So they had a merry Christmas after all, and a New Year’s wedding, on which occasion grandmother was resplendent in fresh ribbons, and the girls laughed and cried by turns.
The hard, dreary year of Tom’s struggle is long since past, but as Christmastide draws nigh and the wreaths are hung at the windows, Charity Ralston, the dearest and brightest little woman in all the country, looks fondly into her husband’s strong, manly face, and lays her cheek upon his shoulder in a way that tells him she remembers. He, too, has never forgotten, and, standing there in the twilight, with the sweet Christmas incense of the evergreen about them, he tells her again how he endured, and hoped, and loved, and ends by holding her close in his arms, while she whispers, “Merry Christmas, Tom!”
XI
THROUGH THE STORM
I
“’Lisbeth, ’Lisbeth, what ye doin’ out there?”
It was a sharp, high-strung voice, yet not loud nor ill-natured. The speaker stood at an open door between the kitchen and an outer porch, the latter built of rough boards and showing little wet streaks on the floor, where the storm had thrust in its snowy fingers the night before. The silence of the place was broken at intervals by a regular series of dull blows, lasting two or three minutes and interspersed with muffled splashings.