as
to be treated _exactly_ as any other day?

If, in the heart of Mis' Abby Winslow, where the plan had originated, it
had originated side by side with the thought that the point of the plan
was the incidence of Christmas Eve, she kept her belief secret. The open
argument was unassailable, and she contented herself with that. Even
Simeon Buck, confronted with it, was silent.

"Goin' back on the paper, are you?" he had at first said, "and hev a
celebration?"

"Celebration of what?" Mis' Winslow demanded; "celebration of that
little boy getting here all alone, 'way from Idaho. And we'd celebrate
that any other night, wouldn't we? Of course we would. Our paper signing
don't call for us to give everybody the cold shoulder as I know of, just
because it's Christmas or Christmas Eve, either."

"No," Simeon owned, "of course it don't. Of course it don't."

As for Abel Ames, he accepted the proposal with an alacrity which he was
put to it to conceal.

"So do," he said heartily, "so do. I guess we can go ahead just like it
was a plain day o' the week, can't we?"

"Hetty," he said to his wife, whom that noon he went through the house
to the kitchen expressly to tell, "can you bake up a basket of stuff to
take over to Mary Chavah's next Tuesday night?"

She looked up from the loaf she was cutting, the habitual wonder of her
childish curved lashes accented by her sudden curving of eyebrows.

"Next Tuesday?" she said, "Why, that's Christmas eve!"

Abel explained, saying, "What of that?" and trying to speak
indifferently but, in spite of himself, shining through.

"Well, that's kind of nice to do, ain't it?" she answered.

"My, yes," Abel said, emphatically, "It's a thing to do--that's the
thing to do."

It was Mis' Mortimer Bates, the nonconformist by nature, in whom doubts
came nearest to expression.

"I _don't_ know," she said, "it kind of _does_ seem like hedging."

"They ain't anybody for it to seem to," Mis' Winslow contended
reasonably, "but us. And we understand."

"We was going to do entirely without a Christmas this year. Entirely
without," Mis' Bates rehearsed.

"Was we going to do entirely without everyday, week-day,
year-in-and-year-out milk of human kindness?" Mis' Winslow demanded.
"Well, then, let's us use a little of it, same as we would on a Monday
wash day."

No voice was raised in real protest. None who had signed the paper and
none who had not done so could take exception to this simple way