y. A neighbor was in the sitting room with Mrs. Wing. Jenny met Mary
at the kitchen door and stood against a background of clothes drying on
lines stretched indoors.

"Don't you want to come upstairs?" Jenny said. "There ain't a fire up
there--but I can show you the things."

She had put them all in the bottom drawer, as women always do; and, as
women always do, had laid them so that all the lace and embroidery and
pink ribbons possible showed in a flutter when the drawer was opened.
Jenny took the things out, one at a time, unfolded, discussed, compared,
with all the tireless zeal of a robin with a straw in its mouth or of a
tree, blossoming. "Smell of them," Jenny bade her. "Honestly, wouldn't
you know by the smell who they are for?" "I donno but you would," Mary
admitted awkwardly, and marveled dumbly at the newness Jenny was
feeling in that which, after all, was not new!

When these things were all out, a little tissue-paper parcel was left
lying in the drawer.

"There's one more," Mary said.

Jenny flushed, hesitated, lifted it.

"That's nothing," she said; "before I came I made some little things for
its Christmas. I thought maybe it would come first, and we'd have the
Christmas in my room, and I made some little things--just for fun, you
know. But it won't be fair to do it now, with the whole town so set
against our having any Christmas. Mary, it just seems as though I had to
have a Christmas this year!"

"Oh, well," said Mary, "the baby'll be your Christmas. The town can't
help that, I guess."

"I know," Jenny flashed back brightly, "you and I have got the best of
them, haven't we? We've each got one present coming, anyway."

"I s'pose we have...." Mary said.

She looked at Jenny's Christmas things--a ribbon rattle, a crocheted
cap, a first picture book, a cascade of colored rings--and then in grim
humour at Jenny.

"It'll never miss its Christmas," she said dryly.

"Don't you think so?" said Jenny, soberly. "I donno. It seems as if it'd
be kind o' lonesome to get born around Christmas and not find any going
on."

She put the things away, and closed the drawer. For no appreciable
reason, she kept it locked, and the key under the bureau cover.

"Do you know yet when yours is coming?" Jenny asked, as she rose.

"Week after next," Mary repeated,--"two weeks from last night," she
confessed, "if he comes straight through."

"I think," said Jenny, "I think mine will be here--before then."

When t