her's verses. She always had a knack of being pious without
cramming piety down your throat. I liked that open door. It meant
welcome, no matter how little you'd deserved it."

"Where'd you get your card, Dave?" asked Dick. "It's prettier than
mine."

"A nurse brought it to me in the hospital just because she took a
fancy to it. She didn't know it would mean anything to me, but it
did--a relapse!" And David laughed shamedfacedly. "I guess she'll
confine herself to beef tea after this!--Where'd you get yours?"

"Picked it up on a dentist's mantelpiece when I was waiting for an
appointment. I was traveling round the room, hands in my pockets, when
suddenly I saw this card standing up against an hour-glass. The color
caught me. I took it to the window, and at first I was puzzled. It
certainly was Letty's house. The door's open you see and there's
somebody in the window. I knew it was Letty, but how could any card
publisher have found the way to Beulah? Then I discovered mother's
initials snarled up in holly, and remembered that she was always
painting and illuminating."

"Queer job, life is!" said David, putting his card back in his pocket
and wishing there were a little more time, or that he had a little
more courage, so that he might confide in Dick Larrabee. He felt a
desire to tell him some of the wretchedness he had lived through. It
would be a comfort just to hint that his unhappiness had made him a
coward, so that the very responsibilities that serve as a spur to
some men had left him until now cold, unstirred, unvitalized.

"You're right!" Dick answered. "Life is a queer job and it doesn't do
to shirk it. And just as queer as anything in life is the way that
mother's Christmas cards brought us back to Beulah! They acted as a
sort of magic, didn't they?--Jiminy! I believe the next station is
Beulah. I hope the depot team will be hitched up."

"Yes, here we are; seven o'clock and the train only thirty-five
minutes late. It always made a point of that on holidays!"

"Never mind!" And Dick's tone was as gay as David's was sober. "The
bean-pot will have gone back to the cellarway and the doughnuts to the
crock, but the 'folks back home' 'll get 'em out for us, and a mince
pie, too, and a cut of sage cheese."

"There won't be any 'folks back home,' we're so late, I'm thinking.
There's always a Christmas Eve festival at the church, you know. They
never change--in Beulah."

"Then, by George, they can have me for