for a distant sleighbell, there
+was hardly a sound. He opened the window and sent his breath steaming
+out into the night, and then sucked back a great lungful of the sweet,
+stinging cold air. With a final glance at the white roof sleeping in
+the moonlight, he tumbled into bed, as the clock solemnly boomed nine,
+and almost before the last reverberation had died away into silence, he
+was asleep.
+
+He was awakened in the morning by the clangor of the breakfast bell,
+breaking strangely in upon his dreams, and for several moments he
+lay in bed enjoying the odd sensation of sunshine in his chamber and
+comparative quiet in the outside world. He heard sleighbells in the
+village street, and the voice of somebody saying “good mornin’” to
+somebody else, with the old Yankee nasal inflection, which was like
+forgotten music to his ear. At 8.30 he was through his breakfast, and
+set forth to find a snow shovel and a toboggan. There were plenty of
+shovels, but only one toboggan in the store.
+
+“Thet’s the last one,” said the storekeeper. “Kinder thought I warn’t
+goin’ ter sell it, seein’ it’s six dollars. The rest wuz three an’
+four. Would you like the cushion, too? Kinder absorbs the shocks!”
+
+Wallace took the cushion, too, and set out down the main street
+dragging his new purchase and feeling rather sheepish. Nobody, however,
+paid much attention to him. He looked for the girl at the house
+behind the evergreens, but she was not visible. The toboggan was still
+standing beside the Doric porch. He passed on, vaguely disappointed,
+and was soon at the hillside. His two friends of yesterday were already
+there, and with them six other small boys, with a total of four snow
+shovels. Evidently the word had gone forth that untoward events were
+on! Wallace was secretly pleased and rather flattered. He felt so shy
+with these boys that their response seemed to him a compliment.
+
+“Good morning!” he cried. “Well, you are ahead of time. I’ll bet you
+don’t get to school so early.”
+
+The boys grinned at this, looking at each other. Wallace felt more at
+ease.
+
+“Well,” he said, “let’s get busy right away. Let’s build the slide
+somewhere so it won’t interfere with the sleds. Over here a little to
+the left, eh?”
+
+The boys followed him to the left side of the slope, and under his
+direction they began to work.
+
+It did not take them long to raise banks nearly two feet high halfway
+down the hill, but before this much was completed a score of other
+coasters had arrived, and come over to watch the work. One large boy,
+with a sled, got into the incompleted slide and came whizzing down.
+
+“Hi, get out of that!” yelled the workers. “This is for toboggans.”
+
+“Aw, chase yourself, I’m goin’ down it again,” said the coaster, as he
+came back up the hill.
+
+“No, you’re not, is he, sir?” cried the workers.
+
+Thus appealed to, everybody looked at Wallace, including the large boy.
+
+That individual spoke up quickly. “I guess this hill’s as much mine as
+it is yours,” said he, with the characteristic aggressiveness of his
+type, “an’ I’ll coast where I please.”
+
+Wallace looked at him sharply. “You are considerable of a bully, aren’t
+you?” he said. “Well, I’m something of a bully myself. We’ve left all
+of this hill to sleds except just this narrow strip, which is going
+to be for toboggans. Everybody who’s decent will keep out of it with
+sleds. Anybody who isn’t decent, who’s just mean and nasty and selfish
+and not thoughtful for other people, will have me and all these eight
+boys to reckon with. Now, young man, go ahead and try to coast here, if
+you care to!”
+
+Wallace’s voice didn’t rise above a conversational key, but he looked
+the bully square in the eyes, and that individual slunk off to the
+other side of the hill. The smaller boys looked at the man with evident
+admiration, and began to talk excitedly.
+
+“Gee,” whispered Joe to Wallace, “Jim never got a lacin’ down like that
+before! I’ll bet he comes and spoils the slide tonight, though.”
+
+“When we get it done,” said the man, “we’ll offer to take him down it
+on a toboggan. That’s the way to pull his teeth. He’ll be ashamed then,
+maybe.”
+
+No sooner had he spoken, than something made him turn. Standing close
+behind him was the girl of yesterday. In the excitement, she had come
+up the hill without his seeing her. She was dressed in a white angora
+wool cap, a white angora sweater, and a short, heavy skirt, with heavy
+knee boots below it. She held a toboggan rope in her hand, and beside
+her stood a yellow-haired youngster of six, with cheeks like two ripe
+apples. She was looking at Wallace. He unconsciously smiled and half
+nodded as his gaze met hers. She spoke, rather to all the boys than to
+him.
+
+“That’s right,” she said, “you scorch Jim’s head with coals of fire and
+maybe it will do him good. Some of these boys are in my Sunday School
+class,” she added more directly to Wallace, “so I’ll just get a day
+ahead with the lesson!”
+
+The boys all laughed at this and Wallace said, “That’s right. _Carpe
+diem_, in a new sense!”
+
+Then he reluctantly turned back to the slide. Presently he saw the girl
+and her small charge tobogganing down the hills. He sent two of his
+own “gang,” as he called them, down the slide to see how it worked,
+and set the rest to completing the bottom part. It was soon done, and
+with a shout all the eight boys piled up to the top, crowded aboard the
+toboggans, and one after another went yelling down. After a few trips
+the bottom was packed smooth, and the coasters scooted clean across the
+pasture at the bottom to the very road.
+
+“Gee, this is great!” cried one of them.
+
+“You bet, best we ever had!” shouted another.
+
+Wallace looked along the hilltop and saw the girl. “Run and tell your
+teacher, Joe, that the slide is for everybody who has a toboggan,” he
+said. “Is that her son with her?”
+
+“Ho, she’s Miss Woodford. That’s her sister’s kid,” said Joe,
+scampering off, while Wallace felt a secret relief and a glow of
+pleasure.
+
+Joe returned with the girl and two other younger girls as well, who had
+a toboggan.
+
+“We built the slide for everybody,” said Wallace to Miss Woodford.
+“It’s for the toboggans, so they won’t have to be steered. The sides
+make it perfectly safe even for children. Try it.”
+
+“It’s very nice of you,” the girl smiled. “Our boys need a man to
+direct their play.”
+
+“I fear I’m a poor hand, and a very inexperienced one,” Wallace
+answered. “But I’m having a good time.”
+
+“Doubtless that is why the boys are,” she replied, as she tucked her
+skirts around her trim boot-legs, told her little nephew to hang on
+tight, and Wallace pushed them over the brim.
+
+The slide grew more and more slippery, and the fun more and more
+furious. Half the coasters came over to watch, or to beg for rides.
+Even Jim, the bully, cast envious eyes toward the slide. “Now’s a good
+time,” said Wallace, to a couple of boys. “Go over and offer Jim a
+ride.”
+
+“You do it, Joe,” said one of the boys.
+
+“No, you do it,” said Joe.
+
+“What’s the matter, are you afraid?” said the man. “You just show him
+once you’re not afraid of him, and he’ll come down off his high horse.”
+
+“Ho, I ain’t afraid!” cried Joe, going at once toward the bully.
+
+“Come on and try the slide on my toboggan, Jim,” the rest heard him
+saying.
+
+Jim scowled and hung back for a moment, but his curiosity got the
+better of him, and he came.
+
+“Take my toboggan, Joe,” said Wallace; “it’s bigger than yours.”
+
+Joe took it, Jim the bully and another boy and two girls piled on, and
+went screaming down the slide. The man smiled, and turned to meet the
+smile of Miss Woodford.
