The hungry child grasped it, and was oblivious and happy.
By the time Jamie returned with his first basket of kindling and coal, the mother had so far rallied from her exhaustion as to meet him smilingly again and help him replenish the dying fire.
"Now you shall rest and have your gingerbread before going for your second load," she said cheerily; and the boy took what was ambrosia to him, and danced around the room in joyous reaction from the depression of the long weary day, during which, lonely and hungry, he had wondered why his mother did not return.
"So little could make them happy, and yet I cannot seem to obtain even that little," she sighed. "I fear—indeed, I fear—I cannot be with them another Christmas; therefore they shall remember that I tried to make them happy once more, and the recollection may survive the long sad days before them, and become a part of my memory."
The room was now growing dark, and she lighted the lamp. Then she cowered shiveringly over the reviving fire, feeling as if she could never be warm again.
The street-lamps were lighted early on that clouded, stormy evening, and they were a signal to Mr. Jackson, the agent, to leave his office. He remembered that he had ordered a holiday dinner, and now found himself in a mood to enjoy it. He had scarcely left his door before a man, coming up the street with great strides and head bent down to the snow-laden blast, brushed roughly against him. The stranger's cap was drawn over his eyes, and the raised collar of his blue army overcoat nearly concealed his face. The man hurriedly begged pardon, and was hastening on when Mr. Jackson's exclamation of surprise caused him to stop and look at the person he had jostled.
"Why, Mr. Marlow," the agent began, "I'm glad to see you. It's a pleasure I feared I should never have again."
"My wife," the man almost gasped, "she's still in the house I rented of you?"
"Oh, certainly," was the hasty reply. "It'll be all right' now."
"What do you mean? Has it not been all right?"