Without turning, Roger felt Anne standing small, almost prim, by the fireplace, distrusting him, clinging fast to her safety, as James Mitchell clung to his little job. Afraid to dare, clutching comfort at any price. Perhaps she had deliberately decided this thing should be. She so often understood his unuttered thoughts, clarified his reactions before they had emerged clearly to himself from their first chaos of emotion and enthusiasm. If Anne had done this, feeling the safety of their present comfort slipping! But, when he turned to her—she was so silvery fair, shame of his own thought rushed over him. Against the reluctance he felt in her, he drew her to him again. And Anne, in her desperate need to believe, came back. He kissed her and smiled into her eyes, and this time, Anne smiled too. But she was glad that Roger did not insist again that she whisper "the sweet secret!" She did not want to talk of it until this mood was dead in the past. After a long silence, she looked up.
"Mamma phoned to-day. She wants us to go there for Christmas."
Their first Christmas to be spent with the Mitchells!
"It's going to be the first real Christmas party mamma has ever had," Anne went on, "and she's as excited as a child. Dr. Stetson is back from the East, more successful and famous than ever and he's asked Belle to go out twice in three weeks. He's coming, and I believe moms has some kind of idea that when he sees how successful matrimony can be, he will be moved to go and do likewise."
Roger tried to smile, but none of Mrs. Mitchell's ideas ever amused him. This was so exactly the kind of crude thing she would do. But he had hurt Anne too much to-night to do anything but pretend genuine pleasure.
"We'll do our best to help the good cause along. Shall I hold your hand and murmur sweet nothings? Come on, let's practice."
"Don't be silly. But I do wish Belle would marry him." Anne spoke in such a matronly tone that Roger laughed. "You needn't laugh. Belle's awfully independent and all that, but she'd make a corking wife for some man. And this Dr. Stetson does seem more persistent than most. She usually frightens them off. I shouldn't wonder a bit if something doesn't come of it." Anne looked oddly like Hilda for a moment.
"Well, you can coach me up, or we'll arrange a code to entangle the gentleman in domestic felicity. I'll do whatever you tell me."
"Then it's sure to be a success. But, Roger, I do want this to be a nice dinner. It's really the first effort mamma has ever been able to make at a jolly Christmas. And she would so have loved trees and Santa Clauses and all the regulation fixings. Only they cost so much, and it never seemed worth while, because it would have taken all the money—even if she could have scraped it together—just for the machinery and there would have been no party."
Roger's own childhood had not been very full of treats, but at the picture of little Anne deprived of the usual Christmas, Roger's heart melted.