ops closed as on
any other night. Only the post office had light--she went in to look in
her box. Affer was there at the telegraph window, and he accosted her.

"Little boy's comin' to-night, is he?" he said, as one of the sponsors
for that arrival.

"I'm on my way to the train now," Mary answered, and noted the Christmas
notice with its soiled and dog-eared list still hanging on the wall. "It
was a good move," she insisted to herself, as she went out into the
empty street again.

"You got a merry Christmas without no odds of the paper or me either,"
Affer called after her; but she did not answer save with her "Thank you,
Mr. Affer."

"Why do they all pretend to think it's so fine for me?" she wondered.
"To cheer me up, I guess," she thought grimly.

To-night they were all sharing the aloofness from the time, an aloofness
which she herself had known for years. All save Jenny. To Jenny's house,
in defiance of that dog-eared paper in the post office, Christmas had
come. Not a Christmas of "present trading," not a Christmas of things
at all; but _Christmas_. Unto them a child was born.

"Jenny's the only one in this town that's got a real Christmas," thought
Mary, on her way to meet her own little guest.

The Simeon Buck North American Dry Goods Exchange was dark, too, and
from its cave of window the gray Saint Nicholas looked out, bearing his
flag--and he to-night an idle, mummy thing of no significance. The Abel
Ames General Merchandise Emporium was closed, but involuntarily Mary
stopped before it. In its great plate-glass window a single candle
burned. She stood for a moment looking.

"Why, that's what they do, some places, to let the Christ-child in,"
Mary thought. "I wonder if Abel knows. How funny--for a store!"

Some one whom she did not know passed her and looked too.

"Kind o' nice," said the other.

"Real nice," Mary returned, and went on with a little glow.

Abel's candle, and the arc light shining like cold blue crystal before
the dark Town Hall, and the post-office light where the dog-eared list
hung and the telegraph key clicked out its pretence at hand touching
with all the world, these were the only lights the street showed--save
Capella, that went beside her and, as she looked, seemed almost to stand
above the town.

At Mis' Moran's house on the other side of the square, the children were
waiting for her--Bennet and Gussie and Tab and Pep and little Emily.
They ran before Mary in the road,