+
+“Won’t you try mine?” she said.
+
+He put her on the front, and held the small nephew between them. That
+young person was very solemn. Wallace could feel the muscles of his
+little arms tighten as he gripped the toboggan rails. His little face
+was set, his lips parted, his yellow hair blown about his temples from
+under his cap. He was deliciously frightened by the speed. As they came
+to rest at the bottom, however, he automatically relaxed, and let out a
+bottled-up yell.
+
+“Having a good time, son?” asked Wallace, as a small hand grasped the
+rope beside his arm.
+
+“My-name’s-Albert-Andrew-Goodwin,” the young person replied, all in one
+gasping breath. “I-think-this-slide’s-the-bestest-fun-I-ever-had.”
+
+Wallace laughed, and so did the girl.
+
+“My name is Wallace Miller and I quite agree with you,” he answered.
+
+“My name is Nora Woodford, and I’m not inclined to present a minority
+report,” the girl smiled.
+
+“What’s that, Auntie Nora, that thing you just said?” demanded Albert
+Andrew Goodwin.
+
+“It’s my way of saying the slide is lots of fun,” she replied.
+
+“Why don’t you just say it, then?” the boy asked.
+
+Again the grown-ups laughed, and Wallace felt a curious thrill through
+his glove as the little hand beside his on the toboggan rope pressed
+close against his fingers.
+
+At the top the small fellow took actual hold of his hand, with a most
+engaging smile, and demanded that he steer them down again. This time
+Albert sat at the front, and Wallace grasped the rails at either side
+of the girl, to hold her on, while she put protecting hands about her
+nephew. The slide was already like glass, and it was developing a few
+spots where the banks were not quite true and the toboggans were thrown
+from one side to the other. Two-thirds of the way down little Albert
+was whipped so sharply to the left that he let go of the rail. His
+aunt, with a scream, grabbed him hard, and the shift in her weight was
+more than Wallace could counteract at the speed they were traveling.
+The toboggan rode madly up the bank at an oblique angle and shot over
+on the other side, burying its nose in a drift and sending all three
+riders overboard in a complete header. Wallace was on his feet in a
+second, and had his arm about the girl, lifting her, for he saw that
+the child must be underneath.
+
+“Are you hurt?” he cried.
+
+“No, but Albert, quick!” she gasped.
+
+Nothing of Albert was visible save his legs. His head and body had
+completely disappeared. The legs were quite still, and something inside
+of Wallace went down to his boots with the sickening lurch of a badly
+run elevator. He put his hands through the snow, grasped the body, and
+lifted it up. It came up looking like a small snowman, wabbled in his
+grasp, straightened itself, and suddenly emitted a wail.
+
+“Oh, where are you hurt?” cried the girl, kneeling beside the child and
+dabbing the snow from his face and eyes.
+
+Albert blinked the water from his vision, meditatively lifted first one
+foot and then the other, stopped crying, and said, “Why, I ain’t!”
+
+The change was so comically sudden that both man and girl laughed in
+nervous relief.
+
+“Are you sure?” she urged.
+
+“Sure,” he replied stoutly. “Ho, that wa’n’t nothing!”
+
+Again Wallace helped the girl to her feet. “And you, are _you_ sure?”
+he asked solicitously.
+
+“I’m all right,” she said. “I had Albert to land on. You’re a fine
+cushion, Albert.”
+
+“And I had both of you,” Wallace laughed. “It was a case of the women
+and children first, with a vengeance! Let me brush you.”
+
+As he stooped to do so, all three were suddenly aware of how
+snow-bepowdered they were, and laughed again, while the others on the
+hill, who had gathered about, laughed with them.
+
+“Thank heaven we can laugh!” Wallace whispered. “When I saw those two
+little leggings so still in the snow I seemed to grow ten years older.”
+
+The girl looked into his face, and shuddered, without speaking. It was
+as though they had touched hands across a sudden gulf. He brushed the
+snow from her clothes as best he could, and then he spanked it off
+Albert, and on an impulse strange to him put his arms about the little
+fellow and gave him a hug. His eyes looked up to meet those of the
+girl, which were regarding him oddly.
+
+“I didn’t know before that I liked kids,” he said, as if in apology.
+
+“You do. I’m sure,” she smiled.
+
+Before any more toboggans were allowed on the slide, Wallace and his
+gang made the banks higher and straighter at the dangerous points,
+and thus corrected the chute held like a vise. The coasters were soon
+whizzing down again.
+
+But before they could start back, the town clock struck twelve.
+
+“Oh, gee, dinner time!” cried Joe. “I’d rather slide.”
+
+“The slide will be here this afternoon,” Wallace laughed. “You go home
+to dinner before your mother gets after you, Joe!”
+
+The rest grinned at Joe, and followed Wallace and Miss Woodford out of
+the field. It was a considerable procession which marched up the road.
+Little Albert refused his aunt’s hand, proudly insisting on tugging his
+own toboggan, and chattering of his adventure. Half a dozen small boys
+disputed for the right to drag Wallace’s. Another boy carried his snow
+shovel. Even the bully was in the group.
+
+The girl looked back, laughing. “I believe you are the Pied Piper,” she
+said.
+
+“If I should confess to you,” he answered, “that this morning I was
+afraid of these boys, as timid as a child before them, maybe you
+wouldn’t believe me. But I’m not used to kids.”
+
+She again darted an odd look of curiosity at him. “Are you visiting in
+town?” she asked.
+
+He shook his head. “I don’t know a soul here. I’m at the Mansion House.
+I just came--saw the name North Topsville on the time table and liked
+it. I’m hunting for Christmas.”
+
+Once more she looked at him. “That shouldn’t be hard to find. Christmas
+is nearly everywhere, isn’t it?”
+
+Wallace shook his head. “I’ve not met Christmas personally in a decade,
+at least,” he answered.
+
+The girl paused in front of the house amid the evergreens. “I think we
+can introduce it to you here,” she said, with a bright smile. “We keep
+quite a supply on hand in Topsville.”
+
+Then she nodded to him, and to the children, and turned up the path.
+The bully touched his cap.
+
+“Boys,” said Wallace, “don’t you know what to do when a lady meets you,
+or leaves you? What is it, Joe?”
+
+Joe turned red. “Touch yer cap,” he said.
+
+“Exactly,” said Wallace, “and Jim, here, was the only boy who did it.
+Good for you, Jim!”
+
+It was Jim’s turn to color--with pleasure as well as embarrassment.
+The other boys looked at him. The villain of the early morning had now
+become the hero! They scattered their several ways in some perplexity,
+while Wallace walked on to his dinner, every nerve tingling with the
+excitement of the morning, the unusual contact with small boys, the
+thrill of little Albert’s touch, his warm baby arms and hand, the
+sudden surge of horror at the thought of injury to him, the feeling of
+intimacy which followed the accident, the perfume of the girl’s hair,
+her bright, friendly smile, the whole atmosphere of naïve enjoyment. It
+wasn’t much like his mornings in New York, he reflected. And what an
+appetite he had!
+
+But he discovered after dinner that he was tired, that the muscles of
+his legs ached from climbing the hill, that his hands were chapped and
+his face smarted. Indolence stole over him, and he curled up before the
+fire in his room and read a book, until the light began to fail. Then
+he went out once more, into the cold twilight, and his feet led him
+up the street to the house with the Doric porch. He told himself that
+he must inquire if Albert were really unhurt. Almost at the gate he
+met Miss Woodford, Albert, and several of the boys, which answered his
+unspoken question.
