"It was awful." Her voice sank low. "You see, with all the preparations going on at the Settlement House, we had sort of forgotten this—this family. They were not the noisy, begging kind, but there was a pitiful, little sick girl whom I had taken a liking to and to think that I should have forgotten her—and at that time, too! There was no tree in that home, Jock, there was nothing much, but the little dying girl and her mother.
"They didn't even blame me—oh, if they only had!" The honest tears ran down Constance's cheeks. "But they didn't. The mother said—and she apologized for troubling me, think of that!—that the baby wanted me to tell her a Christmas story. She just wouldn't go to sleep until I did, and she had been ailing all day. I—I forgot my dress, and tore off my cloak in that cold, empty room and I took that poor baby in my arms. Then—then the hardest part came—she—she didn't know me. She got the queerest little notion in her baby head—she—she thought I was an—angel. Oh! oh! and I wanted her to know me."
Down went the girlish head in the open pages of the character sketches.
"Well of all gol-durned nonsense!" Jock blurted out. "The whole blamed show oughter been exposed. I reckon the best job the company ever had to its credit was that happening of yours—the dress and the—the—rest of the picter. Lord!" Jock's feelings were running over as he looked upon the bowed head. The story had got hold of his tender heart. "Lord above! Just think of that sort of rum suffering going on back there. It's worse than what happens here. We've got wood to keep the kids warm in winter, and there's clean air and coolness in summer. I'm durned glad I cut it when"—he stopped short. Constance was looking at him with wide, questioning eyes.
"When I did," Jock added helplessly. "And now go on with that poor little child what you took to your bosom."
"That's all." Constance choked painfully. "The baby—died while I was telling her about the wonderful tree, and Santa Claus and the other joys she should have had, and never did have. I can see that hideous empty room, and—and that poor baby every time I shut my eyes."
"Here, look up now," Jock commanded, his feelings getting the best of him. "When life's so empty that you can't find things to do by opening your eyes, you better keep your eyes shut to all eternity. Calling up the past is the rottenest kind of folly in a world where things is happening."
Constance rallied to the stern call.
"And now," she said briskly, "I've given myself, heart and soul to—literature. I'll write of what I have seen, and lived!
"Listen, I'll read you a sketch or so. But first I'll explain. The local colour of my novel is drawn from—here."