The thought may have been why, instead of going home, she went to see Jenny. A neighbor was in the sitting room with Mrs. Wing. Jenny met Mary at the kitchen door and stood against a background of clothes drying on lines stretched indoors.
"Don't you want to come upstairs?" Jenny said. "There ain't a fire up there—but I can show you the things."
She had put them all in the bottom drawer, as women always do; and, as women always do, had laid them so that all the lace and embroidery and pink ribbons possible showed in a flutter when the drawer was opened. Jenny took the things out, one at a time, unfolded, discussed, compared, with all the tireless zeal of a robin with a straw in its mouth or of a tree, blossoming. "Smell of them," Jenny bade her. "Honestly, wouldn't you know by the smell who they are for?" "I donno but you would," Mary admitted awkwardly, and marveled dumbly at the newness Jenny was feeling in that which, after all, was not new!
When these things were all out, a little tissue-paper parcel was left lying in the drawer.
"There's one more," Mary said.
Jenny flushed, hesitated, lifted it.
"That's nothing," she said; "before I came I made some little things for its Christmas. I thought maybe it would come first, and we'd have the Christmas in my room, and I made some little things—just for fun, you know. But it won't be fair to do it now, with the whole town so set against our having any Christmas. Mary, it just seems as though I had to have a Christmas this year!"
"Oh, well," said Mary, "the baby'll be your Christmas. The town can't help that, I guess."
"I know," Jenny flashed back brightly, "you and I have got the best of them, haven't we? We've each got one present coming, anyway."
"I s'pose we have...." Mary said.