“Crusts were a great source of trouble,” she resumed after a while.
“I like them!” Merle said encouragingly, to feed the conversation.
“Yours is a very different world, baby. People used to excite and bewilder children thirty years ago. I’ve spent whole mornings sobbing and defiant. ‘You will say it!’ ‘I won’t say it’—hour after hour after hour.”
Merle was actually pale at the thought.
“Timmy was the favorite, and how generous he was to me!” his sister said, musing. And suddenly she raised the little dried crusts in both hands to her face, and laid her cheek against them. “Oh, Timmy—Timmy—Timmy!” she said, between a laugh and a sob. “To think of the grimy little hand that put these here just because Molly was so naughty and so stubborn!”
“Miss Frothingham,” said Doctor Madison quietly, looking up with one of those amazing changes of mood that were the eternal bewilderment of those who dealt with her, “I wonder if you could finish this up? Get Lizzie to help you if you like; we’re all but done anyway! Use your own judgment, but when in doubt—destroy! I believe—it’s only nine o’clock! I believe I’ll go and see my brother! Come, Merle, get your coat with the squirrel collar—it’s cold!”
So then it was all Christmas magic, and just what Christmas Eve should be. Saunders brought the little closed car to the door, to be sure, but there he vanished from the scene, and it was only mother and Merle.
The streets were snowy, and snow frosted the windshield, and lights and people and the bright windows of shops were all mixed up together, in a pink and blue and gold dazzle of color.
But all this was past before they came to the “almost country,” as Merle called it, and there were gardens and trees about the little houses, where lights streamed out with an infinitely heartening and pleasant effect.
They stopped. “Put your arms tight about my neck, Baby. I can’t have you walking in this!” said her mother then.