And this was his Christine who, during the ten months since the child had died, had faced the world and her husband with her head held high, with a smile on her lips and courage in the clasp of her hand! Not once before to-day had he heard her cry out in grief or rebellion—his Christine!
“Then we will not stay here,” he said. “We will go to the farm whether we have missed the train or not! We will go to the end of the world, or beyond it, if that will help!”
“Ned! What do you mean?” she cried, drawing back from his clasp to look up into his face.
“It is only a matter of sixty miles or so, and it isn’t yet two o’clock; we can make it with the big car!”
She sprang to her feet with a choking laugh, her hands on her throat, her eyes shining like stars of hope.
“Hurry!” she cried; and in scarcely half an hour they were on their way, the multitude of the Christmas bundles tumbled, helter-skelter, into the tonneau, she fur-clad and glowing beside him.
The big “sixty” stood up to its task, and the first part of the journey was as nothing. It had been one of those winters when autumn prolongs itself into December, when people begin to talk of a green Christmas, and the youngsters feel almost hopeless about sleds and skates; but to-day, Christmas eve, the children’s hopes had revived; a sudden drop in temperature, a leaden sky, an unwonted briskness among the sparrows—it might not be a green Christmas, after all.
That was one of the little things that Christine talked about along the way; and when the first few flakes of snow came wavering down she held out her muff, as if trying to catch them all, and laughed.
“Oh, see, Ned! We’ll snowball each other to-morrow!”
But he had replied, “Let’s hope that we shall have to postpone the snow-balling until we get to the farm, anyway. By Jove! I had forgotten how steep these roads were!”