“I am going to bed,” she said aloud.
Miss Mary fixed her fires for the night; she set out the milk pail on the shelf on the back porch; she wound the clock and took her lamp and climbed the stairway and undressed and lay down in her bed. Then, metaphorically and actually, she turned her face to the wall.
But at eight o’clock she was still awake. At half past eight she sprang from bed, thinking she heard a rap at the door; at nine she lighted her lamp and looked at the clock. All within and without the house was as silent as midnight. Then poor Miss Mary yielded herself to despair.
“I do not know what is the matter with me. This had to happen sometime! But I am utterly desolate and forlorn. Christmas is a dreadful time when you grow old. But I have been trying to prepare myself for years! I do not know what is the matter with me.”
The ticking of the clock seemed to fill the quiet house. Miss Mary grew more and more nervous. Again she sprang from bed.
“If I have some exercise, perhaps I shall sleep!”
But exercise did not bring sleep. Miss Mary went into her father’s room and her brother’s room, and into her mother’s room, which had lately been the Arundel baby’s, and tears ran down her cheeks. It was not a journey from which she need have expected much repose of spirit.
“If they could only come back!” she cried. “If things could only be as they used to be on Christmas! If I were only not alone in the world!”
Then Miss Mary did an extraordinary thing. She was standing in her mother’s room, where the Arundel baby’s bed had stood. In this room her childish difficulties had been adjusted, her childish troubles soothed. She lifted her head as if she heard a voice speaking to her, and then she laughed almost hysterically.
“I will have a merry Christmas,” she cried suddenly.