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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 ***