It was the day before Christmas that the Village Conscience telephoned the Lindon Bank.
"I felt that I must call you up, Mr. Sawyer," she said firmly, "and tell you that the boy you have with you over Christmas is going around from door to door, ringing the bell and—begging!"
"Begging!"
"Perhaps I shouldn't call it just that—but—well, saying 'Merry Christmas!' rather hopefully."
Feeling rather sick, Abner Sawyer formally thanked his informer and rang off. Glancing out of his office window he saw with a shock that instead of Austin White, who usually drove him home at night, Jimsy and Peggy, the old Sawyer mare, were waiting beneath a snow-ridged elm with the sleigh. Jimsy caught his eye, smiled warmly and waved, and because Abner Sawyer did not know what else to do, he stiffly returned the salute and reached for his hat, irritably conscious that sufficient sleep and food had already left their marks upon his guest. Jimsy's cheeks above the old-fashioned tippet Aunt Judith had wound about his throat were smooth and ruddy.
"Aunt Judith didn't want me to come," explained Jimsy, "but I tol' her how Gink Gunnigan often let me drive his truck an' I guess I coaxed so hard she had to.... Unc—Mister Sawyer, it—it's nearly Chris'mus eve!"
Abner Sawyer climbed in without a word. Peggy flew off with a jingle of bells through the village, through the woods, through a Christmas eve twilight dotted now with homely squares of light shining jewel-wise among the snowy trees.
"Jimsy!"
"Yes, sir?"
"A lady telephoned that you'd been—begging—from door to door."
Jimsy hung his head.
"I—I only rung some door-bells an' said 'Merry Chris'mus.'"
"You expected and received—money?"
"Y-e-e-e-e-es, sir."
"Why?"
Silence.
"Jimsy, I insist upon an explanation."
Jimsy gulped and faced Abner Sawyer, his eyes blazing with heartbroken disappointment through tear-wet lashes.
"Uncle Ab," he choked, "it—it was a Chris'mus s'prise fur you an' Aunt Judith." A great tear rolled slowly down upon the tippet. "I—I seen a book on fancy carpenterin' an' I—I didn't have no money an'—an' a thimble. It ain't silver, but it's 'mos' as good." And then Jimsy lost his moorings with a sob and cried his heart out upon the sleeve of Abner Sawyer. "I—I got the book buttoned under my coat," he blurted after a while, "an', Uncle Ab, I'm awful sorry 'bout the door-bells. All the fellus do it home—"
Abner Sawyer would have been less than human if the boy's tragedy had not touched him.
"Why," he asked huskily, "why did you wish to give me a Christmas present?"
"Because," cried Jimsy passionately, "yer so awful good to me an' Stump, an' so's Aunt Judith. An' I thought mebbe ye'd never had nobuddy ever give ye a present an' mean it like I did or—"
"Or what, Jimsy?"
"Ye'd feel diffrunt 'bout Christmas."
The first citizen took the reins himself, tucked Jimsy in beneath the fur robe and drove home in silence, conscious only that the world was awry and he hated the Village Conscience. Nor was he quite himself even after supper was done and Jimsy, a little tearful still in his disappointment, safe in bed.
"Abner—" began Aunt Judith from her chair by the fire.
"Yes?" said Mr. Sawyer coldly. He wished Judith would not talk. She rarely did. He was tired and upset and probing desperately within for some remnant of the cold complacence of a week ago.
"The minister was here to-day. He—he told me how Mrs. Dorgan took Jimsy in from the street. She—drinks. He—hasn't—a real—home. The minister would like—to—to find one for him.”
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Jimsy again! He must fling away his chain now or feel it clank.
"That," said Abner Sawyer resentfully, "is of no interest to me."
There was pitiful, hard-wrung bravery in Aunt Judith's face. Only a passionate surge of feeling could have swept away the silence and repression of the years. Only a woman's emotion, wild and maternal for all its starving, inevitable as the law of God, could have leaped a barrier so fixed and unrelenting.
"Abner," she said desperately. "I—I want to keep Jimsy. I—I can't bear to see him go—"
"Judith!" There was more in the single word of course than Aunt Judith could know. There was an unread paper and a biscuit, a tailless dog invading sanctity, a yelling boy by a woodpile, and now the memory of a twilight ride and the tears of a choking lad upon his sleeve, an irritating record of moments of weakness which it behooved a first citizen to stamp out of his life forever. Aunt Judith read in his face an inexorable death-sentence of her hope and rose, trembling.
"You are a hard, cold man!" she said, very white. "And the house is so lonely I hate it!... I hate it!" quivered Aunt Judith with a long shuddering sob; "there's no one to love in it—no one! And everything Specks said to Jimsy was true!"
And then, crying and shaking, she was gone, and Abner Sawyer went with stumbling feet to the privacy of his work-shop, his face death-white. The pompous illusions of his little world were tumbling to ruins about him.
He had said with frequent unction that he was a "hard" man, interpreting that phrase liberally in terms of thrift, economy and substantial common sense, and his world, through the mouth of an urchin, had flung back to him the galling words—miser and skinflint! They had fawned to his face and flouted his back, gossiping of servants and made-over gowns and kindlings. Up and down the quiet work-shop walked Abner Sawyer, clinging in an agony of humiliation to the loyalty of a little urchin.... It was all he had, he told himself fiercely, all he had! Jimsy alone saw him as he was and liked him.... No heart!... No Christmas tree!... No one in the house to love.... He must prove then to Specks—to Jimsy—to Judith—to the Middletons—to all Lindon—
Turning with hot anger in his heart, he saw a book upon his work-bench; and picking it up, Abner Sawyer faced the pitiful fiasco of Jimsy's Christmas gift. With a great lump in his throat and his eyes wet he glanced at the fly-leaf.
"To Uncle Ab," it said, "from Jimsy. Chrismus gretings."
The door clicked as it had clicked the night before and the night before.
"Unc—Mister Sawyer," said Jimsy sleepily. "I 'mos' forgot to come, I was so awful tired an' sleepy.... Ain't—ain't sick, are ye, Uncle Ab? Yer face is awful queer."
"I—I don't know," said the first citizen hoarsely. "I—I think I am. Go to bed, Jimsy, and—thank—you—for the book."
Jimsy went back to bed. He did not know—nor did Aunt Judith or Abner Sawyer that presently he was the sole keeper of the house save Stump snoring in the kitchen. For Abner Sawyer was furtively driving Peggy into a village that knew him only by repute and Aunt Judith, having slipped away in white defiance to Cousin Lemuel's down the road, was driving into Lindon with the surreptitious savings of many years in the old-fashioned pocket of her gown.
