Mary Stewart Cutting

“ Fowler waved the suggestion away.
“The doctor gave me something—I'm all right—I just came in to tell you—” Mrs. Fowler burst into a fit of weeping, her face hidden in her hands, and then raised it, to add in a shaky voice of triumph: “I ain't given way like this till now. You can get your presents ready—and put blue bows on 'em. What do you think? She has a little boy! I knew you'd be glad—a little boy!” ”

“ The nurse, she's real nice—she says if any of the children come around she'll give 'em a peep at the little boy.”
Mrs. Fowler rose to throw her arms around Polly. “Oh, my dear, ain't it just grand!”
The windows were all darkened at the double house down the street in that darkness of the dawning, save where one peaceful glimmer came from the window of that upper room. The oldest Christmas story is always the dearest. Every one in the village seemed to touch something of the divine spirit of the first Christmas in this old, old, commonplace joy of welcoming a little child into the world. ”

“ They count everything on it. Mary, the doctor's wife, says she's not at all strong—he's very anxious about her. Mary says she's a perfect darling. Mary sends little Gordon in there every morning”; Mrs. Center paused an instant; “she says Mrs. Sinclair loves to squeeze him.”
“She must be sweet. I'll let Robin go over to-morrow, and Juliet, to wish her a Merry Christmas,” said Mrs. Hartwell, with a little break in her voice. In Ranville Christmas was not so much the festival of a Child as a festival of children—it was the children themselves that counted ”

“ Each house burned a light in some room until a late hour, but that was the only one that had lights in all the rooms, that no one might hasten into one of them for some need and meet the delay of darkness. ”

“ Mrs. Fowler's voice trembled; she had to stop for a moment before she went on: “There's just a chance. The doctor's sent for two more doctors, and they can't get 'em. Mr. Sinclair, he's 'most crazy. He found these things in her room—they're for the children—he said he knew she'd like to have 'em sent out now, by to-morrow— Oh, doesn't it seem the worst ever, on Christmas eve!"
Ranville long remembered that night. The snow fell so fast and so thickly that it broke down the telegraph wires ”

“ Sinclair, but she ran home a few minutes ago and got a little Teddy bear she'd bought for Hubert—he's got two besides—and she tied a blue ribbon around its neck and sent it in for a first Christmas present, and the nurse let Mr. Sinclair take it up to her—though his hands shook so he could hardly hold it. She's forbid to speak, but the nurse tied it to the footrail of the bed, so's she could see it. She's lying there—they say you never in your born days saw any one with such a look as she has, with the little boy on her arm, and his own little Teddy bear at the foot of the bed. Mr. ”

“ Perhaps by another Christmas—goodness, I nearly knocked over that child!” She swerved around a light-haired infant standing stockily in the middle of the pavement. “Why, it's the baker's little boy! Run home, Otto! I do hope there'll be nothing to interfere with this Christmas. I think it's so dreadful when things happen then. Isn't it interesting when children get big enough to really appreciate things—but your children are grown up, of course, Mrs. ”