Fresh crullers she took to her room from the bake-shop, having bought them from a dark, greasy woman, whom she wished a "Merry Christmas" in a voice that almost sang. At dusk she had coffee in her room. It was Christmas Eve and she must begin early to get her full share of the season's peculiar indulgences. After she had read her paper for an hour or so by the recklessly flaming gas jet, she bustled about to brew another cup of coffee, and feasted upon crullers for the second time. At last she filled a water-bottle with tepid water from a faucet in the hall, and prepared for bed.
The chill of the bedclothes, upon which the tepid water-bottle had little effect, could not touch the cozy warmth about the woman's heart. Neither were the happy memories of her strange and lovely visitor disturbed by knowledge of an incident that was taking place at that very hour. As she bounced into her cot, humming a little tune, she did not know that at a down-town theater a popular young actress was just responding to an insistent curtain call. Nor could she have recognized the graceful young girl, issuing from the wings in a new character part—an extreme type of eccentric maidenhood—except for the plucked and ragged fur-piece which formed the keynote of the performer's quaint attire.
No knowledge of this episode disturbed the half-drowsy, half-blissful state which supplanted the woman's sleep that night. The incident cast no cloud upon her eager awakening, nor retarded her active leap from bed when the voice of her landlady aroused her with a start on Christmas morning.
"Eggs-press, eggs-press … a package for Miss Law-lor-r-r!"
Full-chested and lingering, the call reverberated up three flights of naked stairs, and by the time the woman had donned her skirt and sweater and had emerged into the twilight of the upper hall, frowsy, curious heads protruded from every door.
She carried the bulky Christmas package to her own room, moving deliberately, in shy, half-guilty triumph, and placed it on the cot. Behind her closed door she untied it, removed the cover and smilingly bent down to draw an eager inhalation from the tissue paper folds. Then, with careful fingers, she parted the crisp inner wrappings and unearthed a wilting, half-blown rose from its nest in the brown mink fur.
The Reminder
A little Belgian and an old violin—