ying and whooping figure ahead had
the slightest idea of the true situation. They did not know that the
boy was confused by the fires, none the less ardent that they were
so innocent, of a first love for Ellen; that, ever since he had seen
her little, fair face on her aunt's shoulder the day when she was
found, it had been even closer to his heart than his sled and his
jackstones and his ball, and his hope of pudding for dinner. They
did not know that he had toiled at the wood-pile of a Saturday, and
run errands after school, to earn money to buy Christmas presents
for his mother and Ellen; that he had at that very minute in his
purse in the bottom of his pocket the sum of eighty-nine cents,
mostly in coppers, since his wage was generally payable in that
coin, and his pocket sagged arduously therefrom. They did not know
that he was even then bound upon an errand to the grocery store for
a bag of flour to be brought home on his sled, and would thereby
swell his exchequer by another cent. They did not know what dawning
chords of love, and knowledge of love, that wild whoop expressed;
and the boy dodged and darted and hid, and appeared before them all
the way to the busy main street of Rowe; and, after they had entered
the great store where the finest Christmas display was held, he
stood before the window staring at Ellen vanishing in a brilliant
vista, and whooped now and then, regardless of public opinion.

Ellen, when once she was inside the store, forgot everything else.
She clung more tightly to her mother's hand, as one will cling to
any wonted stay of love in the midst of strangeness, even of joy,
and she saw everything with eyes which photographed it upon her very
soul. At first she had an impression of a dazzling incoherence of
splendor, of a blare as of thousands of musical instruments all
sounding different notes of delight, of a weaving pattern of colors,
too intricate to master, of a mingled odor of paint and varnish, and
pine and hemlock boughs, and then she spelled out the letters of the
details. She looked at those counters set with the miniature
paraphernalia of household life which give the first sweet taste of
domesticity and housekeeping joys to a little girl.

There were the sets of dolls' furniture, and the dolls, dishes, and
there was a counter with dolls' cooking-stoves and ranges bristling
with the most delightful realism of pots and pans, at which she
gazed so fixedly and breathlessly that she l