She held it in her hand a moment, hesitating, till the message came again, "Send it!" Then there was no longer any indecision. When she shut it in its little box, and stuffed the box down past the lantern and the orange and the nuts and the peppermints into the very toe, such a warm, glad Christmasy feeling sent its glow through her, that she knew past all doubting she had interpreted the Sky Road message aright.
Many of the passengers had left the car by this time, and the greater number of those who remained were nodding uncomfortably in their seats. But those who happened to be awake and alert saw a picture they never forgot, when a lovely young girl, her face alight with the joy of Christmas love and giving, stole down the aisle and silently fastened something on the back of the seat above each little sleeper. It was a stocking, red and shining as a cherry, and silver-bordered with glistening fairy fringe.
When they looked again she had disappeared, but the stockings still hung there, tokens which were to prove to those same little sleepers on their awakening that the star-flower charm is true. For love indeed works miracles, and every message from the Sky Road is but an echo of the one the Christmas angels sang when first they came along that shining highway, the heralds of good-will and peace to all the earth.
CHAPTER VI
CHRISTMAS morning when Will'm awoke, he was as bewildered as if he had opened his eyes in a new world. He was in a little white bed, such as he had never seen before, and the blankets were blue, with a border of white bunnies around each one. Between him and the rest of the room was a folding screen, like a giant picture-book cover, showing everybody in Mother Goose's whole family. He lay staring at it awhile, and when he recognized Tommy Tucker and Simple Simon and Mother Hubbard's dog, he didn't feel quite so lost and strange as he did at first.
Always at the Junction he had to lie still until Uncle Neal made the fire and the room was warm; but here it was already warm, and he could hear steam hissing somewhere. It seemed to be coming from the gilt pipes under the window. Wondering what was on the other side of the screen, he slid out from under the bunny blankets and peeped cautiously around the wall of Mother Goose pictures. It was Libby on the other side in another little white bed just like his. With one spring he pounced up on top of it, and squirmed in beside her.
The first moment of Libby's awakening was as bewildering as Will'm's had been. Then she began to have a confused recollection of the night before. She remembered being lifted from the pillow on the car seat, and hugged and kissed, and having her limp, sleepy arms thrust into elusive coat sleeves. Somebody held her hand and hurried her down the aisle after her father, who was carrying Will'm, because he was so sound asleep that they couldn't even put his overcoat on him. It was just wrapped around him. Then she remembered jolting across the city in an omnibus, with her head on a muff in a lady's lap, and of leaning against that same lady afterwards while her clothes were being unbuttoned, and her eyelids kept falling shut. She had never been so sleepy in her whole life, that she could remember.
Suddenly she sat straight up in bed and stared at something hanging on the post of the low footboard; a Christmas stocking all red and silver, and for her! Even from where she was she could read the name that Miss Santa Claus had printed in big letters on the scrap of paper pinned to it: "LIBBY."