Then at last a great noise in the front hall. Father shouting “Merry Christmas! My Christmas gift! Merry Christmas up there!”
It is time now. She flings her chill little body into her red wrapper and slippers and scurries down the stairs. A big fire in the grate! The three big bulging stockings! Father and Mother stand by until she empties hers first. She feels it with delicious caution. Oranges, apples and nuts in the toe. A funny little bumpy thing above. That would be one of Father’s jokes. But at the top a mysterious soft, squashy package! She withdraws it slowly. She opens one tiny corner, gasps, opens a little more. Then gives a shrill cry. “Mother! It couldn’t be a—a muff!”
She pulls it out, amazed ecstasy on her face. “It is a muff! Oh, Father, to think of your getting me a muff.” She clasps the small scrap of cheap fur to her breast. “Oh, Mother, I never was so happy.”
A subdued sound drew louder, became a sharp rap at the door. Martinsville receded. The woman in the chair opened her eyes with a dull realization of the present. Delia stood in the door-way, black and ominous. “What about them bed-room curtains?” she demanded.
Alice Barton rose slowly. With a great effort she brought her mind back to the problems of the day. She led the way to the guest room with Delia after her, grumbling inaudibly. Perhaps her eyes were still misted over with sweet memories, for somehow the curtains did not look so bad. “We’ll let them go as they are, Delia. You have enough extras to do.”
Delia departed in pleased surprise, and Alice sat down in the quiet room before a mirror, and peered into it. Almost she expected to see the child she had once been, the tender, smiling young mouth, the soft, eager eyes, the tumbled curls.
Instead she saw a middle aged face with all the spontaneous light gone out of it. There were hard lines in it which no amount of expensive “facials” had been able to smooth away. There was a bitter, unlovely droop to the lips.
Alice regarded herself steadily. Where along the way had she lost the spirit of that child who had this day come back to her?
The outward changes of her life passed in review. It was soon after that last happy Christmas in Martinsville that the little town had been swept by disease. The old village doctor had neither knowledge nor equipment to restrain it. When it was over, many homes had been desolated, and Alice, a bewildered little orphan, had gone to Aunt Jennie’s in the city.
The changed way of living had been at first startling and then strangely commonplace. She had been fluidly adaptable. She had gone to a fashionable finishing school, had made a smart début, had met Tom, fallen deeply in love and then married him with all the circumstance Aunt Jennie had ordained.