f the
day, and had come away feeling, in her inquiry, strangely outside the
moment and alien to its incidence, as if she were somehow less alive
than those in Jenny's house.

"Jenny's got a little girl," Mis' Winslow said.

Mary stood staring at her. It seemed impossible. It was like seeing the
hands of time move, like becoming momentarily conscious of the swing and
rush of the earth, like perceiving the sweep of the stream of stars in
which our system moves.... She was startled and abashed that the news so
seized upon her. Little that had ever happened to herself seemed so
poignant, so warmed its place in sensation. While Mis' Winslow's mind
marked time on details of time and pounds, as is the way with us
immortals when another joins our ranks, Mary was receiving more
consciousness. There are times when this gift is laid on swiftly, as
with hands, instead of coming when none knows. Rather than with the
child whom she was to meet, her thought was with Jenny as she left Mis'
Winslow in the doorway and went down the street.

"Expect you back in about half an hour if the train's on time," Mis'
Winslow called.

Mary nodded, and turned into the great cathedral aisle that was Old
Trail Street, now arched and whitened, spectral in the dark, silver with
starlight....

... Capella was in the east, high and bright, and as imperative as
speech. Mary's way lay north, so that that great sun went beside her,
and there was no one else abroad but these two. A coat of ice had
polished the walks, so she went by the road, between the long white
mounds that lined it. The road, whose curves were absorbed in the
dimness, had thus lost its look of activity and lay inert as any frozen
waterway. Only a little wind, the star's sparkle, and Mary's step and
breath seemed living things--but from the rows of chimneys up and down
the Old Trail Road, faint smoke went up, a plume, a wreath, a veil,
where the village folk, invisible within quiet roof and wall, lifted
common signals; and from here a window and there a window, a light shone
out, a point, a ray, a glow, so that one without would almost say,
"There's home."

The night before Christmas; and in not one home was there any
preparation for to-morrow, Mary thought, unless one or two lawless ones
had broken bounds and contrived something, from a little remembrance for
somebody to a suet pudding. It was strange, she owned: no trees being
trimmed, no churches lighted for practice, and the sh