"His face was the only grim one here," she said. "Just look at Maggie, Con!" To view Maggie was to forget any unpleasant thing.
Maggie Falstar was laying up for the future as a camel does for the desert. Food and drink passed from sight under Maggie's manipulation like a slight-of-hand performance, and through the effort, and above it, the girl's expressionless face was bent over her plate.
The Christmas tree, later, was in the hall. The party staggered to it from the dining room with anticipation befogged by a too, too heavy meal. But St. Angé digestions were of sturdy fibre, and fulfilled joy brought about quick relief.
Aunt Sally looked into the grateful eyes upturned toward the glittering tree, and her own kind eyes were like stars.
It was Ruth Dale who had taught the children to sing, "There's a Wonderful Tree," and the Christmas anthem now surprised and charmed the older people.
Above the shrill, exultant voices, Ruth's clear tones rang firm and true. Drew watched her from his place beside the tree, and his heart ached for her. And yet—what strength and power she had. She so slight and girlish. She had lost faith, and had had love wrenched from her. She was bent upon a martyr's course, and yet she sang, with apparent abandon of joy, the old Christmas song.
Constance Drew was an adept at prolonging pleasure and thereby intensifying it. With the tree bowed with fruit, standing glorified before them, the rapt company listened with amaze to Maggie Falstar as she sniffled and hitched through a poem so distorted that the only semi-intelligible words were: "An—snow—they—snelt—at—the manger, lost in—reverent—raw."
This part of the programme affected Leon Tate in a most unlooked-for manner.
"Say, Smith," he remarked to the station-agent, who was gazing at Constance Drew with his lower jaw hanging, "that beats anything I ever heard in the natural artistic line. Blood's bound to colour its victims—do you remember Pete's mother?"
Tom Smith had forgotten the old lady.