Y!"
"Don't you think I've done pretty well?"
"Sarah Bannister, you know as well as I do, it is wonderful!"
The two women stood in the best parlor, a long room, furnished with aggressive plush and mahogany, and onyx tables, and a marble Clytie drooping her head impudently in her out-of-place state in a New England parlor. The room was chilly in spite of the radiators, glaring with gilt in the most conspicuous wall spaces. Every piece of furniture—old-fashioned square tables, sofa, chairs, and piano—was covered with dainty things, large and small, of all colors and fabrics.
"To think you made everything here with your own hands!" commented Miss Lottie Dodd. She was a distant relative of Mrs. Bannister's, who lived with her a month at a time.
"Yes, and the worst of it is, it isn't quite a week to Christmas, and I haven't got the things done yet."
"Land! I should think you had enough here for the whole town."
"I'm giving to about the whole town this year. Then, you know all our cousins out West, and the raft of relations we never see except at our funerals, that live in Watchboro, and Center Watchboro, and South and North and East."
"I didn't know you remembered them Christmas."
"I don't every year, but this time I was so forehanded I thought I'd put them in with the rest."
"You don't mean to say you are remembering all the Rice family?"
"Yes, I am."
"Not all those children?"
"Oh, I've got the children's presents all ready; it's the older folks' I haven't got done. I have planned a lot of drawnwork."
"You do that so beautifully," said Lottie. She was a tiny woman snugged in a lavender wool shawl. The tip of her sharp nose was red. Her blue eyes were tearful, from cold and enthusiasm. Lottie was prey to enthusiasms, even petty ones.
"I've got a lot more to do. I sha'n't try any different patterns from these here; the same with the knitted lace. That will make it easier."
Sarah Bannister clipped the last word short with a sneeze.
"Sarah, you are catching cold in this room."
"Don't know but I am. It never will heat when the wind's northwest. It's bitter outdoors to-day, too. The snow hasn't melted one mite. Look at those windows all frosted up."
"Well, Sarah, we better be going back to the sitting-room, where it's warm."
"Guess we'd better. I was going to look a little longer. I don't seem to see some things I know I've got. I do feel some as if I were catching cold. Hope to goodness I don't—just before Christmas, too. I'll get Henry to bring in some wood for the sitting-room hearth fire."
"I sort of wonder sometimes why you and Henry don't keep a man to fetch and carry," said Lottie Dodd, as the two entered the sitting-room, meeting a gust of warm air, scented with geranium and heliotrope from the window plants. "Henry is quite some older than you, and it's beginning to show."
"Oh, Henry's perfectly able to do what little chores we have. Men want some exercise."
They sat down. Sarah Bannister began to crochet, a neatly rolled-up ball of finished lace bobbing as her fingers moved. Lottie worked laboriously on a blue centerpiece.
"It certainly is lucky you are so well off, Sarah."
"Yes, I realize it is. Henry never saved much, but I have enough for both, thanks to poor father. I never spend a cent but I think of him. He used to talk so much to me about not being extravagant."
"Oh, Sarah, as if anybody could accuse you of that!"
Sarah started, but she continued talking. "Poor father used to say—I remember as if it were yesterday—'Sarah, it's easy enough to get money, for those who have the right kind of heads, and work, but it takes more than heads to keep it. That's a gift.
Lottie Dodd, impecunious, who had never benefited much from Sarah's riches, except in the somewhat negative way of food and cast-off clothing, looked reflectively at the large, flat, rather handsome face.
Sarah stared sharply at Lottie, who did not speak. Silence and immobility make a fool inscrutable.
Sarah suspected. "Now, you wouldn't believe, Lottie Dodd, how little some of these things in there"—she shrugged her shoulders toward the parlor—"cost."
"You don't mean it." Lottie's voice was as blatantly innocent as a lamb's.
"Yes, I bought a lot at the Five- and Ten-cent stores, and I had nice pieces of silk and satin and lace, and I mixed them in, and you'd never know. I thought of poor father every minute I was in these Five- and Ten-cent stores."
"They would have just suited your dear pa."
Again the look of suspicion was in Sarah's eyes, to disappear before the other woman's innocent expression. Then the door-bell rang with a loud clang.