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Updated: May 9, 2025
I have to be back at work the morning after Christmas." The khaki boy came up again and shared the candy. He told amusing stories of campaigning in South Africa. The minister came too, and listened, and even the sealskin lady turned her head over her shoulder. By and by the children fell asleep, one on Aunt Cyrilla's lap and one on Lucy Rose's, and two on the seat.
He liked the ladylike, "nice" pretenses, of women of the right sort liked them when they fooled him, liked them when they only half fooled him. Presently he knocked on the door of the little library, opened it when permission came in Cyrilla's voice. She was reading the evening paper he did not see the glasses she hastily thrust into a drawer.
The minister stayed there, and the khaki boy and the sealskin lady changed trains. The sealskin lady shook Aunt Cyrilla's hand. She no longer looked discontented or cross. "This has been the pleasantest Christmas I have ever spent," she said heartily. "I shall never forget that wonderful basket of yours. The little shop girl is going home with me. I've promised her a place in my husband's store."
He was gone, and the next thing she definitely knew she was at the threshold of Cyrilla's room. Cyrilla gave her a tenderly sympathetic glance. She saw herself in a mirror and knew why; her face was gray and drawn, and her eyes lay dully deep within dark circles. "I couldn't do it," she said. "I sent for him to marry him. But I couldn't." "I'm glad," said Cyrilla.
Grant, yes, and Mrs. Plunkett too, thanking her for all her kindness to us. You knew she has been awfully nice to us in spite of the oil stove ukase. That's six two apiece. Let's do it, girls." Cyrilla's sudden enthusiasm for her plan infected the others. "It's a nice idea," said Mary, brightening up. "But who's to write to whom? I'm willing to take anybody but Miss Marshall.
That woman's children look as if they hadn't enjoyed a square meal since they were born; and if that girl across from me has a mother, I'd like to know what the woman means, letting her daughter go from home in this weather in clothes like that." Lucy Rose merely wondered uncomfortably what the others thought of Aunt Cyrilla's basket.
She believed matters of this kind were fore-ordained, and she slept calmly. But Lucy Rose got up three times in the night to see if it were storming, and when she did sleep had horrible nightmares of struggling through blinding snowstorms dragging Aunt Cyrilla's Christmas basket along with her.
As the three talked on and on, Mildred continued to picture life with Stanley continued the vivid picturing she had begun within ten minutes of Stanley's entering, the picturing that had caused her to insist on Cyrilla's remaining as chaperon. A young girl can do no such picturing as Mildred could not avoid doing.
Mildred beat down her emotion and was soon able to say in a voice as unconcerned as Cyrilla's: "I'll find a place to-morrow or next day, and go at once." "I'll be sorry to lose you," said Mrs. Brindley, "but I agree with you that you can't get settled any too soon." "You don't happen to know of any cheap, good place?" said Mildred.
At sight of the evidences of Cyrilla's grief Mildred straightway forgot her resentment. There must have been some other cause for Cyrilla's peculiar conduct. No matter what, since it was not hardness of heart. It was a sad, even a gloomy dinner. But the two women were once more in perfect sympathy. And afterward Mildred brought the Keith paper and asked Cyrilla's opinion.
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