ce from the blazing logs; and there were queer tables and old-gold
curtains looped back with brass rosettes--ears really--behind which
the tresses of the parted curtains were tucked; and there were more old
portraits in dingy frames, and samplers under glass, and a rug which
some aunt had made with her own hands from odds and ends; and a huge
work-basket spilling worsteds, and last, and by no manner of means
least, a big chintz-covered rocking-chair, the little lady's very
own--its thin ankles and splay feet hidden by a modest frill. There were
all these things and a lot more--and yet I still maintain that the
room was just one big fireplace. Not alone because of its size (and it
certainly was big: many a doubting curly head, losing its faith in Santa
Claus, has crawled behind the old fire-dogs, the child's fingers tight
about the Little Gray Lady's, and been told to look up into the blue--a
lesson never forgotten all their lives), but because of the wonderful
and never-to-be-told-of things which constantly took place before its
blazing embers.

For this fireplace was the Little Gray Lady's altar. Here she dispensed
wisdom and cheer and love. Everybody in Pomford village had sat in one
or the other of the chairs grouped about it and had poured out their
hearts to her. All sorts of pourings: love affairs, for instance, that
were hopeless until she would take the girl's hand in her own and smooth
out the tangle; to-say nothing of bickerings behind closed doors, with
two lives pulling apart until her dear arms brought them together.

But all this is only the outside of the old mahogany high-boy with its
meerschaum-pipe polish, spraddling legs, and rattling handles.

Now for the Little Gray Lady's own particular drawer.

II

It was Christmas Eve, and Kate Dayton, one of Pomford's pretty girls,
had found the Little Gray Lady sitting alone before the fire gazing into
the ashes, her small frame almost hidden in the roomy chair. The winter
twilight had long since settled and only the flickering blaze of the
logs and the dim glow from one lone candle illumined the room. This,
strange to say, was placed on a table in a corner where its rays shed
but little light in the room.

"Oh! Cousin Annie," moaned Kate (everybody in Pomford who got close
enough to touch the Little Gray Lady's hand called her "Cousin
Annie"--it was only the outside world who knew her by her other
sobriquet), "I didn't mean anything. Mark came in j