's Christmas! You can't go
giving anybody anything, can you?"

"I don't mean give it to him _for_ Christmas at all," protested Abel. "I
mean give it to him just like you would any other day. We'd likely take
him something if it wasn't Christmas? Sort of to show our good will,
like the women with the supper? Well, why not take him some little thing
even if it is Christmas?"

"Oh, well," said Simeon, "that way. If you make it plain it ain't _for_
Christmas--Of course, we ain't to blame for what day his train got in
on."

"Sure we ain't," said Abel, confidently.

Ebenezer was moving away.

"We'll call in for you in half an hour or so," Abel's voice followed
him. "We'll slip out after the boy gets there. There won't be time
before ... what say, Ebenezer?"

"I think not," said Ebenezer; "you don't need me."

"Well--congratulations anyhow!" Abel called.

Ebenezer stopped on the crossing.

"What for?" he asked.

"Man alive," said Abel, "don't you know Bruce has got a little girl?"

"No," said Ebenezer, "I--didn't know. I'm obliged to you."

He turned from them, but instead of crossing the street to go to his
house, he faced down the little dark street to the factory. He had
walked past Jenny's once that evening, but without being able to force
himself to inquire. He knew that Bruce had come a day or two before, but
Bruce had sent him no word. Bruce had never sent any word since the
conditions of the failure had been made plain to him, when he had
resigned his position, refused the salary due him, and left Old Trail
Town. Clearly, Ebenezer could make no inquiry under those circumstances,
he told himself. They had cut themselves off from him, definitely.

How definitely he was cut off from them was evident as he went down the
dark street to the factory. He was strangely quickened, from head to
foot, with the news of the birth of Bruce's child. He went down toward
the factory simply because that was the place that he knew best, and he
wanted to be near it. He walked in the snow of the mid-road, facing the
wind, steeped in that sense of keener being which a word may pour in the
veins until the body flows with it. The third generation; the next of
kin,--that which stirred in him was a satisfaction almost physical that
his family was promised its future.

As he went he was unconscious, as he was always unconscious, of the
little street. But, perhaps because Abel had mentioned Mary's house, he
noted the folk, bound