Chapter II: Part 2

“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.