+
+“Hi, where were you this after’?” called Joe. “Gee, the slide’s so
+slippery now it’s most ice!”
+
+“Yes, an’ I mos’ fell off again twice!” cried little Albert Andrew
+Goodwin, running up to him and thrusting a tiny hand into his.
+
+“Did you?” cried Wallace. “Well, now you see why you’ve got to hang on
+tight, all right.”
+
+The other boys moved on, and Joe led them in touching his cap to the
+girl.
+
+(“That’s right, Joe,” whispered Wallace, as the boy passed him.)
+
+Miss Woodford acknowledged the salute with a bright smile and a “Good
+night.” The little chap kept fast hold of Wallace’s hand.
+
+“I gotta snow man in the back yard. You come ’n see it,” he pleaded,
+tugging at his new friend’s fingers.
+
+Wallace laughed, a little embarrassed. “I guess not today, Albert,” he
+said. “It’s bedtime for little boys and snow men.”
+
+“Ho, snow men don’t go to bed at all, an’ I don’t go till seven!” cried
+Albert. “Please tell him to come, Auntie Nora.”
+
+“You’ve asked him, dear,” said Auntie Nora, with a smile. “I’m sure
+he’ll come for you if anybody.”
+
+Wallace looked at her, and her eyes met his for a second and did not
+tell him to refuse, so with Albert’s hand still tugging at his, he was
+taken up the path between the evergreens, around the big, square house,
+into a large garden space, where a snow man stood, with lumps of coal
+for eyes.
+
+“Why, how do you do, Mr. I. C. Snow!” cried Wallace, pretending to
+shake hands. “I am glad to see you looking so well. I trust you don’t
+find this weather too cold for you?”
+
+Albert shouted with glee. “Say it again!” he cried.
+
+Wallace put his ear to the snow man’s mouth, and shook his head
+gravely. “Oh, that’s very sad!” he said. “Very sad!”
+
+“What does he say?” Albert asked, crowding close.
+
+“He says he’s got such a cold from not wearing a hat that he’s lost his
+voice,” Wallace answered.
+
+The boy looked solemnly puzzled for a second, and then burst into
+shouts of laughter.
+
+“Ain’t he funny, Auntie Nora?” he demanded. “The snow man don’t really
+talk.”
+
+“_What?_” cried Wallace. “Well, I guess you never listened very close!”
+
+“I like you,” said Albert suddenly, grabbing his hand again. “Come in
+an’ see my blocks.”
+
+“Do,” added the girl, noting Wallace’s hesitancy; “we will have some
+tea.”
+
+“You are very kind,” Wallace answered, “but I’m afraid our little
+friend is forcing your hospitality.”
+
+“We always have tea at this time,” she smiled. Her eyes were friendly.
+In her white cap and sweater, her cheeks red with a day in the open,
+her hair curling out rebelliously about her temples, she was a
+temptation hard to resist. The warm little hand was tugging at his
+fingers. But Wallace managed to say, “Another time, sonny,” and made
+his way to the street.
+
+The next morning he debated the propriety of going to church. He had
+not gone to church for so many years that the idea was invested with
+novelty. Yet he knew that he was going in reality to see the girl
+again, and it seemed hardly an appropriate motive. However, he went!
+
+A farmer sat directly in front of him, with a sunburned neck like
+wrinkled leather, rising above a rubber collar. Wallace thought of
+his own grandfather, who had been a Yankee farmer, too. The whole
+congregation, and the bare meeting house with its gallery on three
+sides and its lofty pulpit reached by a winding stair, reminded him of
+his childhood. He saw Miss Woodford in the choir. She wore black furs,
+which became her as much as white. Presently she sang a solo, and her
+voice was sweet and quite evidently trained. Wallace found himself
+suddenly thrilled by it, as he used to be years ago by the voices of
+those he loved, and long after the congregation had rustled to silence
+and the minister had begun to preach, he sat with his eyes on the
+choir, in a delicious revery.
+
+When the sermon was over, and the congregation had sung the closing
+hymn and bowed for the benediction, there was an immediate outpouring
+from the pews and the hum of greetings. This was the social hour of the
+week. The minister came down from the pulpit, exchanging salutations.
+Children came running in on their way to Sunday School in the vestry.
+Neighbors chatted in groups. Before Wallace had fairly left his pew,
+a farmer in starched best was grasping him by the hand, and hoping
+he would come again. The minister came up and greeted him. A moment
+later he saw Miss Woodford drawing near. She put out her hand. “Good
+morning,” she said. Then, turning to the minister, she added, “Mr.
+Miller taught some of my boys in one day to do what I’ve not been able
+to teach them in a year--to touch their hats. I really think you ought
+to give him a Sunday School class.”
+
+“Good gracious!” gasped Wallace, with such evidently genuine amaze that
+the others laughed.
+
+“I should be delighted to get a man into the Sunday School,” said the
+minister. “Who knows, we might start up some Boy Scout work!”
+
+“Mr. Miller is just the man,” said the girl, with a twinkle.
+
+“I don’t think this is fair of you, Miss Woodford,” Wallace put
+in. “For all you know, I’m a heathen--maybe the Pied Piper, as you
+suggested.”
+
+“The Pied Piper would have made an excellent scout master,” the
+minister smiled. “Well, Mr. Miller, if you stay in North Topsville
+long, we shall hope to catch you yet.”
+
+He moved on, leaving the two young people together. A second woman,
+in black, drew near, a few years older than Miss Woodford. “May I
+introduce the mother of your friend Albert--my sister, Mrs. Goodwin,”
+said the girl.
+
+“I am always delighted to meet Albert’s friends,” the second smiled.
+“He tells me you wouldn’t come to see his blocks. I really think you
+will have to come if only to keep him quiet. For tea tomorrow, perhaps?”
+
+Wallace bowed, as Albert’s mother passed on. The girl turned toward the
+vestry. “Now to my class,” she said. “I do wish you would take it,
+instead.” Her eyes met his for a second, half twinkling, half earnest.
+
+He shook his head. “Really, I’m unfit. You don’t know.” He spoke
+seriously.
+
+Their eyes were together a second longer, unspoken questions passing
+between them, and then she left him. As he went down the path from the
+church he heard behind him the shrill piping of the Sunday School,
+singing the opening hymn, and he smiled at the sound, for it touched
+forgotten stops in his memory. Gilsey, he reflected, was just about
+getting up at this moment, after his Sunday morning loaf in bed, and
+was probably swearing at the hot water tap as he shaved himself. Smith
+and Stedman, maybe, were finishing breakfast at the club, and solemnly
+debating the tremendous question of how they would kill the remainder
+of the day. Mercer was getting ready the Sunday afternoon assignment
+book in a newspaper office stale with the tobacco smoke of the night
+before, and doubtless planning to get away early for a bridge game--his
+Sunday afternoon recreation. How they would all sneer at Wallace if
+they knew he was coming from church, and listening with wistful delight
+to the drone of Sunday School behind him!
