“You’ve guessed right.” The new father spoke lightly in an effort to conceal his feeling. “That is, if you think we’ll do!” he added, smiling.
“Oh, you’ll——”
Suddenly inarticulate, David turned, throwing his thin arms around Scott’s neck in a strangling, boylike hug. Then, a bit ashamed because such things were new to him, he slipped away, standing with his back to them at the window, trying, they saw with understanding hearts, to visualize this unbelievable thing that had come, a miracle, into his starved life. When after a silence they joined him, the candle on the table flared up for a protesting moment, and then went out. Only starlight and firelight lit the cabin now; and Nancy, peering into the night, said gently, “How beautifully it has cleared! I think I never saw the stars so bright.”
“Christmas stars,” Scott reminded her and, knowing the memory that brought the roughness to his voice, she caught and clasped his hand.
It was David who spoke next. He was leaning close to the window, his elbows resting on the sill, his face cupped in his two hands. He seemed to have forgotten them as he said dreamily, “It’s Christmas.... Silent night ... holy night ... like the song. I wonder—” He looked up trustfully into the faces above him—“I wonder if—if maybe one of them stars isn’t the Star of Bethlehem!”
FOOTNOTES:
[9] Reprinted from the “American Magazine” by permission of the author.
A GOD IN ISRAEL[10]
Norman Duncan
James Falcontent, of Groot & McCarthy, was in the most singular fashion to be imagined struck with ominous amazement. And big James Falcontent had got well past the years of simplicity; he was not easily startled. The Fifth Avenue bus had stopped; Falcontent had glanced up from his musing—a purely commercial calculation, being nothing more romantic than some trick of the trade having to do with the sale of boots and shoes. But what Falcontent had then observed—he was gently yawning at the time—nevertheless astounded him beyond recent experience. Moreover, it led him eventually to far-away places and engrossed him in preposterous emotions. Here, indeed, was the first flutter of the wings of Fate. No; it was not a woman. A splendid, high-stepping, modish creature, of impeccable propriety, of gracious, aristocratic demeanor, might mildly have interested James Falcontent in passing. But since the last departure of Matilda—well, since the death of Falcontent’s wife, Falcontent had persuaded himself that women were not at all pertinent to his life in the world. No; it was not a woman. Nothing of the sort! A church had dumfounded Falcontent.