And they could tell stories! Stories backed by sparkling wit and a nice
sense of discrimination. On winter nights or on holiday afternoons like
this, as, gathered around the fire they grew mildly convivial, the sound
of their laughter would rise to Anne Warfield's room under the eaves; she
would push back the papers which held her to her desk, and wish with a
sigh that the laughter were that of young men, and that she might be
among them.

To-day, however, she was not at her desk. She was taking down the
decorations which had made the little room bright during the brief
holiday. To-morrow she would go back to school and to the forty children
whom she taught. Life would again stretch out before her, dull and
uneventful. The New Year would hold for her no meaning that the old year
had not held.

It had snowed all of the night before, and from her window she could see
the river, slate-gray against the whiteness. Out-of-doors it was very
cold, but her own room was hot with the heat of the little round stove.
With her holly wreaths in her arms, she stood uncertain in front of it.
She had thought to burn the holly, but it had seemed to her, all at once,
that to end thus the vividness of berry and of leaf would be desecration.
Surely they deserved to die out in that clear cold world in which they
had been born and bred!

It was a fanciful thought, but she yielded to it. Besides, there was
Diogenes! She must make sure of his warmth and comfort before night
closed in.

She put on her red scarf and cap and, with the wreaths in her arms, she
went down-stairs. The Old Gentlemen were in the front room and she had to
pass through. They rose to a man. She liked the courtliness, and gave in
return her lovely smile and a little bow.

They gazed after her with frank admiration. "Who is she?" asked one who
was not old, and who, slim and dark and with a black ribbon for his
eye-glasses, seemed a stranger in this circle.

"The new teacher of the Crossroads school. There wasn't any place for her
to board but this. So they took her in."

"Pretty girl."

The Old Gentlemen agreed, but they did not discuss her charms at length.
They belonged to a generation which preferred not to speak in a crowd of
a woman's attractions. One of them remarked, however, that he envied her
the good fortune of feasting all the year round at Peter Bower's table.

Anne, trudging through the snow with the wreaths in her arms, would have
laughed mockingly