“There was no other way. I hadn’t enough without.”
“The children’s candy money!” she said slowly. “Money that I have been hoarding up, five cents at a time, for months!... Why, John, Davie has been praying for candy!”
“What could I do, Mary? They wouldn’t let me have it at the freight office without the money. I barely had enough as it was. And I supposed, of course, there would be things in it for the children—never dreamed of anything else.”
“For fifty cents,” she said as if to herself, not heeding him, “they could have got enough candy to satisfy these children—and they didn’t do it! And for one dollar they could have given them a Christmas that they would never have forgotten. They could! One dollar at the ten-cent store would have got them a book and a toy apiece, and two pounds of ten cent candy. And our children would have thought that was a glorious Christmas—poor little tads!”
She had been speaking slowly and in a low voice. Now she said with sudden anger: “I know the kind of women that sent these things. They are the kind that go up and down fashionable city streets saying to every acquaintance they meet: ‘Do tell me what to get for my boy! He has everything in the world you can think of now!’... And I would be satisfied with one dollar for my four! Then after Christmas they groan: ‘What shall I do with all these things?’... And I would be glad to pick up after mine all Christmas week if they only had something to throw around! There’s nothing right nor fair about it! Now!”
This mood was so new to her that her husband was speechless before it.
“Well! this barrel is going back to them—to-morrow. To think of their expecting us to pay freight on the wretched thing!”
“Mary! You wouldn’t do that!”
“I would—and shall! I’m going to give these people one lesson in giving that they won’t forget! A Christmas box for a lot of children out on the plains and no candy in it! And Davie praying for candy!... Well! he’s going to have it. I’ll take this barrel back to town to-morrow myself; and when I come back I shall have the candy.”
“Wife, you know I would be only too glad to give you the money if I had it. But I have only two cents left in my pocket until the draft comes!... Are you going to ask credit?” Asking credit was the one humiliation they had spared themselves.