“Mother Margaret, Mother Margaret!” he cried. “Look—oh, look-at!”
Mother Margaret came and looked, and she exclaimed too, with something of pleasure—but through the pleasure there went darting and stabbing a pain which had been coming again and again these past few days; and as Christmas Day drew nearer, it had been hurting her more and more. It had come that morning when she had first waked. And she had said to herself, for the hundredth time:
“What is the use? You can buy him some fruit—a big orange and a red apple. You can manage a little something for Christmas dinner. But you can’t do anything else, and what is the use in thinking about it?”
She put down her paper flowers now, and went over to Anthony’s bed.
“Tony, dear,” she said, “I believe you’re thinking about Christmas.”
He looked up, bravely and brightly.
“No, Mother, truly,” he said, “I wasn’t thinking about it hardly at all.”
She sat down on the bedside and took his hand. “You do know, don’t you, love,” she said, “that Mother Margaret can’t—she sure-enough can’t—do anything for our Christmas this year! But another year—”
“Yes, yes!” Tony agreed eagerly, “another year!”
“This year things are bad enough,” she said; “but if Mother thought that—somewhere in his little heart, he wasn’t quite believing her, and was thinking that maybe, maybe some kind of Christmas would come to him, why, then—”