On the way home they chatted about their Christmas tree.
“It’s the sort of thing that mother would have loved to do,” Justine said, and then she began to talk about her mother, and to tell sweet, homely incidents of the life that they had lived together.
They had passed through Crosset Cove when Doctor Peavey broke the not unhappy silence into which they had lapsed.
“Justine! If we haven’t forgotten to get a present for the schoolteacher!”
“For that Nash woman?” cried Justine. “She doesn’t deserve a present. I shouldn’t like to say what she does deserve.”
Then they reached the long tug of Nobsco Hill, where, in mercy to the tired old horse, they got out and walked. At the top of the hill they overtook a woman, who was trudging on foot in the twilight. She was thirty, perhaps, with a thin, tired face. She wore a coat that was not thick enough, and a little, old-fashioned neck-piece of worn fur. She was dragging a small fir-tree through the snow, and every little while she stopped to beat her numbed hands together.
“I thought I knew everybody in these parts,” said Doctor Peavey, under her breath, “but she’s a stranger. Why, it must be Miss Nash!”
The woman turned as Doctor Peavey spoke to her. Oh, yes, she would be glad of a lift, she said, in a tired voice. She had been out getting a little tree for her school children. She did not want them to think that Santa Claus had forgotten them.
Doctor Peavey’s eyes, seeking Justine’s, read assent in their softened expression.
“We were planning a little surprise for your children,” she said, “but we’ll need help to put it through. Couldn’t you spend the night with us, and string cranberries and sew candy-bags?”