Aunt Judith's arms clung tightly to him.
"Cousin Lemuel helped me," she whispered. "The house was dark and Mr. Sawyer in bed. There wasn't even a light in the work-shop. We tiptoed up and down the back-stairs. You mustn't breathe a word of it, Jimsy! Not a word! It's for you and me."
Jimsy sighed.
"Whisht," he said, "whisht Uncle Ab believed in Chris'mus."
"Bless your heart, Jimsy," she said bravely. "So do I."
But even bewildering hours with gifts and trees must come to an end, and presently Aunt Judith and Jimsy went down hand in hand to attend to the fire and breakfast.... And the opening of the sitting-room door froze Aunt Judith Sawyer to the threshold, her face whitely unbelieving. Something was wrong with the primness of the sitting-room—something in evergreen and tinsel and a hundred candles that showered Christmas from its boughs—something was wrong with Abner Sawyer—up and waiting by the window, his face twisted into a faint and sickly smile of apology.
For now that he was in the very heart of his "proving" he did not know what on earth to do. Dignity?... It was hopelessly out of the question. With a monument to his midnight guilt blazing there in the corner—with Christmas wreaths hung in the windows to confound the Middletons—he must face the music. Feeling very foolish, he cleared his throat and essayed to speak, paralyzed into silence again by the unexpected evolution of a hoarse croak so horribly un-first-citizen that it frightened him.