FullReads

“Father deaf?”

“Sure. Didn’t you know it?”

“Forgotten. But mother’d hear us.”

“No, she wouldn’t. Don’t you know how she trusts everything about the house to Marietta since she got that fall–“

“Mother get a fall?”

“Why, yes!” Guy stared at his brother with some impatience. “Don’t you remember she fell down the back stairs a year ago last October, and hurt her knee?”

“Certainly, Oliver,” his wife interposed. “I wrote for you to tell her how sorry we were. But I supposed she had entirely recovered.”

“She’s a little bit lame, and always will be,” said Guy, a touch of reproach in his tone. “Her knee stiffens up in the night, and she doesn’t get up and go prowling about at the least noise, the way she used to. Marietta won’t let her. So if we make a whisper of noise Marietta’ll tell her it’s the cat or something. Good Lord! yes–it can be worked all right. The only thing that worries me is the fear that I can’t get you all to take hold of the scheme. On my word, Ol,”–he turned quite away from his sister-in-law’s critical gaze and faced his brother with something like indignation in his frank young eyes–“don’t we owe the old home anything but a present tied up in tissue paper once a year?”

Marian began to speak. She thought Guy was exceeding his rights in talking as if they had been at fault. It was not often that elderly people had so many children within call–loyal children who would do anything within reason. But certainly a man owed something to his own family. And at Christmas! Why not carry out this plan at some other–

Her husband abruptly interrupted her. He took his pipe quite out of his mouth and spoke decidedly.

“Guy, I believe you’re right. I’ll be sorry to desert my own kids, of course, but I rather think they can stand it for once. If the others fall into line, you may count on me.”

Guy got away, feeling that the worst of his troubles was over. In his younger sister, Nan, he hoped to find an ardent ally and he was not disappointed. Carolyn–Mrs. Charles Wetmore–also fell in heartily with the plan. Ralph, from somewhere in the far West, wrote that he would get home or break a leg. Edson thought the idea rather a foolish one, but was persuaded by Jessica, his wife–whom Guy privately declared a trump–that he must go by all means. And so they all fell into line, and there remained for Guy only the working out of the details.

* * * * *

“Mis’ Fernald”–Marietta Cooley strove with all the decision of which she was capable to keep her high-pitched, middle-aged voice in order–“‘fore you get to bed I’m most forgettin’ what I was to ask you. I s’pose you’ll laugh, but Guy–he wrote me partic’lar he wanted you and his father to”–Marietta’s rather stern, thin face took on a curious expression–“to hang up your stockin’s.”

Mrs. Fernald paused in the door-way of the bedroom opening from the sitting-room downstairs. She looked back at Marietta with her gentle smile.

“Guy wrote that?” she asked. “Then–it almost looks as if he might be coming himself, doesn’t it, Marietta?”

“Well, I don’t know’s I’d really expect him,” Marietta replied, turning her face away and busying herself about the hearth. “I guess what he meant was more in the way of a surprise for a Christmas present–something that’ll go into a stockin’, maybe.”

“It’s rather odd he should have written you to ask me,” mused Mrs. Fernald, as she looked out the stockings.

Marietta considered rapidly. “Well, I s’pose he intended for me to get ’em on the sly without mentionin’ it to you, an’ put in what he sent, but I sort of guessed you might like to fall in with his idee by hangin’ ’em up yourself, here by the chimbley, where the children all used to do it. Here’s the nails, same as they always was.”