nt through the cold kitchen where the
refrigerator and the ironing board and the clothes bars and all the
familiar things stood in the dark. To Mary these were sunk in a great
obscurity and insignificance, and even Jenny being there was unimportant
beside the thing that her letter had brought to think about. They
stepped out into the clear, glittering night, with its clean, white
world, and its clean, dark sky on which some story was written in stars.
Capella was shining almost overhead--and another star was hanging bright
in the east, as if the east were always a dawning place for some new
star.

"Mary!" said Jenny, there in the dark.

"Yes," Mary answered.

"You know I said I just couldn't bear not to have any Christmas--_this_
Christmas?"

"Yes," Mary said.

"Did you know why?"

"I thought because it's your and Bruce's first--"

"No," Jenny said, "that isn't all why. It's something else."

She slipped her arm within Mary's and stood silent. And, Mary still not
understanding,--

"It's somebody else," Jenny said faintly.

Mary stirred, turned to her in the dimness.

"Why, Jenny!" she said.

"Soon," said Jenny.

The two women stood for a moment, Jenny saying a little, Mary quiet.

"It'll be late in December," Jenny finished. "That seems so wonderful to
me--so wonderful. Late in December, like--"

The cold came pricking about them, and Jenny moved to go. Mary, the
shawled figure on the upper step, looked down on the shawled figure
below her, and abruptly spoke.

"It's funny," Mary said, "that you should tell me that--now. I haven't
told you what's in my letter."

"What was?" asked Jenny.

Mary told her. "They want I should have the little boy," she ended it.

"Oh...." Jenny said. "Mary! How wonderful for you! Why, it's almost next
as wonderful as mine!"

Mary hesitated for a breath. But she was profoundly stirred by what
Jenny had told her--the first time, so far as she could recall, that
news like this had ever come to her directly, as a secret and a marvel.
News of the village births usually came in gossip, in commiseration, in
suspicion. Falling as did this confidence in a time when she was
re-living her old hope, when Adam's boy stood outside her threshold, the
moment quite suddenly put on its real significance.

"We can plan together," Jenny was saying. "Ain't it wonderful?"

"Ain't it?" Mary said then, simply, and kissed Jenny, when Jenny came
and kissed her. Then Jenny went away.

M