"Yes, Jim."

"Well, I bin thinking it over. If I ain't better in the morning I guess--" the words came reluctantly--"I guess you'd better go see the Christmas lady. I wouldn't mind her knowin' so much. 'T won't be fer long, nohow, cause I kin take keer of you all soon--soon 's I kin git up."

The talking brought on severe coughing, and he sank back exhausted.

"Can't you go to sleep, honey?" asked his mother.

"No, it's them ole wheels," he said fretfully, "them wheels at the fact'ry; when I git to sleep they keep on wakin' me up."

Mrs. Wiggs's hands were rough and knotted, but love taught them to be gentle as she smoothed his hot head.

"Want me to tell you 'bout the country, Jim?" she asked.

Since he was a little boy he had loved to hear of their old home in the valley. His dim recollection of it all formed his one conception of heaven.

"Yes, ma; mebbe it will make me fergit the wheels," he said.

"Well," she began, putting her head beside his on the pillow, so he could not watch her face, "it was all jes' like a big front yard without no fences, an' the flowers didn't belong to folks like they do over on the avenue, where you da.s.sent pick a one; but they was G.o.d's, an' you was welcome to all you could pull. An' there was trees, Jim, where you could climb up an' git big red apples, an'

when the frost 'ud come they'd be persimmons that 'ud jes' melt in yer mouth. An' you could look 'way off 'crost the meaders, an' see the trees a-wavin' in the sunshine, an' up over yer head the birds 'ud be singin' like they was never goin' to stop. An' yer pa an' me 'ud take you out at the harvestin' time, an' you 'ud play on the hay-stacks. I kin remember jes' how you looked, Jim--a fat little boy, with red cheeks a-laughin' all the time."

Mrs. Wiggs could tell no more, for the old memories were too much for her. Jim scarcely knew when she stopped; his eyes were half closed, and a sweet drowsiness was upon him.

"It's nice an' warm in the sunshine," he murmured; "the meaders an'

trees--laughin' all the time! Birds singin', singin', singin'."

Then Jim began to sing too, softly and monotonously, and the sorrow that had not come with years left his tired face, and he fearlessly drifted away into the Shadowy Valley where his lost childhood lay.

CHAPTER III

THE "CHRISTMAS LADY"

"The rosy glow of summer Is on thy dimpled cheek, While in thy heart the winter Is lying cold and bleak.

"But this shall change hereafter, When years have done their part, And on thy cheek the wintered And summer in thy heart."

LATE the next afternoon a man and a girl were standing in the Olcott reception hall. The lamps had not been lighted, but the blaze from the back-log threw a cozy glow of comfort over the crimson curtains and on the ma.s.s of bright-hued pillows in the window-seat.

Robert Redding, standing with his hat in his hand, would have been gone long ago if the "Christmas Lady" had not worn her violet gown.

He said it always took him half an hour to say good-by when she wore a rose in her hair, and a full hour when she had on the violet dress.

"By Jove, stand there a minute just as you are! The fire-light shining through your hair makes you look like a saint. Little Saint Lucinda!" he said teasingly, as he tried to catch her hand. She put it behind her for safe-keeping.

"Not a saint at all?" he went on, in mock surprise; "then an iceberg--a nice, proper little iceberg."

Lucy Olcott looked up at him for a moment in silence; he was very tall and straight, and his face retained much of its boyishness, in spite of the firm, square jaw.

"Robert," she said, suddenly grown serious, "I wish you would do something for me."

"All right; what is it?" he asked.

She timidly put her hand on his, and looked up at him earnestly.

"It's about d.i.c.k Harris," she said. "I wish you would not be with him so much."

Redding's face clouded. "You aren't afraid to trust me?" he asked.

"Oh, no; it isn't that," she said hurriedly; "but, Robert, it makes people think such wrong things about you; I can't bear to have you misjudged."

Redding put his arm around her, and together they stood looking down into the glowing embers.

"Tell me about it, little girl; what have you heard?" he asked.

She hesitated. "It wasn't true what they said. I knew it wasn't true, but they had no right to say it."

"Well, let's hear it, anyway. What was it?"

"Some people were here last night from New Orleans; they asked if I knew you--said they knew you and d.i.c.k the year you spent there."

"Well?" said Redding.

Lucy evidently found it difficult to continue. "They said some horrid things then, just because you were d.i.c.k's friend."

"What were they, Lucy?"

"They told me that you were both as wild as could be; that your reputation was no better than his; that--forgive me, Robert, for even repeating it. It made me very angry, and I told them it was not true--not a word of it; that it was all d.i.c.k's fault; that he--"

"Lucy," interrupted Redding, peremptorily, "wait until you hear me!

I have never lied to you about anything, and I will not stoop to it now. Four years ago, when those people knew me, I was just what they said. d.i.c.k Harris and I went to New Orleans straight from college.

Neither of us had a home or people to care about us, so we went in for a good time. At the end of the year I was sick of it all, braced up, and came here. Poor d.i.c.k, he kept on."

At his first words the color had left Lucy's face, and she had slipped to the opposite side of the fire, and stood watching him with horrified eyes.

"But you were never like d.i.c.k!" she protested.

"Yes," he continued pa.s.sionately, "and but for G.o.d's help I should be like him still. It was an awful pull, and Heaven only knows how I struggled. I never quite saw the use of it all, until I met you six months ago; then I realized that the past four years had been given me in which to make a man of myself."

As he finished speaking he saw, for the first time, that Lucy was crying. He sprang forward, but she shrank away. "No, no, don't touch me! I'm so terribly disappointed, and hurt, and--stunned."

"But you surely don't love me the less for having conquered these things in the past?"

"I don't know, I don't know," she said, with a sob. "I honored and idealized you, Robert I can never think of you as being other than you are now."

"But why should you?" he pleaded. "It was only one year out of my life; too much, it's true, but I have atoned for it with all my might."

The intensity and earnestness of his voice were beginning to influence her. She was very young, with the stern, uncompromising standards of girlhood; life was black or white to her, and time had not yet filled in the canvas with the myriad grays that blend into one another until all lines are effaced, and only the Master Artist knows the boundaries.

She looked up through her tears. "I'll try to forgive you," she said, tremulously; "but you must promise to give up your friendship for d.i.c.k Harris."