Unless it was Abel Ames. He, in fact, made or replied to almost no observations that evening. He drank his coffee without cream, sugar, or spoon,—they are always overlooking somebody's essentials in this way, and such is Old Trail Town's shy courtesy that the omission is never mentioned or repaired by the victim,—and sighed his triple sigh at intervals, and went home.
"Hetty," he said to his wife, who had not gone to the meeting, "they put it through. We won't have no Christmas creditors this year. We don't have to furnish charged Christmas presents for nobody."
She looked up from the towel she was featherstitching—she was a little woman who carried her head back and had large eyes and the long, curved lashes of a child.
"I s'pose you're real relieved, ain't you, Abel?" she answered.
"My, yes," said Abel, without expression. "My, yes."
They all took the news home in different wise.
"Matthew," said Ellen Bourne, "the town meeting voted not to have any Christmas this year. That is, to ask the folks not to have any—'count of expense."
"Sensible move," said Matthew, sharpening his ax by the kitchen stove.
"It'll be a relief for most folks not to have the muss and the clutter," said Ellen's mother.