When the Yule Log Burns | Page 2

lamely. "As for Ralph--" the Doctor looked
away--"well, Ralph hasn't spent a Christmas home since college days."
"It will be the first Christmas we ever spent without some of them
home," ventured Aunt Ellen, biting her lip courageously, whereupon
the old Doctor patted her shoulder gently with a cheery word of advice.
Now, there was something in the touch of the old Doctor's broad and
gentle hand that always soothed, wherefore Aunt Ellen presently wiped
her troublesome glasses again and bravely tried to smile, and the
Doctor making a vast and altogether cheerful to-do about turning the
blazing log, began a brisk description of his day. It had ended,
professionally, at a lonely little house in the heart of the forest, which
Jarvis Hildreth, dying but a scant year since, had bequeathed to his
orphaned children, Madge and Roger.
"And, Ellen," finished the Doctor, soberly, "there he sits by the window,
day by day, poor lame little lad!--staring away so wistfully at the forest,
and Madge, bless her brave young heart!--she bastes and stitches and
sews away, all the while weaving him wonderful yarns about the pines
and cedars to amuse him--all out of her pretty head, mind you! A lame
brother and a passion for books--" said the Doctor, shaking his head, "a
poor inheritance for the lass. They worry me a lot, Ellen, for Madge
looks thin and tired, and to-day--" the Doctor cleared his throat, "I think
she had been crying."
"Crying!" exclaimed Aunt Ellen, her kindly brown eyes warm with
sympathy. "Dear, dear!--And Christmas only three days off! Why, John,
dear, we must have them over here for Christmas. To be sure! And
we'll have a tree for little Roger and a Christmas masquerade and such
a wonderful Christmas altogether as he's never known before!" And
Aunt Ellen, with the all-embracing motherhood of her gentle heart
aroused, fell to planning a Christmas for Madge and Roger Hildreth
that would have gladdened the heart of the Christmas saint himself.
Face aglow, the old Doctor bent and patted his wife's wrinkled hand.

"Why, Ellen," he confessed, warmly, "it's the thing I most desired!
Dear me, it's a very strange thing indeed, my dear, how often we seem
to agree. I'll hitch old Billy to the sleigh and go straight after them now
while Annie's getting supper!" And at that instant one glance at Aunt
Ellen Leslie's fine old face, framed in the winter firelight which grew
brighter as the checkerboard window beside her slowly purpled, would
have revealed to the veriest tyro why the Doctor's patients liked best to
call her "Aunt" Ellen.
So, with a violent jingle of sleigh-bells, the Doctor presently shot forth
again into the white and quiet world, and as he went, gliding swiftly
past the ghostly spruces by the roadside, oddly enough, despite his
cheerful justification to Aunt Ellen, he was fiercely rebelling at the
defection of his children. John and his lovely wife might well have
foregone their fashionable ball. And Howard and Philip--their
holiday-keeping Metropolitan clubs were shallow artificialities surely
compared with a home-keeping reunion about the Yule log. As for the
children of Anne and Ellen and Margaret--well, the Doctor could just
tell those daughters of his that their precious youngsters liked a country
Christmas best--he knew they did!--not the complex, steam-heated
hot-house off-shoot of that rugged flower of simpler times when homes
were further apart, but a country Christmas of keen, crisp cold and
merry sleigh-bells, of rosy cheeks and snow-balls, of skating on the
Deacon's pond and a jubilant hour after around the blazing wood-fire: a
Christmas, in short, such as the old Doctor himself knew and loved, of
simplicity and sympathy and home-keeping heartiness!
And then--there was Ralph--but here the Doctor's face grew very stern.
Wild tales came to him at times of this youngest and most gifted of his
children--tales of intemperate living interlarded with occasional tales of
brilliant surgical achievement on the staff of St. Michael's. For the old
Doctor had guided the steps of his youngest son to the paths of
medicine with a great hope, long abandoned.
Ah--well! The Doctor sighed, abruptly turning his thoughts to Madge
and Roger. They at least should know the heart-glow of a real
Christmas! A masquerade party of his neighbors Christmas eve,

perhaps, such as Aunt Ellen had suggested, and a Yule-log--but now it
was, in the midst of his Christmas plans, that a daring notion flashed
temptingly through the Doctor's head, was banished with a shrug and
flashed again, whereupon with his splendid capacity for prompt
decision, the Doctor suddenly wheeled old Billy about and went
sleighing in considerable excitement into the village whence a host of
night-telegrams went singing over the busy wires to startle eventually a
slumbering conscience or so. And presently when the Doctor drew