“No; on the contrary, something wholly right,” she replied, leading the way into the library. “I’ve been watching the Great Cable strain, but, thank God, it has held, and I know a little bark that has all sails set for the Beautiful Land.”
CHAPTER XVIII
ORIENTATION
“NOW, my dear, you must turn toward the east when you say your prayers,” Miss Braithwaite briskly said to Cis the next morning at breakfast.
Cis smiled inquiringly, missing her meaning; it was one of Miss Braithwaite’s highest assets that her meanings were not always obvious; they stimulated curiosity and held attention.
“I don’t suppose you really mean that I’m to turn to the east?” Cis said.
“You are to face the coming day, keep your eyes on the rising sun, your back resolutely turned on the setting day,” explained Miss Braithwaite. “That is called orientation, and it is your best attitude now. Indeed I don’t know anyone who can afford to take any other—eyes toward the orient ‘whence comes the light.’” Cis was considering this hint from Miss Braithwaite all day.
“Anyone else would tell me to brace up, or let bygones be bygones, or something of that sort, but Miss Braithwaite gives everything she says a turn that makes you begin to do what she advises, even while you’re listening to her,” she thought. “I’ll look eastward! I’ll wear blinders so I can’t see, except straight ahead! But I’ll be glad when Christmas is over.”
Miss Braithwaite involved Cis in preparations for a Christmas totally unlike any that she had hitherto known. There was to be a tree for her “scalawags,” and it was not hard to interest Cis in this. She went with Miss Braithwaite to see her little ragged boys, and capitulated to them at once, as they did to her. It refreshed Cis to play with them, to talk to them, falling back on the vernacular which she had learned from her newsboys in those old days, hourly becoming more and more unreal to her. There was a small, peaked lame little creature of nine who won and wrung Cis’s heart. She immediately began a glorious warm crimson sweater for him, on which she knit frantically every evening when she was not oversewing tarlatan candy bags with bright worsteds, or assembling and gluing into place the figures for the little, but perfect “Cribs” which each child within Miss Braithwaite’s orbit was to receive to take home at Christmas. She would set up a “Bethlehem” in wretched places, far enough removed in squalor and vicious ignorance from the light of the Star, the chant of the angels.
Every one of Father Morley’s girls in his club was to receive a book and some of the useless, pretty things which girls covet.
“It’s downright brutal to give only utilitarian things at Christmas!” declared Miss Braithwaite. “It’s a joyous time, and who can be joyous over black stockings and initialed handkerchiefs? The girls must have nonsensical things; dangling, silly vanity-feeders along with their substantial gifts from Father Morley, else Merry Christmas would be mockery said to them.”