“These funny little hassocks are much smaller than those at our old church,” she announced audibly, once.
Out in the dreary streets again. The emotional mood of Phyl and Dolly has passed, and they profess themselves dying of hunger, and enter into a pleasurable discussion as to what they will have to eat.
Mrs. Conway has supposed that plenty of restaurants will be open, and that they will be able to get a dinner “Christmassy” enough to satisfy the children, and still inexpensive. But up and down streets they go, anxiously scanning signs, and not one of the places is open; the mother’s heart begins to fail her. She has been obliged to forego hung stockings, Christmas-tree,—all the bright merriment of the season. Surely she will not have to let her little ones go without their dinner.
“It won’t matter about holly and burning fire around the dish for once, if we can only have the pudding,” Phyl remarks; half-an-hour ago she had said pudding without those accompaniments was not pudding at all.
“We could do without vegetables and things if only they could let us have turkey, or fowl, or something,” said Dolly.
Weenie begins to cry for sheer need of something to eat.
Up streets, down streets—the mother dare not go [121] ]too far afield for fear of losing her bearings entirely in this thick wretched fog—and all this part of the world shows blank shuttered windows and inhospitably closed doors. At last they find a place where the door, though not open to invite customers, is ajar.
There is a delicious fragrance of roast goose in the foggy air outside, and they all sniff it luxuriously.
The mother pushes open the door, and they troop after her in eager anticipation. But the shopkeeper is far from pleased at this advent.
“I am not prepared for customers to-day,” she says shortly, “the door was left open by accident.”