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CHRISTMAS EVE again!

Moses Marvel has driven out his own bays in his own double cutter to meet the stage at Fordyce’s. On the back seat is Mattie Marvel, with a rosy little baby all wrapped up in furs, who has never seen his father. Where is Laura?

“Here she comes! here she comes!” Sure enough! Here is the stage at last. Job Stiles never swept round with a more knowing sweep, or better satisfied with his precious freight at Fordyce’s, than he did this afternoon. And the curtains were up already. And there is Laura, and there is Tom! He is pale, poor fellow. But how pleased he is! Laura is out first, of course. And then she gives him her hand so gently, and the others all help. And here is the hero at Marvel’s side, and he is bending over his baby, whom he does not try to lift with his one arm,–and Mattie is crying, and I believe old Moses Marvel is crying,–but everybody is as happy as a king, and everybody is talking at one time,–and all the combination has turned out well.

Tom Cutts had had a hole made through his left thigh, so that they despaired of his life. And, as he lay on the ground, a bit of a shell had struck his left forearm and knocked that to pieces. Tom Cutts had been sent back to hospital at Washington, and reported by telegraph as mortally wounded. But almost as soon as Tom Cutts got to the Lincoln Hospital himself, Laura Cutts got there too, and then Tom did not mean to die if he could help it, and Laura did not mean to have him. And the honest fellow held to his purpose in that steadfast Cutts way. The blood tells, I believe. And love tells. And will tells. How much love has to do with will! “I believe you are a witch, Mrs. Cutts,” the doctor used to say to her. “Nothing but good happens to this good-man of yours.” Bits of bone came out just as they were wanted to. Inflammation kept away just as it was told to do. And the two wounds ran a race with each other in healing after their fashion. “It will be a beautiful stump after all,” said the doctor, where poor Laura saw little beauty. But every thing was beautiful to her, when at last he told her that she might wrap her husband up as well as she knew how, and take him home and nurse him there. So she had telegraphed that they were coming, and that was the way in which it happened that her father and her sister had brought out the baby to meet them both at Fordyce’s. Mattie’s surprise had worked perfectly.

And now it was time for Laura’s surprise! After she had her baby in her own arms, and was on the back seat of the sleigh; after Tom was well wrapped up by her side, with his well arm just supporting the little fellow’s head; after Mattie was all tucked in by her father, and Mr. Marvel himself had looked round to say, “All ready?” then was it that Jem Marvel first stepped out from the stage, and said, “Haven’t you one word for me, Mattie?” Then how they screamed again! For everybody thought Jem was in the West Indies. He was cruising there, on board the “Greywing,” looking after blockaders who took the Southern route. Nobody dreamed of Jem’s being at Christmas. And here he had stumbled on Tom and Laura in the New Haven train as they came on! Jem had been sent into New York with a prize. He had got leave, and was on his way to see the rest of them. He had bidden Laura not say one word, and so he had watched one greeting from the stage, before he broke in to take his part for another.