+
+The following afternoon, when school was out, Wallace dragged his
+toboggan to the hill, and joined once more in the sport. The slide
+was still intact. The bully’s fangs had evidently been drawn. Miss
+Woodford was there, with Albert. For an hour Wallace’s toboggan was
+packed with shouting small boys, who treated him now like one of them,
+an unconscious flattery which he found very pleasant. Then, as the sun
+began to sink through a green sky into the tops of the hemlocks far
+across the snowy fields, Wallace left his toboggan behind, for Joe to
+take proud charge of, and walked home with the girl and Albert. The
+shouts died away behind them. It was almost twilight in the village
+street. As they came to Miss Woodford’s gate, Wallace saw a red lamp in
+the window, glowing between the evergreens. He paused abruptly.
+
+“I can’t tell you what a curious sensation that lighted window square
+gives me, gleaming behind the trees over the snow,” he said. “But in
+some strange way it takes me back to the days when I was no older
+than Albert, and Christmas was a reality. Ever since I came to North
+Topsville I’ve had a curious sensation of familiarity, though I was
+never here before in my life. Just now, if my mother should be waiting
+at the door, I’d not be surprised.”
+
+“Your mother is dead?” the girl asked.
+
+“And my father. I left New England many years ago, and I guess I’ve
+been a man without a country ever since. Now I’m coming back home.”
+
+It may be he spoke wistfully, for the girl did not reply for a moment,
+and little Albert ran ahead with the toboggan.
+
+“We New Englanders never quite forget, do we?” she finally said. “We
+are like the Irish in that. I--I trust you will continue to feel at
+home in North Topsville. We are surely New England here, especially in
+our ratio of the sexes! I’m one of sixty-seven old maids in this small
+village.”
+
+Wallace looked at her, with her firm body in its white sweater, her
+full-colored cheeks, her keen, dancing eyes, and suddenly laughed.
+“Then that’s proof positive of Mr. Shaw’s ‘Man and Superman’ theory,”
+he said, “and--well, some of you are merely indifferent.”
+
+The girl darted a look at him. “No woman ever tells what she really
+thinks of Mr. Shaw’s theory,” she replied, leading the way up the path.
+
+Presently Wallace was trying to drink tea and reproduce the Woolworth
+Tower in blocks at the same time, in a square, mahogany-furnished
+room which appeared to have been lived in for a century and yet to be
+freshly and cheerfully of today. He saw Miss Woodford for the first
+time without hat or wraps. She had run upstairs and returned with
+slippers on instead of high boots, and he noticed that her stockings
+were of heavy wool. Somehow he was pleased at this common-sense
+concession to the climate. Her hair was copious and rebellious.
+Inside of the house, she looked riotously healthy, in odd contrast
+to the women of New York. Her sister, evidently a recent widow, was
+more subdued, though she, too, had a twinkle in her eyes, a palpable
+inheritance from the white-haired woman who sat upright and energetic
+at the tea table and astounded Wallace by saying, “Since my daughter
+spoke of you I have read one of your stories in a magazine, and I
+don’t like it very much.”
+
+“Which one was it?” asked Wallace, looking up from the pile of blocks
+in front of him on the rug. His eyes met the old lady’s, and she seemed
+pleased at the challenge.
+
+“It was about a man and a woman--all magazine stories are--who have all
+kinds of emotions at a violin recital. It seemed rather turgid to me. I
+call that form of affection a sublimated species of Dutch courage.”
+
+Wallace joined in the laugh. “I guess you are right,” he said, “but
+you must try to excuse me as a New Yorker. You see, we live in such a
+restricted round of artificial pursuits and pleasures that we have to
+substitute art for nature as a stimulant.”
+
+“Speaking of stimulants, have some more tea,” said the old lady.
+“Albert, pass the gentleman’s cup.”
+
+“He ain’t got the tower did yet,” said the boy.
+
+“Albert!”
+
+Albert brought the cup.
+
+Presently Albert’s mother took him off, protesting, to his supper, and
+Wallace and the girl sat before the fire while the mother chatted on
+an amazing variety of topics, evidently pleased at the chance of a new
+listener, and asked innumerable questions about affairs of the hour,
+which the man answered as best he could.
+
+The girl came with him to the outer door.
+
+“I like your mother,” he said.
+
+“Most people do, who aren’t afraid of her,” she smiled.
+
+As he drew on his gloves, she stood in the doorway not minding the
+cold, and the last glimpse he had was of her face, rosy and smiling, in
+the slit of golden light, her eyes alone telling him good night, while
+the face of Albert was suddenly squeezed through between her skirts
+and the door frame and his small voice piped, “I got a steam train you
+ain’t saw!”
+
+“You _haven’t seen_,” Wallace heard faintly, as the door closed.
+
+Even the little shops in North Topsville were gay for Christmas.
+Nearly all had small evergreens before the doors, and attempted window
+displays. As Wallace walked back for supper, it occurred to him that
+he ought to buy Albert a present. But there seemed to be nothing quite
+satisfactory in the local market. It would be a good joke to write and
+ask one of the To-Hell-with-the-Merry-Yule-Tide Association to select
+it for him in New York. He smiled as he thought of Mercer’s remarks
+when the request came. What was the name of that Fifth Avenue toy shop,
+anyhow? Wallace searched his memory till the name came to him, and
+wrote at once for a toy aeroplane such as he had seen in the windows,
+the propeller operated by rubber bands. But he didn’t write to Mercer.
+He wanted to be sure of the toy.
+
+The next day it snowed, a soft, steady, dry fall, and after working
+all the morning before his cheerful fire, the ideas coming with
+unaccustomed fertility, Wallace set out for a tramp. He wondered if he
+dared ask the girl to go with him, and was still debating the point
+when he found himself on her porch. Yes, she would go; she loved to
+tramp in the snow. In three minutes she reappeared, wrapped in white
+woollens, and strode beside him down the path, while the wails of
+Albert were heard at being left behind.
+
+“Poor chap,” said Wallace, “it’s a great tragedy not to be allowed to
+do what the big folks are doing. Perhaps I can make him a snow lady to
+cheer him up when we get back. Where shall we walk?”
+
+“How would you like to take a tramp to Christmas?” the girl asked.
+
+“Have we time?” he smiled.
+
+She didn’t answer, but set off up the road at a swinging pace.
+
+“You see, the honor of the town is rather at stake,” she said
+presently. “We can’t let you get away still a heathen. We’ve _got_ to
+show you Christmas.”
+
+“Will we meet Santa Claus?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, no, not in the daytime, silly. But we may see the prints of his
+reindeers’ hoofs.”
+
+They turned up a side road after half a mile of brisk walking, passed
+one or two farmhouses, and began to climb a hill. The snow, which had
+been stinging their faces, was now abating. The wind had broken into
+the northwest, and in that quarter a rift of blue sky appeared.
+
+“Look,” cried the girl, “it is clearing! Oh, I’m going to show you
+something beautiful!”
+
+They now turned up a wood road, and began to make their way with
+difficulty through unbroken snow, four inches of feathery new fall on
+top, and beneath that the half-crusted old snow through which their
+feet broke. Wallace found it hard work, and looked at his companion
+solicitously. “Isn’t this too hard walking for you?” he asked.
+
+“Are you getting tired?” she smiled. “We really should have brought
+snowshoes, but you’ll have to go a considerable distance to fag me. I’m
+used to it.”
+
+“You are quite different from some women I’ve known in recent years,
+that’s a fact,” said he. “You are so wonderfully healthy!”
+
+“I’m disgustingly so,” she laughed. “Look! One of Santa’s reindeer!”
