switch that suddenly lighted the dim big room, paused at the window to
look down upon Monroe. An early twilight was creeping into the village
street, and the drug-store windows glowed with globes of purple and
green. The shops were already disguised under bushy evergreens; wreaths
of red and green paper made circles of steam against the show windows.
Silva, of the fruit market opposite, was selling a Christmas tree from
the score that lay at the curb, to a stout country woman, whose shabby,
well-wrapped children watched the transaction breathlessly from a
mud-spattered surrey. The Baxter girls went by, Martie saw them turn
into the church yard, and disappear into the swinging black doors, "for
a little visit."

Nothing dramatic or beautiful in the scene: a little Western village
street, on the eve of Christmas Eve, but to-night it was lighted for
Martie with poetry and romance. The thought of a slim, dark-blue book
with its four magic lines thrilled in her heart like a song.

"Christmas day after to-morrow!" she said to Fanny, "don't you love
Christmas?"

But she knew that her real Christmas joy had come to-day.

The December kitchen was gas-lighted long before she got there, and
Pauline was deep in calm preparation for dinner. Pauline was a Canadian
girl, and if her work ever confused or fatigued her, at least she never
betrayed the fact. There never were pots and pans awaiting cleaning in
Pauline's sink, there never was a teaspoonful of flour spilled upon her
biscuit board. Her gingham cuffs were always starched and stiff, her
colourless hair smooth. She was a silent, dun-coloured creature, whose
most violent expression was an occasional deep, unctuous laugh at Mrs.
Bannister's nonsense.

Pauline did not prepare a meal in a series of culminating convulsions,
with hair rumpling, face reddening, and voice rising every passing
minute. She moved a shining pot forward on a shining stove, she took
plates of inviting cold things from the safe, and lifted a damp napkin
from her pats of butter. Then she said, in an uninterested voice: "You
might tell your p'pa, Miss Lydia--"

Humble as her business was, she had been taught it well. Martie,
insatiable on this particular topic, sometimes questioned Pauline. She
was given a meagre picture of a farmhouse on Prince Edward's Island, of
a stern, exacting, loving mother who "licked" daughters and sons alike
with a "trace-end" for any infractions of domestic rule. Of snows so
la