"And no time for anybody to warn him that there won't be any Christmas waiting for him," Mis' Moran observed thoughtfully.
"And like enough he'll bring a little something for Mary for a present," Mis' Winslow went on. "How'll she feel then?"
"Ain't it too bad it ain't last year?" Mis' Moran mourned. "Everything comes too late or too soon or not at all or else too much so, 'seems though."
Mis' Bates's impulse to nonconformity had not prevented her forehead from being drawn in their common sympathy; but it was a sympathy that saw no practical way out and existed tamely as a high window and not as a wide door.
"Well," she said, "Mary ain't exactly the one to see it so. You'll never get her to feel bad about anybody not having a Christmas. I donno, if it was any other year, as she'd be planning any different."
"No," said Mis' Winslow, thoughtfully, "Mary won't do anything. But we could."
Mis' Bates's forehead took alarm—the alarm of the sympathetic hearer who is challenged to be doer.
"Do?" she repeated. "You can't go back on the paper at this late day. And you can't give him a Christmas and every other of our children not have any just because we're their parents and still living. There ain't a thing to do."
Mis' Winslow's eyes were still on her overshoes. "I don't believe there's never 'not a thing' to do," she said, "I don't believe it."
Mis' Bates looked scandalized. "That's nonsense," she said sharply, "and it's sacrilegious besides. When God means a thing to happen, there's not a thing to do. What about earthquakes and—and cancers?"