+
+She was on her knees in the snow, examining a hoof print. “And there
+are more!” she added. “See, he’s tramped around that sumach bush, and
+nibbled off all the buds!”
+
+“Are we getting near Christmas?” asked Wallace.
+
+She rose, shook her skirt, and started on. “We are,” she cried, “and
+here’s the sun to decorate the trees!”
+
+Sure enough, as she spoke the sun came out, and instantly the woods
+around them--a grove of young chestnuts and maples--became radiant
+with frostwork on every twig, arching into groins of tracery overhead.
+Wallace fairly gasped with delight, and the girl smiled into his face.
+
+“Have you anything as nice as that in New York?” she said. “This is all
+mine, too. I own this wood lot all myself.”
+
+She hurried him on through the sunlit, elfin aisles of the frost
+cathedral till suddenly the hard timber ended, and a grove of young
+spruce and hemlock confronted them, with now and then a patriarchal old
+pine lifting far above the lesser trees and holding out the dazzling
+snow on its branches against the blue sky.
+
+“Come in, come in,” the girl whispered, “Christmas is in here!”
+
+Close behind her, he followed in among the evergreens. The branches
+shook snow down upon them as they passed through till they were
+powdered white. A few chickadees hopped, half invisible, among the
+thick foliage. A moment later they stood in an open glade, where a few
+dead goldenrod stalks stood up in lovely Japanese simplicity above the
+white carpet, and all about them was a ring of perfect Christmas trees,
+each loaded with snow on its lateral branches, dazzling snow against
+the green in the afternoon sun. Above was the blue winter sky. Only the
+chickadees’ song broke the perfect silence.
+
+“This is where the Christmas trees live,” said the girl, softly. “Now,
+do you believe?”
+
+“I believe,” he answered. “And there is a present for me on every
+branch.”
+
+“What is that?”
+
+He looked into her face. “Perhaps I can’t tell you now,” he answered.
+“I shall have to take it home and open it. I’m not used to presents,
+and I can’t guess from the feel of the bundle.”
+
+“I hope it’s something nice,” she smiled.
+
+“I’m sure of that,” said he, his eyes still on hers.
+
+So they stood for an instant, their eyes meeting, and then her gaze
+dropped.
+
+They spoke more seriously as they tramped homeward.
+
+“Your mother’s criticism of my story, it was just--I see that now,”
+he said. “After all, to anyone who lives near woods like these, who
+has children to care for, and neighbors’ troubles to adjust, and the
+welfare of a community on his conscience, the life of some of us in
+New York, between theatres and concerts and clubs and teas, must seem
+rather--well, rather useless. I’ve thought sometimes--most of the time,
+I fear--that life outside of New York was a pretty dull and deadening
+thing, that I couldn’t be happy anywhere else. That’s the typical New
+York view. Yet all the while these woods were here, these elfin aisles
+of frost and twig--and--and you walking down them.”
+
+“I know the New York view very well,” she answered, after the briefest
+pause, in which his last personality seemed to hover between them till
+she put it from her, not angrily, still less coquettishly, but rather
+as an interruption to graver thought. “But if you lived here in North
+Topsville long you would learn that there is something to be said for
+New York, too. I should hate to live in New York all my days. I think I
+should rise up like Samson and push over the walls if I were cooped up
+in a flat. But you noticed how Mother just ate you up conversationally?
+Well, that was because you came from New York, I mean because you had
+touched all the currents of thought and activity just by being there
+amid so many active people. We have to go down to New York once in a
+while to restock our brains as well as our wardrobes. And you’ve no
+idea how good the old street looks when we come back!”
+
+“But here,” Wallace said, “you have neighbors, you have a community
+life, you are of use to other people. I suppose one could be in town,
+too, if he were big enough to realize the opportunities--to go out for
+them. But the average man in a city isn’t big enough.”
+
+“Of use to other people, yes,” she answered, eagerly. “That more than
+anything else is at the bottom of what silly little philosophy of life
+I, as a woman, am permitted to have. My friends in New York ask me, as
+they are rushing me off to a concert or a theatre or a tea, what I find
+to do with myself in the country all winter. I don’t tell them--what’s
+the use? But there’s so much to do! So much I’m not fitted to do,
+though I try. You know Joe, who helped you build the slide--the merry,
+red-haired little chap? You must like Joe! Joe’s father drinks. How are
+we going to keep Joe from drinking? We mustn’t let him go the same way,
+must we? That’s just one of a hundred problems--all too hard for me.
+Sometimes I come out here to these woods and just ask and ask for help!”
+
+Wallace looked into her flushed, eager face, lovely in its
+transfiguration of earnestness, and something in his own soul rose
+up and choked him. He saw his life as utter selfishness, and he was
+ashamed, ashamed as he had never been before.
+
+“I--I--came here looking for Christmas,” he said slowly, “but I guess
+it’s something different from what I thought. I guess I was just a
+sentimental searcher after my lost childhood. Christmas is--is service,
+isn’t it?”
+
+The girl looked at him, and suddenly put out her hand. He took it
+in his. “Yes, oh yes!” she answered. “It is service and the joy of
+service. It is just being glad of the chance! Oh, please always believe
+that!”
+
+She gave his hand an eager pressure, while her face glowed to his.
+
+“I promise,” he answered.
+
+Then her fingers slipped away, and they tramped on in silence, deep
+in their thoughts. The woods seemed more than ever to him a frost
+cathedral.
+
+Out on the open road, in the freedom of clear walking, they swung along
+at a faster pace, and laughter returned. They entered her house for
+tea, and once more Wallace saw her rebellious hair about her face, and
+once more the little hands of Albert grasped his, dragging him to see
+his toys, and sent a thrill to his heart, and once more he sat opposite
+to the girl in the firelight and talked, with the mother leading the
+conversation. He felt as if he were once more almost a part of a real
+family, as he had not been for many, many years. It was with a pang
+that he rose to go. The girl shook hands with him in the door. He could
+only say “Thank you,” awkwardly, and went to his hotel in a daze, like
+a man walking in new worlds not yet realized.
+
+The next morning he wrote to New York for a Boy Scout manual, and for
+more of his clothes and possessions. At dinner a message came from the
+girl asking him to join in a trip to the woods after a Christmas tree,
+and of course he went. At the Woodford house he found a big lumber
+sledge waiting, with Albert already dancing up and down beside the
+driver, and Joe, with three other boys, dangling their legs behind.
+The girl soon joined them, and they went jingling up the street, the
+youngsters chattering, and yelling at their companions on the walk.
+
+When they reached the grove of spruce and hemlock, everybody sprang
+from the sledge and began to prospect for trees.
+
+“Don’t let them cut any from the Christmas ring,” whispered Wallace.
+“I--I shouldn’t want that ring altered. Please!”
+
+The girl looked at him, and colored a little, nodding an affirmation.
+“You haven’t told me what the present was,” she whispered.
+
+“I will--some day,” he answered. “I can’t quite make it out myself yet.”
+
+For the next five minutes there was much scampering about and
+excitement and shouting. But presently each boy selected a tree, and
+Wallace, leading Albert by the hand, up to his tiny knees in snow,
+found a tree which just suited that young person, and then the ax went
+the round, and the sledge was loaded with the fragrant evergreens.
