For a few moments she stood at the window, looking out into the
night and listening to the sleepy murmurs from the room above. It
would be good sleighing for Santa Claus, she thought, and then
smiled at the childishness of the idea. The storm had died away at
sunset, and the soft, light snow lay white on the ground, and
piled high on the evergreen hedge at the side of the house. In the
cold, still air, the stars glittered like little, pricking points
of steel, throwing a faint light over the town below; while, far
down in the quiet western sky, lay the tiny silver thread of the
baby moon, as if anxious to linger above the horizon for a peep
into the happy Christmas world, when the midnight bells should
ring in the glad news, centuries old, yet ever coming to us with
all the fresh joy of that first eastern Christmas dawn.
Jean's eyes wandered from the snow below to the sky above, then
dropped again to the distant lights that were shining out from the
upper rooms of the Hapgood house. Even the attic was ablaze, for
Mrs. Hapgood still kept to the old-fashioned custom of
illuminating the house on Christmas eve. How Jean wished she could
peep in to see what they were all doing! She had missed her
friends and their frolics during these past weeks, missed them
more than any one knew but her pillow, to which alone she confided
her troubles.
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