“Got any Christmas presents for them?—don’t mind my asking.”
“Well, I’d just ’s lief show you what I have got. ’T ain’t much, you know, but then it’s somethin’.”
He stepped inside the door, laid aside his snowy mittens, and taking from the corner of the seat a small brown parcel, carefully removed the string and wrappings.
“There,” he said, with a sort of pleading pride in his eyes, “I guess these’ll please ’em some. ’Taint much, you know,” he added again, glancing at his passenger’s fur cap, as he displayed the presents on the car-seat.
A very red-cheeked and blue-eyed doll, with a placid countenance quite out of keeping with her arms; these members being so constructed as to occupy only two positions, one of which expressed unbounded astonishment, and the other gloomy resignation; a transparent slate, with a dim cow under the glass, and “fifteen cents,” plainly marked in lead pencil on one corner of the frame, and a rattle for the girl baby.
As the conductor held up these articles in his stiff, red fingers, turning the doll about so as to show her flaxen braid to the best advantage, and inducing the arms to take the positions alluded to, the Shadow crept away, and had well-nigh disappeared. But it returned again, thicker than ever, when he said, with a little choke in his voice, “I did mean to get ’em a little tree, with candles on it, and a picture-book or two; but our pay ain’t overmuch, and we had sickness, and—and”—he was very busy doing up the bundle, and very clumsy he must have been, too, for it was a long time before the wide-looped, single bow-knot was tied, and the parcel carefully put away again.