+
+On the homeward trip, Wallace was aware of the old Christmas tingle in
+his veins, for beside him the boys chattered of their holiday hopes,
+of sleds and books and tools and toys long desired; behind him was the
+pile of fragrant spruce; all about him was the white world and the
+cold air and the jingle of sleighbells. But he was aware of something
+else--strange and new, of which his memory had no record. He felt an
+odd, new tenderness toward these children; their chatter was music to
+him, yes, to him who lived between his club and his apartment and never
+saw a child from one month to the next! He put an arm about Albert to
+hold him on the sledge, and longed suddenly to press the little body
+hard against his side. He was aware, too, of the girl--above all of the
+girl; but not, somehow, apart from these other little lives and this
+new tenderness for childhood, but rather as the crown and completion of
+his mood. He thought of it first as his mood, and then mentally altered
+the word. No, it was not a mood. It was a new, spiritual attitude,
+surely. It was his present on the Christmas trees, the present _she_
+had given him. He longed to tell her of it. He looked at her, over the
+laughing, eager faces of the boys, and her eyes smiled back. He was too
+happy to speak. Perhaps she knew that, for she did not speak, either.
+When he took her hand to help her alight, it seemed to him as if they
+were older friends than when the ride began. An hour later, in the
+twilight dimness of her hall, she said to him:
+
+“Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Mother wants you to dine with us--early,
+because of Albert--and maybe you’ll help us set up the tree and
+decorate it. We’ll try to be as Christmasy as we can for you.”
+
+“Tomorrow I’ll--I’ll tell you what the present was,” he answered. “Ah,
+you’ve shown me Christmas already. I can’t explain--perhaps I shouldn’t
+say anything--but somehow I have felt today as if I had known you a
+long time, as if I had known you always, but something had separated
+us.” He laughed a little, embarrassed how to continue, for she was
+silent, her face averted. “I--guess that’s a pretty common way for a
+man to feel when he meets somebody who comes into his life with a big,
+glad, upsetting rush,” he went on. Then he finished lamely, “Rosetti
+has a poem about it, I recall.”
+
+There was a long silence. In the house behind Wallace could hear
+Albert’s voice, chattering excitedly to his mother as he ate his
+supper. In the sitting room he could hear the old lady poking the fire
+energetically--she did everything energetically. A big grandfather’s
+clock on the stair landing ticked in time to his heart throbs--a
+curious, irrelevant fact which his mind laid hold of as the mind will
+in such tense moments. Finally the girl spoke, her voice low, but her
+eyes looking frankly up into his.
+
+“What you have just said seems to connect me, a little more personally
+than I’m afraid I deserve, with Christmas,” she answered. “Isn’t it
+really little Albert you’ve known so long, not I?”
+
+“It is you--Auntie Nora,” he whispered back. “Oh, I can’t tell you
+now, but I will--I will! Why were all the intervening years?”
+
+“We are taught there is a reason for everything,” she smiled, her eyes
+veiled as a woman can veil her eyes when she chooses. But her color was
+high, nor did she move away from him. In the half dusk of the hall they
+were close together to see each other’s faces, and to hear each other’s
+low-spoken words. Her presence thrilled him. “Good night,” he suddenly
+whispered, taking her hand and holding it hard in his. “I shall find
+Christmas tomorrow!”
+
+“I--I hope so,” she whispered back.
+
+Her smile had gone, and the veil from her eyes. They seemed suddenly
+the eyes of all good women he was looking into. They gazed into his
+and told him in some mysterious way that a bond existed between him
+and her, that she desired his happiness, that she desired it to be the
+happiness which comes from the highest living. Her hand was warm in
+his. She did not withdraw it, but held his fingers firmly, while her
+eyes were lifted telling him these things the tongue cannot utter. His
+own eyes filled with strange tears, of happiness and humbleness, and he
+left her in silence.
+
+At his hotel room he found the big parcel containing Albert’s
+aeroplane, and also, in his mail, a final threat from the other members
+of the To-Hell-with-the-Merry-Yule-Tide Association. With a smile, he
+put the letter in his pocket, and, unpacking the aeroplane, consumed
+the half hour before dinner putting it together. When it was assembled,
+he placed it on his bed, contemplated it in the light of Albert’s
+emotions--and found it good.
+
+It was there on the bed when he came up from dinner--a child’s toy in
+his room, a warming reminder, a symbol. He drew a picture and wrote
+a poem to go with it, and then, seeing the moonlight on the village
+roofs, he went out into the street, his shoes squeaking on the packed
+snow in the zero weather, and swung up the road. In the house behind
+the evergreens the sitting-room window squares glowed warmly. Inside,
+by the fire or the lamp, she was sitting. Wallace two weeks before
+would have laughed down the suggestion that he could be such a banal
+idiot as to haunt the roadway before a woman’s house, thrilled by
+the thought that she was inside. Yet here he was, in the moonlight,
+gazing at the red window squares beyond the snowy evergreens, all his
+conscious being flooded with the memory of the girl within and the
+sense of home and hearth and loved ones.
+
+Home and hearth--those words began to chime in his brain. Losing them,
+one lost Christmas. Christmas was service, and the joy and celebration
+of service, she had said. But were not they, the home and hearth, at
+the beginning and the end of service? What was all the industrial
+struggle of the world for at the bottom but to gain them? What was
+liberty but the opportunity to enjoy them? What generous or holy
+impulse but owed its birth to them, where even the race is born? The
+light went out behind the evergreens, and a moment later reappeared
+in the second story. He saw a figure come to the window, look for a
+second, and then draw down the shade. It was she! That was her chamber!
+Foolishly, happily, tenderly, Wallace lifted his face toward it and
+shaped his lips into a kiss.
+
+As he went back to the hotel his life seemed as clear before him as the
+shadows of the tree trunks cast by the moonlight on the snow.
+
+Late the next afternoon, when he arrived at the house behind the
+evergreens, a large, mysterious parcel under his arm, Albert greeted
+him in the hall with shouts of delight, demanding to know if the parcel
+was for him.
+
+“For you? What an idea!” said Wallace. “I met Santa Claus just now
+flying over the church, and he dropped this down to me, telling me to
+give it to the best boy in North Topsville. You don’t get it unless you
+can prove you’re the best boy. My! I had a hard time catching it, for
+Santa was up nearly as high as the top of the steeple when he dropped
+it. Lucky I’m a ball player!”
+
+“I’m the bestest boy,” said Albert. “My mother said so yesterday to
+Mrs. Perkins, ’cause I heard her.”
+
+“What does Auntie Nora say? The law requires two witnesses, you know.”
+
+“Auntie Nora says it will depend on how Albert behaves tonight,” said a
+voice on the landing.
+
+Wallace looked up. The girl he had seen only in rough short skirt and
+outing woollens, with rebellious hair, was descending toward him in
+silks, a jeweled pendant at her bare throat, her shoulders gleaming.
+She was very beautiful, and the hand she extended toward him might, he
+thought, have been the hand of a princess which he should stoop and
+kiss.
+
+“Hi, Auntie Nora’s all dressed up!” cried Albert. “Why’d you all dress
+up, Auntie?”
+
+The princess blushed and laughed, and said, “Now Auntie Nora thinks
+you’re _not_ the best boy in town, because good boys don’t make
+personal remarks.”
+
+“But I think you’re very beautiful,” said Albert, suddenly throwing his
+arms about her. “Isn’t she, Mr. Miller?”
