A Christmas Story
IDE by side, on a bench in the waiting room of the big station in the heart of the city, sat a pretty young woman and a boy of ten. The young woman was dressed in a smartly fitting cloth suit and gay little hat, and a luxurious fur muff and scarf lay beside her on the seat, together with a small hand bag and a large lunch box. The boy was very plainly and cheaply, though warmly, clothed. One hand, in a red worsted mitten, rested on a straw suit case, which contained his entire worldly possessions.
The two had come early, for if they missed the train for which they were waiting they could not reach their destination that day, and it was important that they should do so. It was so important, in fact, that the pretty young woman had made a considerable sacrifice to that end.
"I hate to ask you to do it, Miss Wetherbee," the superintendent had said to her the day before, "but you know how it is at this time of year—everybody has their Christmas plans. I don't doubt you have, too, and it's hard, for you'll have to stay over the day up there so as to make the necessary inquiries. You understand that when people ask for a child of this age we have to be very careful, as they may want them for the work they can get out of them. Now these people make such a special point of the boy's getting there for Christmas that I want to manage it if possible. You see, it will be a more cheerful beginning for him, and as he has already been sent back from two places—"
Miss Wetherbee had hesitated. But in a moment she had said quietly: "I'll do it." Now, as she sat watching the rushing crowds, holiday bound, her face was soberly wistful. For the first time she would miss a Christmas at home—the gathering of the clans in the big house under the New England elms—the joyful turmoil, the streaming in and out of guests, neighbors, old friends, the big tree glittering up to the ceiling, the dinner, the dance.
Swiftly she dried her eyes, glancing at Gregory. But he had not noticed. He was busy observing the scene about him. His small figure was tensely quiet, his mouth firmly closed. He had not asked a single question. Miss Wetherbee reflected that for a troublesome boy—so reputed—he had been very little trouble to her, especially in comparison with other of her charges. More than once, in the course of her year's work as a humble substitute for the by no means infallible stork, she had paced the floor of this same station with a baby in arms loudly wailing. Gregory showed no such crude egotism. He had been disciplined by ten years of an institution.
HE announcement for which they were waiting, moaned out by the invisible megaphone, roused Miss Wetherbee from her reverie.
"Our train, Gregory," she said gently.
The boy started. Without a word he stood up. lifted his suit case, and followed her.
People were crowding into the day coach. Miss Wetherbee put Gregory into an aisle seat, with a cake of chocolate and a boys' magazine. He was, she had been told, fond of reading, and stood well in school. The people to whom he was going had asked for "a smart boy," but whether Gregory's kind of smartness would suit them was, of course, the question. They were stock farmers in the Massachusetts hills, whereas the two families who had previously tried to adopt Gregory had lived in small places in the suburbs, where he had promptly got into difficulties with the neighbors' chickens, fruit trees, and children. This was all Miss Wetherbee knew about him.
Presently the seat beside her was vacated, and she called fire-gory and put him next the window. She noticed that neither the magazine nor the cake of chocolate had been touched. He gazed persistently out at the snowy landscape; but when Miss Wetherbee named to him the places they were passing and pointed out the Sound, he merely nodded in silence. After a time she gave up her attempt to talk to the back of his head and returned to her novel. But between her eyes and the printed page pictures kept slipping in—the big hall at home, the bustle of arrivals, laughing greetings, the yule log blazing in the chimney place, masses of holly against the white walls—and Somebody there who was coming at her special invitation and who would be bitterly disappointed and her new dress, a love of a pink chiffon dress with little rosebuds, in which she would have danced with Somebody. She could almost hear the thin, sweet, poignant music of the violins, the dreaming waltz that they had danced together only twice.