The Christmas Angel | Page 2

again snarled her mistress.
"And choir-boys are going about the streets, they say, singing carols in
front of the lighted houses," continued Norah enthusiastically. "It must
sound so pretty!"
"They had much better be at home in bed. I believe people are losing
their minds!"
"Please'm, may I go?" asked Norah again.
Norah had no puritanic traditions to her account. Moreover she was
young and warm and enthusiastic. Sometimes the spell of Miss Terry's
sombre house threatened her to the point of desperation. It was so this
Christmas Eve; but she made her request with apparent calmness.
"Yes, go along," assented her mistress ungraciously.
"Thank you, 'm," said the servant demurely, but with a brightening of
her blue eyes. And presently the area door banged behind her
quick-retreating footsteps.
"H'm! Didn't take her long to get ready!" muttered Miss Terry, giving
the fire a vicious poke. She was alone in the house, on Christmas Eve,
and not a man, woman, or child in the world cared. Well, it was what
she wanted. It was of her own doing. If she had wished--
She sat back in her chair, with thin, long hands lying along the arms of
it, gazing into the fire. A bit of paper there was crumbling into ashes.
Alone on Christmas Eve! Even Norah had some relation with the world
outside. Was there not a stalwart officer waiting for her on the nearest
corner? Even Norah could feel a simple childish pleasure in candles
and carols and merriment, and the old, old superstition.

"Stuff and nonsense!" mused Miss Terry scornfully. "What is our
Christmas, anyway? A time for shopkeepers to sell and for foolish folks
to kill themselves in buying. Christmas spirit? No! It is all humbug,--all
selfishness, and worry; an unwholesome season of unnatural activities.
I am glad I am out of it. I am glad no one expects anything of me,--nor
I of any one. I am quite independent; blessedly independent of the
whole foolish business. It is a good time to begin clearing up for the
new year. I'm glad I thought of it. I've long threatened to get rid of the
stuff that has been accumulating in that corner of the attic. Now I will
begin."
She tugged the packing-case an inch nearer the fire. It was like Miss
Terry to insist upon that nearer inch. Then she raised the cover. It was a
box full of children's battered toys, old-fashioned and quaint; the toys
in vogue thirty--forty--fifty years earlier, when Miss Terry was a child.
She gave a reminiscent sniff as she threw up the cover and saw on the
under side of it a big label of pasteboard unevenly lettered.
[Illustration: PLAY BOX OF TOM TERRY AND ANGELINA
TERRY (scrawl)]
"Humph!" she snorted. There was a great deal in that "humph." It
meant: Yes, Tom's name had plenty of room, while poor little Angelina
had to squeeze in as well as she could. How like Tom! This accounted
for everything, even to his not being in his sister's house this very night.
How unreasonable he had been!
Miss Terry shrugged impatiently. Why think of Tom to-night? Years
ago he had deliberately cut himself adrift from her interests. No need to
think of him now. It was too late to appease her. But here were all these
toys to be got rid of. The fire was hungry for them. Why not begin?
Miss Terry stooped to poke over the contents of the box with lean, long
fingers. In one corner thrust up a doll's arm; in another, an animal's tail
pointed heavenward. She caught glimpses of glitter and tinsel, wheels
and fragments of unidentifiable toys.
"What rubbish!" she said. "Yes, I'll burn them all. They are good for

nothing else. I suppose some folks would try to give them away, and
bore a lot of people to death. They seem to think they are saving
something, that way. Nonsense! I know better. It is all foolishness, this
craze for giving. Most things are better destroyed as soon as you are
done with them. Why, nobody wants such truck as this. Now, could any
child ever have cared for so silly a thing?" She pulled out a faded
jumping-jack, and regarded it scornfully. "Idiotic! Such toys are
demoralizing for children--weaken their minds. It is a shame to think
how every one seems bound to spoil children, especially at Christmas
time. Well, no one can say that I have added to the shameful waste."
Miss Terry tossed the poor jumping-jack on the fire, and eyed his last
contortions with grim satisfaction.
But as she watched, a quaint idea came to her. She was famous for
eccentric ideas.
"I will try an experiment," she said. "I will prove once for all my point
about the 'Christmas spirit.'