Amen, indeed!

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

_CHRISTMAS EVE AT SWAMP'S END_

As for poor little Pattie Batch, all this while, she sat alone, a doleful heart, in the shack at the edge of the big, black woods, quite unaware of the momentous advent of a Christmas baby at Swamp's End. The Christmas wind was still high, still shaking the cabin, still rattling the door, still howling like a wild beast in the night, still roaring in the red stove; and snow was falling again--a dry dust of snow which veiled the wondering stars. It was no longer a jolly, rollicking Christmas wind. The gale, now, it seemed, was become inimical to the lonely child: wild, vaunting, merciless, terrible with cold. Pattie Batch, disconsolate, sighed more often than a tender heart could bear to sanction in a child, and found swift visions in the glowing coals, though no enlivening tableaux; but--dear brave and human little one!--she presently e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed "Shoot it, anyhow!" and began at once to cheer up. And she was comfortably toasting her shins, in a placid delusion of stormy, mile-wide privacy, her mother's old-fashioned long black skirt drawn up from her dainty toes (of which, of course, the imminent John Fairmeadow was never permitted to be aware), when, all at once, and clamouring above the old wind's howling, there was a tremendous knocking at the door--a knocking so loud, and commanding, and prolonged, that Pattie Batch jumped like a fawn in alarm, and stood for a moment with palpitating heart and a mighty inclination to fly to the bedroom and lock herself in. Presently, however, she mustered courage to call "Come in!" in a sufficient tone: whereupon, the door was immediately flung wide, and big John Fairmeadow, with a wild, dusty blast of the gale, strode in with a gigantic basket, and slammed the door behind him, leaving the shivering, tenacious Shadow, which had secretly followed from Swamp's End, to keep cold vigil outside.

"h.e.l.lo, there, Pattie Batch!" John Fairmeadow roared. "Merry Christmas!"

Pattie Batch stared.

"h.e.l.lo, I say!" John Fairmeadow cried, again. "Merry Christmas, ye rascal!"

Pattie Batch, gulping her delight, and quite incapable of uttering a word, because of it, flew to the kitchen, instead of to the bedroom, and returned with a broom, with which, while the Shadow peeked in at the window, she brushed, and sc.r.a.ped, and slapped John Fairmeadow so vigorously that John Fairmeadow scampered into a corner and stood at bay.

"Look out, there, Polly Pry!" he shouted, in a rage; "don't you _dare_ look at my basket."

Pattie Batch had been doing nothing of the sort.

"Don't you so much as _squint_ at my basket," John Fairmeadow growled.

Pattie Batch instantly _did_, of course--and with her eyes wide and sparkling, too. It was really something more than a squint.

"Keep your eyes off that basket, Miss Pry!" John Fairmeadow commanded, again. "Huh!" he complained, emerging from his refuge and throwing his mackinaw and cap on the floor; "anybody'd think there was something in that basket for _you_."

"There ith," Pattie Batch gasped, in ecstasy.

"Is!" John Fairmeadow scornfully mocked. "Huh!"

Pattie Batch caught John Fairmeadow by the two lapels of his coat--and she stood on tiptoe--and she wouldn't let John Fairmeadow turn his head away--(as if John Fairmeadow cared to evade those round, glowing eyes!)--and she looked into his gray eyes with a bewitching conglomeration of hope, amus.e.m.e.nt, curiosity and adoring childish affection. "There ith, too," she chuckled, her lisp getting the better of her. "Yeth, there ith. I know _you_, Mithter Fairmeadow."

John Fairmeadow ridiculously failed to smother a chuckle in a growl.

"Doth it bite?" Pattie Batch inquired, maliciously feigning a terrific fright.

"Nonsense!" John Fairmeadow declared; "it hasn't a tooth in its head."

He added, with one eye closed, and palms lifted: "But--aha!--just you wait and _see_."

"Well," Pattie Batch drawled, "I th'pose it'th a turkey. It'th thertainly _thome_thin' t' eat," she declared.

"Good _enough_ to eat, I bet you!" John Fairmeadow agreed, with the air of having concealed in that veritable big basket the sweetest morsel in all the world.

"Ith it a chicken?"

"Nonsense!" said John Fairmeadow; "it's fa-a-a-ar more delicious than chicken. Hi, there, Poll Pry!" he roared, and just in time; "keep your hands off."

"Is it anything for the house?"

"No, indeed; the house is for _it_."

Pattie Batch scowled in perplexity.

"The back yard, too," John Fairmeadow added; "and don't you forget that this whole place--and all the world--belongs to just what's in that basket."

"I'm sure," poor Pattie Batch mused, scratching her curls in bewilderment, "I can't guess what it _could_ be."

Both were now staring at the basket; and at that very moment the blanket covering--_stirred_!

"Ith a dog!" Pattie Batch exclaimed.

"Dog!" the outraged John Fairmeadow roared. "Nothing of the sort! No _ma'am_!"

Pattie Batch clasped her hands. "It ith, too!" she cried. "I thaw it move."

"It is _not_!"

"Ith a kitten, then."

"It is _not_ a kitten!"

Thereupon--while the Shadow, by whom John Fairmeadow had been dogged that night, now peered with acute attention through a break in the frost on the window-pane--thereupon, without any warning save a second slight movement of the blanket, a sound--and not by any means a growl--the thing was certainly not a dog--a sound proceeded from the depths of the basket.

Pattie Batch jumped away.

"Well, well!" cried John Fairmeadow; "what's the row?"

Row, indeed! Pattie Batch was gone white; and she swayed a little, and shivered, too, and clenched her little hands to restrain her amazing hope. "Oh," she moaned, at last, far short of breath enough, "tell me quick: ith it--ith it a--a----"

John Fairmeadow threw back the blanket in a most dramatic fashion; and there, wrapped in the neglected fawn-skin cloak, all dimpled and smiling, lay--

THE BABY!

"By George!" screamed Pattie Batch; "it _ith_ a baby!"

"Your baby," John Fairmeadow whispered. "G.o.d's Christmas gift--to you."

Pattie Batch--adorable, young mother!--reverently approached, and, bending with parted lips, eyes shining, and hands laid upon her trembling heart, for the first time gazed content upon the little face.

She lifted, then--and with what awe and tenderness!--the tiny mortal from the warm basket, and pressed it, with knowing arms, against her warmer, softer young breast. "My baby!" she crooned, her lips close to its ear; "my little baby--my own little baby!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]