"Here's where having a family comes in. You all think it's my just dues, but I can tell you I'm as pleased as Punch over it," said Bob. "Mother, you may plume yourself on this promotion. If I weren't a good accountant Mr. Felton couldn't have given me my chance, and you are my teacher. You'll get twice as much income as you've been having out of your investment in me. That strikes me as the main point."
Fine Bob's eyes were moist. He was not quite seventeen, and it had been long weary waiting for the day when he could do a fraction of what he wanted to do for the brave mother who had struggled on alone while her children were small. Here was his foot placed on the lower rung of the ladder by his Christmas promotion, and he had always been sure that, given the first rung, he could climb.
Mrs. Scollard understood what was in Bob's heart. She slipped her hand through the boy's arm, going down the tiny hall to his room.
"It is not I who have done it, my Robert," she whispered. "It's your own upright, truthful honesty and industry; your sterling self. I know, my son, and I'm thankful that my one boy is what he is."
"The Scollards are getting rich!" cried Happie rapturously rumpling up her bronze hair, already sufficiently disordered by the wind. "Margery, shall we take a house on the Plaza or Fifth Avenue next year? I always liked North Washington Square best of all New York."
"Don't make your disobedient hair any worse, Hapsie!" protested Margery. "You look as if you were likely to take a padded cell." But she was not less delighted than Happie, and sang like a whole field of larks, as she helped get the dinner on the table.
The Scollards kept to the fashion of giving Christmas gifts on Christmas eve, and when the girls got the dinner out of the way and its consequent work done, they brought out the presents they had long been making and treasuring up for one another.
Gretta, who had learned the family custom during the summer, had prepared in Crestville for this night. She now brought forth bags and feather-stitched aprons, made of materials familiar to the girls from frequently seeing them in the all-sorts store to which black Don Dolor used to take them down the mountain road. And after these had been produced, Gretta brought forth sunbonnets made like her own in which Happie had found her lonely, painting the fence on her cousins' farm, where she had been tolerated almost intolerantly.
Gretta looked ashamed of her gifts, though they were the best she could find or afford to buy. Her cousins had allowed her no money; in the old days she had had none except what she could earn in small ways, and the stock of the Crestville shop was not varied. There was no mistaking the fact, however, that the Scollards liked Gretta's gifts. They brought back the summer days, the pleasant Ark, the glorious mountains and the funny, homelike little store.
Happie put on her pink sunbonnet at once, and the others followed her example. Thus Crestville crowned, they proceeded to open the New York packages with which each lap was filled. They were not costly presents, but there was nothing that did not represent time, thought, affection, and which did not fit the receiver's needs and tastes. Consequently much laughter and more pleasure accompanied the opening of every tightly tied package.