+
+“She is, indeed, Albert, she is the loveliest lady in the world!”
+Wallace answered, his voice intense, his eyes looking over Albert,
+fascinated.
+
+The girl hid her face on Albert’s shoulder, while that young person
+added the further comment, “Why, your cheek’s orful hot, Auntie.”
+
+“Now you’re the _worst_ boy in town,” she said, “and you won’t get
+Santa’s box, for certain!”
+
+“I’m not so sure,” said the man, as Albert freed himself from his aunt
+and rushed off with the box to the sitting room.
+
+The girl had scarce lifted her rosy face to Wallace, their eyes meeting
+in silence, when her mother and sister descended the stairs, and the
+cord was snapped. But it was at the girl’s side that Wallace entered
+the sitting room, and as they passed through the door together their
+hands brushed, and he knew that she, too, felt the spark.
+
+In the middle of the sitting room lay Albert’s tree, mingling its odor
+with the odor of burning apple wood. Albert was hovering about it.
+“How’s it going to stand up?” he demanded.
+
+“Maybe we’ll bore a hole in the floor,” Wallace suggested.
+
+Albert regarded him gravely. “No, I don’t think Grandmother would
+approve,” said he, lapsing as he sometimes did into a quaint adult
+vocabulary.
+
+“When I was little, we used a tub of furnace coal,” Wallace laughed.
+
+“Come on!” cried Albert. “I know where the tub is!”
+
+His mother grabbed his flying coat tails, and diverted him to the
+dining room. The excitement of dining with the family, of candles and
+turkey, of a big tinsel star suspended over the centre of the table,
+made him quite forget what he was about, and he was talking rapidly as
+he pulled up his chair.
+
+“Albert!” said his grandmother.
+
+The three women bowed their heads, and Wallace bowed his.
+
+Albert drew in his breath, expelled it in a grace, had just enough left
+for the “Amen,” and instantly resumed his interrupted chatter. The
+elders exchanged smiles, but Wallace was thinking how at that moment
+five members of the To-Hell-with-the-Merry-Yule-Tide Association were
+on their way toward Delmonico’s, and of what a contrast to this little
+act of old-fashioned devotion the preliminaries of that feast would be.
+He grinned to himself at the irony of it.
+
+Wallace’s attention during dinner was divided between the girl at his
+side and the boy opposite, between efforts to talk sense and nonsense,
+for Albert loved his nonsense, and demanded minute details of Santa
+Claus’s appearance as he drove over the church steeple, which he
+accepted with the paradoxically trustful unbelief of small boyhood.
+Wallace finally got into a considerable argument with the old lady
+regarding the number of reindeer in Santa’s team, she insisting that
+in her day, at any rate, there used to be twelve. In the excitement of
+the debate, the plum pudding was forgotten, and suddenly it appeared,
+burning merrily, and then everybody stopped talking to cheer.
+
+After dinner, Albert was permitted to stay up long enough to see
+the tree mounted. He went for a tub, while his aunt took Wallace
+to the cellar for a big hod of furnace coal. One must make all the
+preparations one’s self on Christmas Eve! She held her skirts high as
+they went laughing over the dusty, uncemented floor, and her silk-clad
+ankles shone in the dim light. In the far corners of the cellar dark
+shadows seemed to crouch and stir. She gave a mocking little shiver.
+
+“I used to be so terrified down here when I was a child!” she said. “I
+don’t remember whether it was rats or ghosts.”
+
+Wallace filled the hod, and on the way back from the bin stopped in
+front of the furnace.
+
+“I want to look into a furnace,” he said. “I haven’t been down in a
+cellar and looked into a furnace since I was a boy and had to do it
+every night and morning. It is so homey!”
+
+He opened the door, and the warm red glow came out and fell full on the
+girl’s face and bare shoulders, as she stood close beside him, peering
+in. He turned from the fire to look at her.
+
+“You _are_ so beautiful!” he whispered.
+
+“Sh--, you mustn’t,” she answered. But her color rose and her eyes
+softened.
+
+“I must, I must!” he exclaimed. “I cannot help it any longer! You are
+so beautiful, and so good! If I’d stayed in New York I should be at the
+dinner of the To-Hell-with-the-Merry-Yule-Tide Association. Now I’m
+gazing into Heaven with the most wonderful woman in the world!”
+
+“It doesn’t look exactly like Heaven,” she twinkled, pointing to the
+wallowing little spits of flame above the bed of coals, and moving a
+little from his side. “Come, we must go back!”
+
+He followed her reluctantly up the stairs, into the rear hallway.
+There, for a brief second, she faced him soberly.
+
+“I’m--I’m glad you are not at that horrid association you spoke of,”
+she whispered, and ran ahead swiftly into the sitting room.
+
+It was not long before the tree stood erect in the centre of the room,
+its top just bent against the ceiling; and poor Albert was ordered off
+to bed, refusing, however, to go unless Wallace carried him up on his
+shoulder and his aunt undressed him.
+
+“Auntie Nora lets me kick my shoes,” he explained.
+
+Wallace swung him up and marched up the stairs with him, Auntie Nora
+following behind. There was an open fire in the little chap’s nursery,
+and his stocking hung from the mantle. There were toys on the floor.
+When, a few moments later, he came dashing out from the bathroom in a
+long flannel nightie, followed by the girl, he ran to the fireplace and
+pinched the toe of the stocking. Then, instinctively, he held his hands
+out toward the blaze, and Wallace saw his Christmas card--saw the warm
+red firelight reflected on the little figure, the dangling stocking,
+the cold moonlight on a whitened world through the window beyond. He
+almost held his breath, whispering to the girl what it was that held
+him so in the picture.
+
+They stood side by side a moment, watching Albert, who was gazing in
+silence into the fire, his chatter suddenly stilled.
+
+“What are you thinking about, son?” said Wallace, presently.
+
+“I was thinking maybe Santa’d get his feet burnt if the fire didn’t go
+out,” Albert replied.
+
+“Well, you say good night to Mr. Miller now, and go to bed,” his aunt
+laughed, “and we’ll put it out.”
+
+The boy ran over and flung his arms about Wallace’s neck, giving him a
+soft, dabby kiss on the cheek. “Good night!” he cried. Then he dashed
+into his chamber.
+
+When the girl came back, she found Wallace standing in front of the
+fire, looking into the coals. She came over and stood beside him.
+
+“Come,” she said softly, “we must go down and decorate the tree.”
+
+He put out his hand and took hers, drawing her closer to his side.
+
+“That present,” he said, “I have not told you what it was. It was the
+gift of Christmas, it was the gift of a new spirit, it was the gift of
+my lost childhood--it was the gift of love.”
+
+She did not speak, but her hand lay warm in his, and her fingers closed
+a little tighter about his own.
+
+“When I suddenly saw my Christmas card right here in flesh and blood
+tonight,” he went on, “I was not surprised. It is but a symbol. Once
+I was the little boy on that card. Now I am my own father and mother
+looking at him. Last night I stood out there a long while before your
+windows, realizing that hearth and home are the altars of Christmas,
+alike its foundation and the flower of its spirit. I realized that,
+because love had entered my heart, because you had entered my heart. I
+have been so selfish these many years! I have not helped others, I have
+not liked children, I have been far away from all the deep, natural
+instincts. But you have brought me back. You have given me the present
+of a new spirit, the Christmas spirit.”
