· · · · · · ·
The woman in the room sat prone on the floor, her thin shawl sheltering herself and wailing infant. Not an article of furniture remained, not even her little charcoal burner—it had been the last to go. The firm, quick footsteps in the hallway carried a message that brought her face up and drew her eager gaze to the door. The man who stepped within carried an armful of packages. With her eyes riveted on these, her own arms tightened around the emaciated form she held.
“Maery!” said the newcomer gently. “Ye have been telling me I’d be finding the Christ Child if I tried hard—I do remember ye said He always came to the pooer an’ sick first; to the honest an’ thrue! Ye knew, Maery, me girl! Sure, it’s in the holy name of ye—the faith. Well, I found Him to-night!”
He stood silent, his lips twitching and his face drawn against an emotion that shamed him.
A wordless cry came from the woman. She struggled to her knees and leaned toward him, her eyes shining with the light that ever is on land and sea where angels pass.
“Mike! Where?”
The packages slipped from Mike’s arms to the floor, and his lifted face blanched with the wonder of some far-away scene, and a revelation undreamed of in his hard, narrow life. And then with a twinkle in his Irish eyes:
“In the heart of a Jew,” he whispered.
PATCHES
By Francis E. Norris