on't mind," Mis' Winslow told her. "Better come around through
town, too. It's some farther, but he'll like the lights. What's the
little chap's name?" she asked; "I donno's I've heard you say."

Mary flushed faintly. "Do you know," she said, "I don't know his name. I
can't remember that Lily ever told me. They always called him just
_Yes_, because he learned to say that first."

"'_Yes!_'" repeated Mis' Winslow, blankly. "Why, it don't sound to me
real human."

Later in the day, Mis' Mortimer Bates and Mis' Moran came in to see
Mary. Both were hurried and tired, and occasionally one of them lapsed
into some mental calculation. "We must remember something for the middle
of the table," Mis' Bates observed to Mis' Moran, under cover of Mary's
putting wood in the stove. And when Mary related the breaking of the
bracket lamp, the two other women telegraphed to each other a glance of
memorandum.

"Don't it seem funny to _you_ to have Christmas coming on to-morrow and
no flurry about it?" Mary asked.

"_No flurry!_" Mis' Bates burst out. "Oh, well," she amended, "of course
this Christmas does feel a little funny to all of us. Don't you think
so, Mis' Moran?"

"I donno," said Mary, thoughtfully, "but what, when folks stop chasing
after Christmas and driving it before them, Christmas may turn around
and come to find them."

"Mebbe so," Mis' Moran said with bright eyes, "mebbe so. Oh, Mary," she
added, "ain't it nice he's coming?"

Mary looked at them, frowning a little. "It seemed like the thing had to
happen," she said; "it'll fit itself in."

Before dark she took a last look about the child's room. The owl paper,
the puppy washbasin, the huge calendar with its picture of a stag, the
shelves for whatever things of his own he had, all pleased her newly.
She had laid on his table her grandfather's Bible with pictures of
Asiatic places. Below his mirror hung his father's photograph, that
young face, with the unspeakable wistfulness of youth, looking somewhere
outside the picture. It made her think of the passionate expectation in
the face of the picture that Jenny had brought.

"Young folks in pictures always look like they was setting store by
something that ain't true yet," Mary thought. "It makes you kind of feel
you have to pitch in and make whatever it is come true, a little...."

It was when Mis' Winslow came back toward seven o'clock that there was
news of Jenny. Mary had been twice to her door in the course o