_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?"

"I don't believe he ever means earthquakes and cancers," said Mis'
Winslow, to her overshoes.

"Prevent 'em, then!" challenged Mis' Bates, triumphantly.

Mis' Winslow looked up. Her eyes were shining as they had shone
sometimes when one of her seven-under-fifteen had given its first sign
of consciousness of more than self.

"I believe we'll do it some day," she said. "I believe there's more to
us than we've got any idea of. I believe there's so much to us that one
of us that found out about it and told the rest would get hounded out of
town. But even now, I bet there's enough to us to do something every
time--something every time, no matter what. And I believe there's
something we can do about this little orphaned boy's Christmas, if we
nip our brains on to it in the right place."

"Oh, dear," said Mis' Moran, "sometimes when I think about Christmas I
almost wish we almost hadn't done the way we're going to do."

Mis' Bates stiffened.

"Jane Moran," she said, "do you think it's right to go head over heels
in debt to celebrate the birth of our Lord?"

"No," said Mis' Moran, "I don't