It was a Christmas of bright sun and glad weather. Sarah Peavey and her sister set crimson roses beneath their mother’s picture and opened their gifts in its presence. Sarah Peavey had the medical book that she had needed, and a brown print of a Madonna, and even a ticket for the opera. But the gift that she valued most came in the twilight. The telephone-bell rang, and over the wire came Justine Eliot’s voice:
“Is it you, dear Doctor Sarah? I wanted to tell you. I’ve seen my old cousin Hester. She’s tired of hiring maids, you know, and she’s been looking for a woman to be a sort of companion housekeeper in her little apartment. I told her about Ellen Nash, and she’s sending for her. She’ll pay her three times what the Hardscrabble school paid, and Miss Nash will be able to go often to see her mother. Doctor Sarah!”
“Yes, Justine.”
“Do you remember my telling you about that fir-balsam pillow I made up last year—the one I thought I couldn’t ever touch again?”
“I remember, child.”
“I sent it off yesterday, in holly wrappings—to Ellen Nash’s mother. And that’s all, Doctor Sarah, dear, only—I wanted to wish you—Merry Christmas!”
[14] This story was first printed in “Youth’s Companion,” December 14, 1911. Reprinted by permission of the author and “Youth’s Companion.”
THE KING OF THE CHRISTMAS FEAST[14]
Elaine Sterne
The little boy in No. 60 pressed his nose against the cold window-pane and looked out over the school yard. It was a deserted white courtyard, with a few muddy footprints zigzagging across the snow toward the second dormitory. There was, to be sure, a rusty puddle in one corner where the drops from the rain-pipe spattered, but aside from that, four gray walls with staring windows looked him back square in the eye, no matter how far he twisted his head.