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Updated: May 25, 2025
Billy felt himself somewhat at a loss to deal with this well-formed impression, so he contented himself with the remark, "But you haven't told me what your name is yet?" She rose upon her knees in the bed and leaned over toward him. "My really name is Lotchen." "Lotchen what?" "That's all just Lotchen." "Where's your mother, Lotchen?" "I don't know; do you?"
"No," he replied, "we won't do that, Lotchen; but I shouldn't wonder if he was to run away from us. Don't your uncle love you?" "He loves his nose better," she replied. "His which?" "His nose. He's all the time rubbing it up and down." "But don't he love you, too?" "No." "What makes you think that?" "'Cause I'm afraid of him." "When did you see him first, Lotchen?" "Oh, ever so long.
She went in to see Lotchen, and snuggled the little one up to her close and tight, and told her she should have a merry Christmas and she mustn't be afraid of anybody, for her Billy, that is, Billy's mother's Billy, could whip anybody on earth, she didn't care who he was, and nobody should frighten this dear little soul; and the old lady began now to express her ideas in that strange language which is hidden from the wise and prudent but revealed unto grandmammas and babes.
After that last Christmas, Billy and Lotchen talked and walked with each other on a different footing from that on which their intercourse had previously been conducted. He said nothing to her, nor she to him, that referred to their interrupted conversation until October came, and then one day he said: "Lotchen, is my Christmas gift ready?" and he held out his hand to her both hands and smiled.
"I don't have to think, Billy," Lotchen answered promptly, "for I've been thinking a great deal and wondering whether you " She stopped there short, and her face her pretty face, her dear, round, dimpled face, her truthful, honest, womanly face got very red, and she jumped up and ran out of the room.
His smithy in the cellar grew in dimensions and gradually he absorbed the little old house over it. The saloon disappeared, and the room it had occupied became a parlor for Lotchen. The lodgers went out one by one until the whole house was Billy's dwelling. One day when she was nearly fourteen years old, Billy received a letter that worried him a good deal.
The precise moment at which it ceased to be enough is not fixed in Billy's mind, but last Christmas, when Lotchen found a gold watch in her stocking, and when she came and put her arms around his neck and kissed him, which she hadn't done very often of late, and when she whispered that she wished she had something to give him, Billy turned his eyes to the floor and stuck his big fists in his trowsers pockets, and did a power of thinking.
He knew then, if he had not fully known it before, that for her to be his child was not enough. So he said very solemnly, "Are you sure you mean that, Lotchen? Now, don't answer without you know, for you might have something you wouldn't want to give me, and if I was to ask for it and you was to look hesitatin', I well I don't know what I should do."
He told Lotchen to go into his room, where she had spent the night, and on her assuring him that she wasn't afraid, he locked her in and stowed the key away in his pocket. Then he shot upstairs to the hall bedroom. He knocked, but no answer came. He opened the door. The room was empty.
"Here linger yet the showers of fire, Deep in each fold, high on each spire On yonder mountain proud." Up the walk came Maude, leading by the hand the little Lotchen, the prattle of the child showing the lesson the mother had been attempting to teach. Beautiful such a Sabbath! and my heart felt refreshed as I stood upon the threshold and looked out into the new day.
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