The village fire apparatus had done its best, and departed, and the
tenants of the two-family house were assembled in the Gayles’s sitting
room, dejected, weary, and silent. Bess lay on the sofa, still weak and
shaken. Angelina was looking over a mass of sodden papers which had once
been a portfolio of drawings, and the professor was helping her. Tom
Tench sat hunched in an armchair, staring gloomily before him.
The curtains were scorched rags. Through a hole chopped in the ceiling
water was still dripping, and the room was devastated; but the worst
damage had occurred upstairs. The flames from Tom Tench’s papers heaped
upon the ash can had mounted upward, and had caught the curtains at a
window that happened to be open. It was bad enough down here, but
upstairs there was stark ruin.
“I wonder where Alan is,” said Angelina. “He drove down to the
village--to buy something, I suppose; but it’s so late!”
“As a matter of fact,” Tom Tench told her curtly, “he went to find a
doctor. He was hurt.”
“Hurt!” cried Angelina and Bess together. “Hurt!” they repeated.
“That’s what I said. He hurt himself. He came back in here--in this
jungle--this old curiosity shop--”
“Mr. Tench!” said the professor.
“Oh, it’s your room,” said Tench. “If you like it this way--but Alan
fell over one of these antique doodads and cut his head.”
“Boys!” cried Miss Smith, greatly distressed. “Boys!”
The professor glanced up. It was a long time since he had been
classified as a boy, and it was pleasing.
“Miss Smith!” he said.
Bess sat up straight. Was it possible? The way her father and Miss Smith
were looking at each other!
“I didn’t mean--” Angelina began, somewhat confused, and then: “But it’s
true!” she said. “You really are--both of you--but there’s Alan!”
The front door opened, and just at that moment there came from upstairs
the most pathetic, tired little voice. It was the cuckoo clock.
“Midnight!” cried Alan. “Look here! Merry Christmas, you people!”
The words might have been a charm, striking every one speechless. They
could only look at him, as he stood in the doorway, a bandage around his
head, his collar a wet and dirty rag, his face white with fatigue and
pain, and a wide grin on it.
“Oh, Alan!” cried his sister. “My dear, dear boy! Your new set of
plans--for that yacht--they’re burned up!”
It seemed to Bess that he winced a little, but it was almost
imperceptible.
“Then we may starve yet,” he said; “but, anyhow, we’re all right for the
present. Look at this!”
He held out a package that he was carrying. Bess took it from him, and
opened it gingerly.
“But--” she said.
“It’s the best sort of plum pudding there is,” he said. “I only wish I
could have got a bigger one. You’ll like it, all right!”
She stood looking at the round tin in her hands.
“But I’m afraid,” she said, “it--it must be a mistake. You see, it
says--” She looked up at him, and her eyes filled with tears. It was
_too_ pathetic! His head bandaged, his plans destroyed, his home in
ruins, and now this! “It says ‘corned beef’!” she faltered.
Then she could bear no more. Taking the corned beef, she ran into the
kitchen, and began to cry there.
Alan came after her. He put his arm about her shoulders, but, this being
the second time, she did not seem to notice it very much.
“I am s-so s-sorry!” she wailed.
“Please don’t be!” he entreated. “Two-family houses are a mistake,
anyhow. I’ve been staying late at the office, trying my hand at
designing a house, for a change. I wish you’d look at the plans!”
“I think I’ll make some coffee,” said Bess, hastily, moving away. Then
her glance fell again upon the tin of corned beef.
She looked at him, and their eyes met, and she began to laugh.
“You little angel!” he cried. “I’ve never seen you do that before!”
“I’ve just learned,” said Bess, still laughing.
They had a good deal more to say. They took a very long time in getting
a very simple supper; but nobody tried to hurry them. Nobody seemed at
all impatient. Indeed, when Bess came in with a tray, they all smiled at
her in a new sort of way, as if they, too, had been somehow touched by
her gay young laughter.
Nothing could have been more festive than that supper of coffee and
corned beef, eaten under a ceiling that still dripped, in a room with a
broken windowpane stuffed with rags, and heaps of charred débris from
upstairs piled in the corners. The wind howled outside, but nobody
cared.
The professor rose to his feet.
“This,” he said, “is Christmas Day; and in some respects I may say that
it is a--for me, personally--a merry one. I should like to take this
occasion to say--Mr. Tom Tench, sir, your cousin, Miss Smith,
has--er--shown me an example of--of--” He hesitated for a moment. “Mr.
Tench, sir!” he said. “Your hand!”
Tom Tench sprang up and took the proffered hand in a vigorous clasp.
“Gayle!” he said. “Gayle! I--I think I’ll run down and take a look at
that furnace!”
MUNSEY’S
MAGAZINE
JULY, 1927
Vol. XCI NUMBER 2