her Christmas shopping and instructed
the bank to send on the fifteenth of December this sum for her personal
use.
"Dear, dear Daddy! He forgot nothing," sobbed Janice, when she read this
note, and kissed the check which seemed to have come warm from her
father's hand. "Whatever shall I do all through my life long without
him, if he never comes back?"
Christmas Eve came. The clouds had been gathering above the higher peaks
of the Green Mountains all day, and, as evening dropped, the snow began
falling.
Janice and Marty went down town together after supper. Even Poketown
showed some special light and life at this season. Dusty store windows
were rejuvenated; candles, and trees, and tinsel, and wreathes blossomed
all along High Street. Janice was proud to know that the brightest
windows, and the most tastefully dressed, were Hopewell Drugg's. And in
the middle of the biggest window of Drugg's store was a beautiful wax
doll, which she and Miss 'Rill had themselves dressed. On Christmas
morning that doll was to be found by Lottie Drugg, fast asleep with its
head on the blind child's own pillow!
Janice had to run around just to take a last peek at the window and the
doll, while Marty went to the post office for the evening mail. Papers
and magazines were due in that mail for the reading-room; and, despite
the fact that the snow was falling more heavily every minute, there
would be some of the "regulars" in the reading-room, glad to see the
papers.
Janice had turned her own subscription for the New York daily over to
the reading-room association; and when she wanted to read the New York
paper herself, she went to the files to look at it. Weeks had passed now
since there had been anything printed about that district in Chihuahua
where her father's mine was located.
Coming back, down the hill from Drugg's, Janice saw that Marty had not
gone at once into the reading-room and lit the lamps. Her cousin was
standing in the light of the drug-store window, a bundle of papers and
magazines under his arm, and one paper spread before his eyes. He seemed
to be reading eagerly.
"Hey, Marty! come on in and read! It's awful cold out here!" she shouted
to him, shaking the latch of the reading-room door with her mittened
hand.
Marty, roused, looked up guiltily, and thrust the quickly folded paper
into the breast of his jacket. "Aw, I'm comin'," he said.
But when he came to open the door Janice noticed that he seemed to
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