"Abner," she said desperately. "I--I want to keep Jimsy. I--I can't _bear_ to see him go--"
"Judith!" There was more in the single word of course than Aunt Judith could know. There was an unread paper and a biscuit, a tailless dog invading sanctity, a yelling boy by a woodpile, and now the memory of a twilight ride and the tears of a choking lad upon his sleeve, an irritating record of moments of weakness which it behooved a first citizen to stamp out of his life forever. Aunt Judith read in his face an inexorable death-sentence of her hope and rose, trembling.
"You are a hard, cold man!" she said, very white. "And the house is so lonely I hate it!... I _hate_ it!" quivered Aunt Judith with a long shuddering sob; "there's no one to love in it--no one! And everything Specks said to Jimsy was true!"
And then, crying and shaking, she was gone, and Abner Sawyer went with stumbling feet to the privacy of his work-shop, his face death-white. The pompous illusions of his little world were tumbling to ruins about him.
He had said with frequent unction that he was a "hard" man, interpreting that phrase liberally in terms of thrift, economy and substantial common sense, and his world, through the mouth of an urchin, had flung back to him the galling words--_miser_ and _skinflint_! They had fawned to his face and flouted his back, gossiping of servants and made-over gowns and kindlings. Up and down the quiet work-shop walked Abner Sawyer, clinging in an agony of humiliation to the loyalty of a little urchin.... It was all he had, he told himself fiercely, all he had! Jimsy alone saw him as he was and liked him.... No heart!... No Christmas tree!... No one in the house to love.... He must prove then to Specks--to Jimsy--to Judith--to the Middletons--to all Lindon--
Turning with hot anger in his heart, he saw a book upon his work-bench; and picking it up, Abner Sawyer faced the pitiful fiasco of Jimsy's Christmas gift. With a great lump in his throat and his eyes wet he glanced at the fly-leaf.
"To Uncle Ab," it said, "from Jimsy. Chrismus gretings."
The door clicked as it had clicked the night before and the night before.
"Unc--Mister Sawyer," said Jimsy sleepily. "I 'mos' forgot to come, I was so awful tired an' sleepy.... Ain't--ain't sick, are ye, Uncle Ab? Yer face is awful queer."