She was to have speedy confirmation of her belief. She had barely started down the shining hill slope to the wood-path, when she heard the crackling of a step behind her, and turned to see Justine, as warmly bundled up as she was herself, with her purse in her mittened hand. The color came and went in Justine’s cheeks. For the moment she seemed again the girl that Doctor Peavey had known in joyous summers at the camp.
“Doctor Sarah!” Justine began, breathlessly. “I didn’t mean to peep, but your writing is so big and clear! I only glanced at your list by mistake, but I knew in a minute, and I might have known anyway, knowing you. But why didn’t you ask me to help? Oh, you surely don’t think I’m like that horrible Miss Nash? I don’t want Christmas for myself ever again, but I wouldn’t take it away from other people, and least of all from little children. So let me help, please!”
For one second Doctor Peavey’s heart contracted. She saw the purse in Justine’s hand, and she read the passing thought in Justine’s mind. Would she have to tell Justine that money alone could not buy a Christmas gift, even of the poorest sort? But Mrs. Eliot, as Doctor Peavey had often said, was one of the finest women that she had ever known, and Justine was her daughter.
“Oh!” said Justine, with a little catch of the breath. “You think that I should—” She slipped the purse into her pocket. “Of course you can’t do it all alone. Eighteen children!” she cried. “I’m coming with you, Doctor Sarah!”
Together they trudged through the cathedral gloom of the firs and over the dazzling whiteness of the fields to Hardscrabble. Together they clambered into the ramshackle pung and drove the nine bright miles to Hanscomville. Such plans as they made on that drive! They would have a tree set up in Serena Wetherbee’s cottage, if the odious Miss Nash still refused to let them have the schoolhouse. They would string pop-corn and red cranberries by the yard.
“And we’ll buy lots of sparkly snow and shiny doodaddles at the ten-cent store!” cried Justine. Her eyes were as bright as Christmas stars.
“We’ll cut the candy-bags in the shape of stockings. And we’ll buy a ‘dolly with hair’ for that wee Emmy. I’ll have time to make it a dress and a petticoat, at least. And I’m going to get a sled for Jacob Tracy.”
So they planned all along the road, which seemed short, and in Hanscomville they made the plans come true. Up and down the little main street they bustled, and made their purchases, Doctor Peavey painstakingly, Justine with a lavish hand.
Presently they were stuffing packages into the pung—bags of oranges and nuts and Christmas candies from the grocer’s, bulging, frail bundles from the ten-cent store, skates and pocket-knives—an extravagance at which Doctor Peavey held up her hands—from the hardware shop, and even lordly, important-looking parcels from the general store. Among the last was a doll’s carriage.
“It’s for Emmy’s doll,” said Justine, “and we must find room for it, even if we have to tow it behind the pung.”