"We never observed it before. God has been so good to us, Jerome,—and it is His day of the whole year,—the day," her voice sinking with an inexpressible tenderness, "when Love came into the world as a little child,—as a little child."
He looked at her wistfully for a moment, then took up his stick and an hygrometer, saying, as he opened the door,—
"But hear to the cry of the sea! it grows more muffled and dull each hour. If Death itself could speak, that is his voice, I think." He spoke vaguely, with an anxious, absent look, then went groping down the dark stairway. Presently she heard him come back hurriedly.
"Will it cost you much to give up this day, child?" he demanded, coming close and putting his hand on her head. "I ask it of you. I must be with you in your little plans, and"—
"Your mother kept it," interrupted she, sharply.
"I know,"—with dull, pained looks at the fire, at the night without, everything but her face. "Her faith is not mine."
"No, Jerome," gently,—for she was tender with him always, when he seemed weaker than herself. "But if it could be, my husband?"—her voice growing unsteady. "Humor me this one time: I have looked forward to it so long! Perhaps it was to remember my own childhood; perhaps I had some little gifts to offer you. But let me keep it. If it be childish, let me be a child."
Something in the broken voice reminded him of little Tom's. She put her hands on his arms, too, and in the thin face turned up to his there was a look left by all the years of patient love and work she had borne for him; it struck him back somehow, as by a touch, to those first days when they were lovers together in Canada. It was curious, that, in after years, when M. Jacobus remembered his wife, it was always as she looked at that last moment.
"Don't think me harsh, Sharley," he faltered.
She caught at her advantage. "We will keep it together,"—eagerly.