Christmas | Page 3

The three skirted the flower beds and came out
on the level sweep of turf before the house that was no house in the
darkness, save that they remembered how it looked: a square, smoked
thing, with a beard of dead creepers and white shades lidded over its
never-lighted windows--a fit home for this man least-liked of the three
hundred neighbours who made Old Trail Town. He touched the elbows
of the other two men as they walked in the dark, but he rarely touched
any human being. And now Abel Ames suddenly put his hand down on
that of Ebenezer, where it lay in the crook of Abel's elbow.
"What you got there?" he asked.
"Nothing much," Ebenezer answered, irritably again. "It's an old glass.
I was looking over some rubbish, and I found it--over back. It's a field
glass."
"What you got a field glass out in the dark for?" Abel demanded.
"I used to fool with it some when I was a little shaver," Ebenezer said.
He put the glass in Abel's hand. "On the sky," he added.
Abel lifted the glass and turned it on the heavens. There, above the
little side lawn, the firmament had unclothed itself of branches and lay
in a glorious nakedness to three horizons.
"Thunder," Abel said, "look at 'em look."
Sweeping the field with the lens, Abel spoke meanwhile.
"Seems as if I'd kind of miss all the fuss in the store around Christmas,"
he said,--"the extra rush and the trimming up and all."
"Abel'll miss lavishin' his store with cut paper, I guess," said Simeon;
"he dotes on tassels."

"Last year," Abel went on, not lowering the glass, "I had a little kid
come in the store Christmas Eve, that I'd never see before. He ask' me if
he could get warm--and he set down on the edge of a chair by the stove,
and he took in everything in the place. I ask' him his name, and he just
smiled. I ask' him if he was glad it was Christmas, and he says, Was I. I
was goin' to give him some cough drops, but when I come back from
waiting on somebody he was gone. I never could find out who he was,
nor see anybody that saw him. I thought mebbe this Christmas he'd
come back. Lord, don't it look like a pasture of buttercups up there?
Here, Simeon."
Simeon, talking, took the glass and lifted it to the stars.
"Cut paper doin's is all very well," he said, "but the worst nightmare of
the year to the stores is Christmas. I always think it's come to be 'Peace
on earth, good will to men and extravagance of women.' Quite a nice
little till of gold pieces up there in the sky, ain't there? I'd kind o' like to
stake a claim out up there--eh? Lay it out along about around that
bright one down there--by Josh," he broke off, "look at that bright one."
Simeon kept looking through the glass, and he leaned a little forward to
try to see the better.
"What is it?" he repeated, "what's that one? It's the biggest star I ever
see--"
The other two looked where he was looking, low in the east. But they
saw nothing save boughs indeterminately moving and a spatter of
sparkling points not more bright than those of the upper field.
"You look," Simeon bade the vague presence that was his host; but
through the glass, Ebenezer still saw nothing that challenged his sight.
"I don't know the name of a star in the sky, except the dipper," he
grumbled, "but I don't see anything out of the ordinary, anyhow."
"It is," Simeon protested; "I tell you, it's the biggest star I ever saw. It's
blue and purple and green and yellow--"

Abel had the glass now, and he had looked hardly sooner than he had
recognized.
"Sure," he said, "I've got it. It is blue and purple and green and yellow,
and it's as big as most stars put together. It twinkles--yes, sir, and it
swings...." he broke off, laughing at the mystification of the others, and
laughed so that he could not go on.
"Is it a comet, do you s'pose?" said Simeon.
"No," said Abel, "no. It's come to stay. It's our individual private star.
It's the arc light in front of the Town Hall you two are looking at."
They moved to where Abel stood, and from there, up the rise of ground
to the east, they could see Simeon's star, shining softly and throwing
long rays, it seemed, almost to where they stood: the lamp that marked
the heart of the village.
"Shucks," said Simeon.
"Sold," said Ebenezer.
"Why, I don't know," said Abel, "I kind of like to see it