's Christmas--Christmas--Christmas!" she laughed, when the little
boy commented upon her gaiety. Lydia found the usual damper for her
mood.

"Very different for you from last Christmas, poor Mart!" she observed,
with a long sigh.

Martie was sobered. They went into the church for a moment's prayer,
and Teddy wriggled against her in the dark, and managed to get a little
arm about her neck, for he knew that she was crying. The revulsion had
come, and Martie, tears running down her face in the darkness, was only
a lonely woman again, unsuccessful, worried, trapped in a dull little
village, missing her baby!

Women were coming and going on the altar, trimming it with odorous
green for Christmas. There was a pungent smell of evergreen in the air.
About the confessionals there was a constant shuffle, whispering and
stirring; radiators hissed and clanked, the big doors creaked and swung
windily.

Sally and her whispering tribe were just in front of them; presently
they all went out into the cold, and across a bare yard to the lights
and warmth and noise and music of the Sodality Hall. Sally saw that
Martie had been crying, and when they were seated together in one of
the rows of chairs against the wall, with their laps full of children's
coats, she touched the hidden hurt.

"Martie, dearest, I'm so sorry!"

"I know!" Martie blinked and managed a smile.

"I'll be glad for you when this first Christmas is over!" Sally said
earnestly.

Martie's answering look was full of gratitude: she thought it strangely
touching to see the blooming little mother deliberately try to bring
her gay Christmas mood into tune with sorrow and loss. Sally's
beautiful Elizabeth was one of the Christmas angels in the play
to-night, and Sally's pride was almost too great to bear. Billy was
sturdily dashing about selling popcorn balls, and Jim was staggering to
and fro flirting with admiring Sodality girls. The young Hawkeses were
at their handsome best, and women on all sides were congratulating
Sally.

What could Sally dream, Martie mused, of a freezing Eastern city packed
under dirty snow, of bitter poverty, of a tiny, gold-crowned girl in a
shabby dressing-gown, of a coaster wrapped in wet paper, and delivered
in a dark, bare hall? Sally's serene destiny lay here, away from the
damp, close heat under which milk poisoned and babies wilted, away from
the icy cold that caught shuddering flesh and blood under its solid
pall. These friendly, c