"'MERRY CHRISTMAS, MAMMY AND DADDY!'"
Nan's hand clutched Guy's under the table. "Doesn't that make it worth it?" his grasp said to her, and hers replied with a frantic pressure, "Indeed it does, but we don't deserve it."
... It was late in the afternoon, a tremendous Christmas dinner well over, and the group scattered, when Guy and his mother sat alone by the fire. The "boys" had gone out to the great stock barn with their father to talk over with him every detail of the prosperous business he, with the help of an invaluable assistant, was yet able to manage. Carolyn and Nan had ostensibly gone with them, but in reality the former was calling upon an old friend of her childhood, and the latter had begged a horse and sleigh and driven merrily away alone upon an errand she would tell no one but her mother.
Mrs. Fernald sat in her low chair at the side of the hearth, her son upon a cushion at her feet, his head resting against her knee. Her slender fingers were gently threading the thick locks of his hair, as she listened while he talked to her of everything in his life, and, at last, of the one thing he cared most about.
"Sometimes I get desperate and think I may as well give her up for good and all," he was saying. "She's so—so—elusive—I don't know any other word for it. I never can tell how I stand with her. She's going South next week. I've asked her to answer me before she goes. Somehow I've clung to the hope that I'd get my answer to-day. You'll laugh, but I left word with my office-boy to wire me if a note or anything from her came. It's four o'clock, and I haven't heard. She—you see, I can't help thinking it's because she's going to—turn me down—and—hates to do it—Christmas Day!"
He turned suddenly and buried his face in his mother's lap; his shoulders heaved a little in spite of himself. His mother's hand caressed his head more tenderly than ever, but, if he could have seen, her eyes were very bright.
They were silent for a long time. Then suddenly a jingle of sleigh bells approached through the falling winter twilight, drew near, and stopped at the door. Guy's mother laid her hands upon his shoulders. "Son," she said, "there's some one stopping now. Perhaps it's the boy with a message from the station."
He was on his feet in an instant. Her eyes followed him as he rushed away through the hall. Then she rose and quietly closed the sitting-room door behind him.