The Romance of a Christmas Card | Page 6

for news of the girl he loves even when he is content to let
silence reign between him and his old father.--What makes you think
there was anything particular, Reba?"
"What makes anybody think anything!--I wonder why some people are
born props, and others leaners or twiners? I believe the very
nursing-bottle leaned heavily against Letty when she lay on her infant
pillow. I didn't know her when she was a child, but I believe that when
she was eight all the other children of three and five in the village
looked to her for support and guidance!"
"It's a great vocation--that of being a prop," smiled the minister, as he
peeled a red Baldwin apple, carefully preserving the spiral and eating it
first.
"I suppose the wobbly vine thinks it's grand to be a stout trellis when it
needs one to climb on, but doesn't the trellis ever want to twine, I
wonder?" And Reba's tone was doubtful.
"Even the trellis leans against the house, Reba."
"Well, Letty never gets a chance either to lean or to twine! Her family,
her friends, her acquaintances, even the stranger within her gates, will
pass trees, barber poles, telephone and telegraph poles, convenient
corners of buildings, fence posts, ladders, and lightning rods for the
sake of winding their weakness around her strength. When she sits
down from sheer exhaustion, they come and prop themselves against
her back. If she goes to bed, they climb up on the footboard, hang a
drooping head, and look her wistfully in the eye for sympathy. Prop on,
prop ever, seems to be the underlying law of the universe!"
"Poor Reba! She is talking of Letty and thinking of herself!" And the

minister's eye twinkled.
"Well, a little!" admitted his wife; "but I'm only a village prop, not a
family one. Where you are concerned"--and she administered an
affectionate pat to his cheek as she rose from her chair--"I'm a trellis
that leans against a rock!"

[Illustration]
III
Letitia Boynton's life had been rather a drab one as seen through other
people's eyes, but it had never seemed so to her till within the last few
years. Her own father had been the village doctor, but of him she had
no memory. Her mother's second marriage to a venerable country
lawyer, John Gilman, had brought a kindly, inefficient stepfather into
the family, a man who speedily became an invalid needing constant
nursing. The birth of David when Letty was three years old, brought a
new interest into the household, and the two children grew to be fast
friends; but when Mrs. Gilman died, and Letty found herself at
eighteen the mistress of the house, the nurse of her aged stepfather, and
the only guardian of a boy of fifteen, life became difficult. More
difficult still it became when the old lawyer died, for he at least had
been a sort of fictitious head of the family and his mere existence kept
David within bounds.
David was a lively, harum-scarum, handsome youth, good at his
lessons, popular with his companions, always in a scrape, into which he
was generally drawn by the minister's son, so the neighbors thought. At
any rate, Dick Larrabee, as David's senior, received the lion's share of
the blame when mischief was abroad. If Parson Larrabee's boy couldn't
behave any better than an unbelieving black-smith's, a Methodist
farmer's, or a Baptist storekeeper's, what was the use of claiming
superior efficacy for the Congregational form of belief?
"Dick's father's never succeeded in bringing him into the church,

though he's worked on him from the time he was knee-high to a toad,"
said Mrs. Popham.
"P'raps his mother kind o' vaccinated him with religion 'stid o' leavin'
him to take it the natural way, as the ol' sayin' is," was her husband's
response. "The first Mis' Larrabee was as good as gold, but she may
have overdone the trick a little mite, mebbe; and what's more, I kind o'
suspicion the parson thinks so himself. He ain't never been quite the
same sence Dick left home, 'cept in preaching'; an' I tell you, Maria, his
high-water mark there is higher 'n ever. Abel Dunn o' Boston walked
home from meetin' with me Thanksgivin', an', says he, takin' off his hat
an' moppin' his forehead, 'Osh,' says he, 'does your minister preach like
that every Sunday?' 'No,' says I, 'he don't. If he did we couldn't stan' it!
He preaches like that about once a month, an' we don't care what he
says the rest o' the time.'"
"Well, so far as boys are concerned, preachin' ain't so reliable, for
behavin' purposes, as a good young alder switch," was the opinion of
Mrs. Popham, her children being of the comatose kind, whose minds
had never been illuminated by