“Please Heaven, you surely shall. My work is almost done;” and then
she had stitched away more resolutely than ever on the child’s frock
she was elaborately embroidering. The children meanwhile were feeding
upon hope, and watching a scene in the house over the way, where, as
they thought, all that any human creature could possibly hope for had
already been given. Busy preparations had been made in that other
house for Christmas. There was a great Christmas-tree in one corner,
all full of little tapers, and a large, fair, gentle-looking woman had
been engaged much of the afternoon in arranging gifts upon it. Now,
with the twilight, a boy and girl had come in and were watching the
lighting up of the Christmas-tree.
“It’s so good of them not to pull the curtains down,” Ethel said, with
a sigh of delight. “It’s almost as good as being there--almost.”
“I do suppose that’s the very grandest house in all New York,” little
Annie said, in a tone of awe and admiration.
“Nonsense! You only think that because you are so little,” answered
Ethel, from the height of her three years more of experience. “_You_
forget, but _I_ can remember. We had a finer house ourselves, before
poor papa died. There are plenty of them, only we’re so poor we don’t
see them.”
“Oh, it’s good to be that little girl!” cried Annie. “See how pretty
her dress is, and how her hair curls; and she’ll have lots of presents
off that Christmas-tree.”
“So should we, if we had papa,” Ethel answered gravely. “Mamma, when we
get up to heaven, do you think papa will know we’re his little girls?”
“I’m sure he will,” Mrs. Vanderheyden answered; and then she rose
wearily. “It’s all done,” she said, as she shook out the lovely little
robe into which she had wrought so many patient stitches. “I cannot
carry it home just yet, I am so tired; I must lie down first; but you
shall have a good dinner to-morrow, my darlings.”
The children had seen her very tired before, and they didn’t think
much about it when she groped her way to a bed in the corner and lay
down, drawing the scant bed-clothes up over her. They stood at the
window still, and watched the merry children opposite, until at last a
servant came and pulled down the curtains and shut away from them the
Christmas-tree, with all its gleaming lights, and the boy and girl, who
were dancing round it to some gay tune which their mother played.
Then Ethel and Annie began to realize that they were cold and hungry
and the room was dark. Ethel lit a candle. The fire was nearly out,
but she would not make another till morning.
“I won’t wake up mamma,” she said, with the premature thoughtfulness
that characterized her; “she’s so tired. We’ll just have supper, and
then I’ll hear you say ‘Our Father,’ and we’ll get to bed, and in the
morning it will be Christmas.”
Some vague promise of good was in the very word: Ethel did not know
what would come, but surely Christmas would not be like other days.
“Supper” was the rest of the bread. And then the two little creatures
knelt down together and said their well-known prayers, and I think
“Our Father” heard, for their sleep was just as sweet as if they had
been in the warm, soft nest of the children over the way, tucked in
with eider down. Through the long evening hours they slept,--through
the solemn midnight, when the clear, cold Christmas stars looked down,
just as they had looked centuries ago when the King of Glory, Himself a
little child, lay asleep in an humble manger in Judea. Nothing troubled
their quiet slumber until the sunshine of the Christmas morning broke
through their dingy windows, and the day had begun.
“It must be ever so late,” said Ethel, rubbing her sleepy eyes, “and
mamma isn’t awake yet. But she was so tired. You lie still, Annie, and
I’ll build the fire, and when she wakes up she’ll find it all done.”
Very patiently the poor little half-frozen fingers struggled with the
scant kindlings and the coal that seemed determined never to light; but
they succeeded at last, and the room began to grow a little warm. Then
she dressed Annie, and then it began to seem very late indeed, and she
wondered if mamma would never wake up. She went to the bedside and,
bending over, kissed her mother gently, then started back with a sudden
alarm.
“Why, Annie, she’s so cold--almost like poor papa--only you can’t
remember--just before they took him away.”
“No, she can’t be like papa,” Annie said stoutly, “for he was dead, and
mamma is asleep.”
“Yes, she’s asleep,” said the elder sister firmly. “We must wait till
she wakes up. We’ll look over the way, and then, maybe, it won’t seem
so long.”
But over the way was brighter than ever this Christmas morning. The
curtains had been looped back once more, the table glittered with
lovely gifts, and presently the little girl who lived there came to the
windows. She looked up at them--they were sure of it; but they could
not have guessed what she said, as she turned away, and spoke to her
mother.
“O mamma,” cried the sweet young voice, “won’t you come and see these
two poor little girls? They stood there all day yesterday and last
night; and now see how sad they look. I can’t eat my Christmas candies
or play with my Christmas things while they look so pale and lonesome.
Won’t you go over and see them, mamma dear?”
Mrs. Rosenburgh was a woman of warm and earnest sympathies when once
they were aroused. When she was a girl she too had had quick impulses
like her child’s; but she had grown selfish, perhaps, as she grew
older, or maybe only careless; for the quick sympathies were there
still, as you could see, now that her little girl had touched them.
“To be sure I will,” she answered at once. “Poor little things! I wish
we could make merry Christmas for all New York; but since we can’t,
at least we won’t have faces white with want looking in at our very
windows.”
So the watching, wondering children saw the large, fair lady wrap
herself in a heavy shawl and tie a hood over her head, and then come
out and cross the street and enter their house.
“What if she saw us, and what if she is coming here!” Ethel said
breathlessly.
Then they listened as if their hearts were in their ears. They heard
feet upon the stairs and then a gentle tap, and the lady from over the
way stood in their room.
“I saw you at the window,” she said, “and came over to wish you a merry
Christmas. How is this? Are you all alone?”
“No, ma’am, mamma is in the bed there; but she was very tired
yesterday, and she hasn’t waked up.”
An awful terror seized Mrs. Rosenburgh. Had this woman died of want and
weariness, in sight of her own windows? She stepped to the bedside, and
drew away the clothes gently from the face of the sleeper. She looked a
moment on that fair, faded face, and then she grew white as death.
“Children,” she asked, “what are your names?”
“I am Ethel Vanderheyden,” the oldest girl answered, “and she is Annie.”
“And your mother--was she Ethel Carlisle once?”
“Yes, ma’am, before she married papa.”
“And your little sister is Annie?”
“Yes; she was named for mamma’s best friend, one she hadn’t seen for a
long, long time.”
Meanwhile Mrs. Rosenburgh had knelt by the bedside. She had lifted the
low-lying head upon her arm, and drawn a bottle of pungent salts from
her pocket, and she was crying as if her heart would break, while the
children looked wondering on.
“O Ethel, my own old Ethel, _wake_ up!” And then she dropped her cheek,
all wet with tears, against the white, cold cheek, that was so still.
Oh, was it the warm tears, or the voice that sounded from far away out
of the past, or only the strong odor that roused the poor soul from
that long, heavy sleep of exhaustion that had so nearly been the sleep
of death? I do not know, but I know the eyes did open, and beheld the
tender face bending above them. And then, like a little child, the
children heard their mother cry,--
“O Annie, Annie, have I been dreaming all this time?”
And then there were explanations, and the story of the long years
since Annie Bryant and Ethel Carlisle were girls together was told.
But the best of it all, the children thought, was when the lady from
over the way took them home with her, and told them the boy and girl
there should be their brother and sister, and they should live there
henceforth; for she, who had found again her best friend, would never
more let her struggle with want alone.
And so the children had gifts and dinner, and a merry, merry Christmas
in the bright, warm, crimson-hung room, which had seemed to them
such a paradise of delights when they looked down into it from their
fourth-story window through the falling shadows of Christmas Eve.