"My!" she said, "you'll miss her—miss thinkin' of her bein' somewheres. Allen! Where do you s'pose she is?"
"I thought o' that," said Allen, soberly.
"Goodness!" said Christopha, and shivered, and suddenly drew the child close to her. He was sleeping again. And it was so, with his little body between them, that she could no longer keep her hand warm in Allen's greatcoat pocket. But above the child's head her eyes and Allen's would meet, and in that hour the two had never been so near. Nearer they were than in the talk about the new house, and the presents, and the dinners and suppers and breakfasts together.
They passed the farmhouses that looked asleep, and the farmhouses that looked watchfully awake while their owners slept. It would not be well to knock at these, still and sombre-windowed. And though there were lights at the Moneys' and at the Howells' and at the Hubbelthwait farm, and even at Bess and Opie's, their gates, by common consent, were also passed. Nor did they stop at the Topladys'.
"They're real, regular people with a grown son," Chris said of them vaguely, "and it don't seem hardly fair to give 'em little John, too!"
"Little John," Allen said over wonderingly. When they called him that the child seemed suddenly a person, like themselves. Their eyes met above his head.
"Allen!" Chris said.
"What? What is it?" he asked eagerly.
"Could—do you think—could we?" she demanded.
"My!" he answered, "I been a-wishin'—"