air, and
I thought I could tell which were Mis' Ailing and Mis' Burney and Mis'
Norris. And the faces of them all, the gentle, the grief-marked, even
the querulous, were grown kindly with the knowledge that somebody had
cared about their Christmas.

The child went toward them as simply as if they had been friends. They
looked at her with some murmuring of surprise, and at one another
questioningly. Viola went straight to the knee of Grandma Holly, who was
nearest.

"'At lady tied my hood too tight," she referred unflatteringly to me,
"p'eas do it off."

Grandma Holly looked down over her spectacles, and up at the other
grandma ladies, and back to Viola. The others gathered nearer, hitching
forward rocking-chairs, rising to peer over shoulders--breathlessly,
with a manner of fearing to touch her. But because of the little
uplifted face, waiting, Grandma Holly must needs untie the white hood
and reveal all the shining of the child's hair.

"Nen do my toat off," Viola gravely directed.

At that Grandma Holly crooned some single indistinguishable syllable in
her throat, and then off came the cloak. The little warm, plump body in
its fine linen emerged, rose-wise, and Viola smoothed down her frock,
and freed her hair from her neck, and glanced up shyly. By the stir and
flutter among them I understood that they were feeling just as I feel
when a little hood and cloak come off.

Viola stood still for a minute.

"I like be made some 'tention to," she suggested gently.

Ah--and they understood. How they understood! Grandma Holly swept the
little girl in her arms, and I know how the others closed about them
with smiles and vague unimportant words. Viola sat quietly and happily,
like a little come-a-purpose spirit to let them pretend. And it was with
them all as if something long pent up went free.

Calliope left the door and turned toward us.

"Seems like my throat couldn't stand it," she said, ... and it seemed to
me, as we three sat together in the dim little parlor, that Nita Ordway
must cherish Viola for us all--for the grandma ladies and Calliope and
me.

Half an hour later we three went out to the dining room. Viola ran to
her mother when she entered. Nita took her in her arms and sat beside
the stove, her cloak slipping from her shoulders, the soft peach tints
of her gown shot through with shining lines and the light caught in her
collar of gems. "I did want to get a-hold o' somethin' beautiful for
them old