+
+“You were not really so selfish as you thought,” she whispered, “and
+you always loved children, only you didn’t have a chance to find it
+out. I knew that as soon as I saw you.”
+
+He put his arm about her waist and felt the perfume of her hair
+beneath his face, as her head rested on his shoulder.
+
+“It is so short a time,” he said, “and I am so unworthy. Why should you
+care for me?”
+
+“It has been a very long time,” she answered softly. “I am not a child.
+I have known the man whom I should love, and only waited for him till
+he came, and till he, too, knew. That is what those intervening years
+were for--that we might learn.”
+
+She lifted her face, then, and he bent down his head and kissed her,
+while his eyes closed with the wonder of it.
+
+“Auntie Nora, I want a drink of water,” came the voice of Albert
+suddenly. “What are you whispering about in there?”
+
+“Maybe we were talking to Santa,” she answered, as she slipped from her
+lover’s arms and ran to get the water.
+
+Hand in hand, they moved down the stairway, and her eyes flashed back
+at him like two pools of happiness as she went ahead through the
+sitting-room door.
+
+The three women and Wallace spent a gay and busy hour hanging the tree
+with tinsel and candles and stars and presents. When it was nearly
+finished, Nora disappeared. Presently she came back with a parcel.
+
+“This is for you, from Mother and Albert,” she said to the man. “You
+ask Santa to put it in your stocking tonight.”
+
+“Yes, and come tomorrow morning and let me see what I’ve given you!”
+chuckled the old lady.
+
+Both Albert’s mother and grandmother had bidden him a Merry Christmas
+and gone upstairs to tie up the presents hidden away from the prying
+eyes of the youngster, when Wallace rose to leave. The girl stood in
+front of him, between the glittering tree and the fireplace. The red
+glow threw her beautiful body into high relief. She put her hand into
+the bodice of her gown and drew out a tiny parcel.
+
+“This is something for your stocking, too,” she said, “not from Albert
+nor Mother.”
+
+He took it tenderly. “And I have nothing for you,” he answered, “for
+you who have given me everything--who have given me life anew!”
+
+“I have given you nothing which I haven’t received back again,” she
+whispered, suddenly coming into his arms.
+
+Her lips were close to his ear in the doorway. “Merry Christmas, dear,”
+they said.
+
+He kissed her hair. “Those words mean more than I can utter now,” he
+answered. “I--I’m not used to saying them so. Oh, may the Author of
+Christmas guard and keep you!”
+
+He went down the path between the evergreens, and the moonlight poured
+a soft, golden glory on the white world, which had never seemed to him
+so beautiful.
+
+He hung up his stocking when he reached the hotel, and put his two
+presents into it. When morning came, he sprang out of bed, shut the
+window, turned on the steam, grabbed his stocking, and climbed back
+under the covers. He opened the parcel from Albert and the old lady
+first, and drew forth a large barley sugar elephant, which he gave a
+slow, contemplative lick with his tongue, reviving memories of his
+childhood. Then he opened the other present, with fingers that bungled
+in their eagerness. It was a quaint and valuable old scarf pin, a ruby
+set in seed pearls, and wrapped around it was a tiny note.
+
+“This was my father’s. I have been keeping it for you, Dearest, on our
+first Christmas.”
+
+Wallace smoothed out the bit of paper and read it again and again,
+foolishly happy. Then he rose, beaming on the world in general,
+pinned an extravagant present for the chambermaid on his pillow, in
+an envelope labeled “Merry Christmas,” and went down to breakfast. As
+soon as the meal was over, he hastened out to the telegraph office,
+chuckling to himself, and sent five telegrams to the five members of
+the To-Hell-with-the-Merry-Yule-Tide Association. He wished that he had
+thought to send them the night before, to the dinner. But it was not
+too late even now. The five telegrams were alike. They all read--
+
+  Merry Christmas!
+
+“You can have eight more words for your money,” said the operator.
+
+“I don’t need ’em,” he answered. “Those two will do the trick.” Then he
+hastened, almost running, up the street.
+
+Albert was already out in the front yard, pursuing his aeroplane over
+the snow, while the three women stood in the windows, watching him. He
+rushed at Wallace to give him a hug and a “Merry Christmas,” and then
+dashed back to wind up the propeller again. The door opened as Wallace
+stepped upon the porch, and in the hall he felt, like a man in a dream,
+two arms about his neck, and another “Merry Christmas” whispered in his
+ear.
+
+In the sitting room the old lady came forward to greet him, regarding
+his face sharply. She took his hand in one of hers, and put the other
+on his shoulder.
+
+“If my daughter hasn’t said it, I will say it for her,” she
+remarked--“this is so sudden! But I am too old a woman to be surprised
+at anything young folks will do. I believe you are a good man, for I
+have known many of both sorts and have never been fooled yet. Are you?”
+
+“Only negatively,” he answered, “till you showed me Christmas.”
+
+“Well, Christmas is a very good time to begin,” said the old lady.
+“Here is a present for you.”
+
+She brought him a token from the tree, while the younger women stood
+near him, the widow with her arm about Nora’s waist. He opened the
+package, and found within a beautiful old-fashioned watch fob, and a
+card, “From your new mother.” He knew instinctively that it had been
+her husband’s, and that its gift to him was a sacrifice not lightly
+made. In his eyes it linked him with the past, in hers it bound him
+with the future. He held this link of amethyst and gold in his hand,
+touched to silence, and then walked over and kissed the old lady on
+the cheek, while she patted his hair with a little laugh that was
+suddenly half a sob, and the two younger women watched the scene
+tenderly, the one with soft, happy laughter, the other in silence and
+with a furtive glance through the window toward her son.
+
+He felt a great, heart-warming, new instinct to protect and guard them
+all, to keep inviolate the gentle atmosphere of this old room, to watch
+over the little chap who was playing and shouting out there in the
+snow. The mother presently went to the rear of the house to attend to
+her housekeeping, and as Wallace and Nora sat talking softly before the
+fire, he was aware of the elder sister looking wistfully at them from
+her seat at the window, where she could also keep an eye on Albert.
+
+“This is only her second Christmas without John,” the girl whispered.
+“Poor Marion! I feel almost selfish today in my new happiness.”
+
+Wallace watched the other woman steal softly from the room, and he saw
+that she was clenching her handkerchief in her hand, and biting her
+under lip. When she had gone, Nora slipped to a footstool, her hands
+crossed over her knees. He laid his hand gently on her hair.
+
+“All the deep mysteries of love and death and sorrow seem opening to
+me on this Christmas morning,” he said. “I don’t quite know whether to
+laugh or to cry.”
+
+The girl raised her face to his, and her own eyes were misty now.
+
+“Poor, poor Marion!” she said. “Oh, now I know what she has lost!”
+
+Her hands suddenly clasped him hard, as if he were about to slip away.
+
+Just then the front door opened, and Albert dashed into the room.
+The girl did not rise. He came over to them as if there were nothing
+unusual in their attitude, crying that his aeroplane had stuck in a
+tree out of his reach.
+
+“We’ll get it in a minute,” said Wallace, drawing the boy to him. As he
+held the little body close against his side, he looked down again at
+the girl.
+
+“And now I know, also, what she has found,” he whispered.
+
+The girl’s eyes looked into his for a reply, and Albert, awed by the
+silence, gazed from one to the other without speaking a word.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
+
+
+  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
+
+  Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
+
+  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77821 ***