It was their first Christmas, and they spent it alone together. Bert
and Nancy knew that they would not spend another Christmas alone, and
the shadowy hope for April lent a new tone even to their gayety, and
deepened the exquisite happiness of the dark, snowbound day. The tiny
house was full of laughter, for Bert had given his wife all the little
things she had from time to time whimsically desired. The fancy
cheeses, and the perfumes and soaps, made her laugh and laugh as she
unwrapped them. There were fuzzy wash-cloths--a particular fancy of
hers--and new library paste and new hair-pins, and a can-opener that
made her exclaim: "Bert, that was cute of you!" and even an alligator
pear. A bewildered look came into Nancy's eyes as she went on
investigating her bulging stocking--gloves, and silk hosiery, and new
little enamelled pins for her collars, and the piano score of the opera
she so loved--where had the money come from?
"My firm gave us each ten," Bert explained, grinning.
"And you spent it ALL on me!" Nancy said, stricken. "You poked about
and got me every blessed thing I ever wanted in this world--you
darling!"
"Why not?" he asked. "You're the only thing I have, Nance! And such
LITTLE things, dear."
"It isn't the things--it's your thinking of them," Nancy said. "And
eating wretched lunches while you planned them! You make me cry--and
meanwhile, my beloved little chicken will roast himself dry!"
She rushed into her kitchen. Bert rushed after her; his days at home
were a succession of interruptions for Nancy, no topic was too
insignificant for their earnest discussion, and no pleasure too small
to share. To-day the chief object of their interest was his mother's
Christmas present to him, a check for fifty dollars, "for my boy's
winter coat."
They looked at the slip of paper at regular intervals. To Bert it
brought a pleasant thought of the thin, veiny hand that had penned it,
the little silk-clad form and trimly netted gray hair. He remembered
his mother's tiny sitting room, full of begonias and winter sunshine
and photographs of the family, with a feeling that while mother could
never again know rapturous happiness like his own, yet it was good to
think of her as content and comfortable, with her tissue-wrapped
presents from the three daughters-in-law lying on her table.
But to Nancy the check meant the future only: it meant her handsome
Bert dressed at last in suitable fashion, in a "big, fuzzy, hairy
coat." She pointed out various men's coats in the windows they passed
that afternoon, and on the other young men who were walking with wives
and babies.
But Bert had his own ideas. When Nancy met him down town a day or two
later, to go pick the coat, she found him quite unmanageable. He said
that there was no hurry about the coat--they were right here in the
housekeeping things, why not look at fireless cookers? In the end they
bought an ice-cream freezer, and a fireless cooker, and two pairs of
arctic overshoes, and an enormous oval-shaped basket upon which the
blushing Nancy dropped a surreptitious kiss when the saleswoman was not
looking, and a warm blue sweater for Nancy, and, quite incidentally, an
eighteen-dollar overcoat for Bert.
Nancy's lip trembled over this last purchase. They were nice overcoats,
remarkable for the price, indeed--"marked down from twenty-five."
But--but she had wanted him to spend every cent of the fifty dollars
for a STUNNING coat! Bert laughed at her April face. He took her
triumphantly to the fifty-cent luncheon and they talked over it for a
blissful hour. And when she left him at the office door, Nancy consoled
herself by drifting into one of the near-by second-hand bookshops, and
buying him a tiny Keats, "Pepy's Diary" somewhat shabby as to cover,
and George's "Progress and Poverty," at ten cents apiece. These books
were piled at Bert's place that night, and gave him almost as much
pleasure as the overcoat did.
And even Nancy had to confess that the disputed garment looked warm and
thick, when it came home in its green box, and that it was "fun" to
open the other packages, and find the sweater, looking so wooly and
comfortable, and the big basket destined for so precious a freight! She
and Bert laughed and chattered over the thick papers and strings that
bound the freezer and the cooker, and made chocolate ice-cream for
dinner on Sunday, and never ate their breakfast oatmeal without a
rapturous appreciation of the cooker.