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Soon after nightfall the latchstring was pulled in a timid sort of way, and Obadiah Weeks stood on the threshold, waiting sheepishly till Mrs. Hamlin bade him enter. He came forward, toward the chimney, taking off his hat and smoothing his hair with his hand.
He discovered at the same moment that the sun was striking sparks of light from a thousand snow crystals. It was a good world, if one only looked for the evidence of it. "The latchstring is always oot for you at the hame of Angus McRae. Will you no' drap in for a crack the nicht?" asked the trapper. "Not to-night. Sometime. I'll see."
"Take some yourself," Sandy responded. "Are they after you, too?" McHale shook his head sadly. "Sonny," said he, "you're too young to be havin' them cute little visions of things bein' after you. I reckon maybe we're pullin' two ways on one rope. Also, we ain't gettin' no drier standin' here chewin' about it. Maybe you got a camp somewheres. S'pose you find the latchstring.
Perhaps the reader has heard before this of having the latchstring out, but has not known just what the phrase meant. The log cabin door in those days was fastened with a wooden latch on the inside, which could be lifted on the outside by a leathern string passed through a small hole in the door above it.
"I wish you wouldn't talk so to me, now," she said, "as if I didn't care anything when you're all going away and have been so good to me and father. And I don't care about Obadiah either, and you needn't say so. He's just a great gumph." At this point, the conversation was abruptly broken off by the noise of the latchstring being pulled. Both turned.
"Huntington accepts my friendship, after a fashion." "But the other?" "Nothing doing!" Marion stared at him, wondering. "Fact!" he assured her, with a sheepish smile. "But why?" "Don't know. I'd like to, but he lives like a hermit. Latchstring never hangs outside his door." There was a certain evidence of feeling in Smythe's speech. "You speak as if you " "As if I knew!"
The latchstring to the large house was always out. What with the coming and the going, it was never still. The rafters of the great living-room shook with the roar of wassail and of song.
We have a compulsory education law under which it is possible to punish the parent for the boy's truancy, as he ought to be if there was room in the school for the lad, and he let him drift. And the day cannot be delayed much longer now when every child shall find the latchstring out on the school door.
The chatelaine, gracious and cultured, is to the manner born: and from season to season she fills her house with congenial people who are invited to come, but not, as with present house parties, told when to go. As long as they found it comfortable and convenient the latchstring was out. A guest was never permitted to pay for anything; expressage, laundry and all incidentals were as free as air.
"Come to see us every Christmas Eve, my boy, if it puts you in such good spirits to see the the kiddies " his voice quavered a little "and to hear the 'Carol. You will always find the latchstring out." "No other Christmas Eve will be as glorious as this one, sir," said Dick, gently dragging his host into the hall and lowering his voice to a thrilling undertone. "Not in a million years.
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