“That’s a new one,” whispered the Discouraged Man again, delightedly. “She never sang it before. She must have learned it on purpose for to-night!”
There was a weary little pause within the room; she wondering, perhaps, why he didn’t come in. Presently she began again, and her voice had grown strangely weak, so that they could hardly hear it, in the rush of the wind outside the building:
“Let the bright red berries glow,
Everywhere—in goodly show”—
It died away into a mere whisper, and then ceased entirely.
Mr. Broadstreet hesitated no longer, but touched his companion’s arm, and they both entered.
She was lying on a rude bed in the corner of the room, her eyes closed, and her hands folded upon her breast. A look of agony swept across the face of her husband as he knelt beside her, taking her cold hands—ah, so thin! in his own, chafing and kissing them by turns.
Above his head on the whitewashed wall was the word “John,” in large, bright letters. It was his name; she had crept from her bed and traced it with her finger-tip upon the frosty window-pane, so that the light from a far-off street lamp shone through the clear lines, and thus reproduced them upon the opposite wall. Just beneath was “Merry Christmas.” She thought it would please him, and seem like a sort of decoration, hung there above her bed. And now he was kneeling by her side, and holding her thin hands. Perhaps he was more discouraged than ever, just then. O Shadow, Shadow, could you not have spared him this?