WHEN CHRISTMAS CAME AGAIN[14]
Beulah Marie Dix
“I want to go,” said Justine Eliot, “where I won’t even hear the word Christmas. If you’d only open the camp, Doctor Sarah, we could stay there, just by our two selves, until these ghastly holidays are over. Oh, won’t you, please?”
Justine Eliot was nineteen, far richer in money than she needed to be, and as pretty as a blush-rose. Until a year ago she had known nothing but sunshine. This fact Dr. Sarah Peavey took into swift account, and she did not say, “Don’t be a coward! Face it out!”
“You see, there were two of us a year ago,” Justine went on, “and now I’m all alone. Oh, if I’d only gone down-town that day with mother! But she said it was a secret, and I wasn’t to come. And I said I didn’t want to come, for I had a secret, too. It was a pillow I was covering for her as a Christmas present—the fir-balsam pillow that I’d made that summer at the camp. I finished it that afternoon, and tied it up with red ribbons. There were Christmas wreaths in all the windows, and holly paper and red ribbon everywhere. You know how mother loved the Christmas season, and how she remembered everybody. Oh, it was too cruel that she should leave us then! And if I’d only been with her, I know it wouldn’t have happened. But that crowded, slippery crossing, and that automobile bearing down—and I wasn’t there! I never want to see green holly or red ribbons again. I think if I hear people say, ‘Merry Christmas!’ I shall die. And I wish I could!”
Justine broke into sobs, with her face in her hands.
For a moment Doctor Peavey watched her through narrowed eyelids. Then she took a time-table from the drawer of her desk, and said:
“I’ll leave my patients with Deering. I’ll telegraph Serena Wetherbee to open the camp for us. Meet me at the station to-morrow evening, and—”
“Doctor Sarah! Then you will?”
“Yes, I’ll take you where Christmas won’t find you—if I can!”