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“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 daugh¬ 
ters of his that their precious youngsters liked a country Christ¬ 
mas best — he knew they did! It was not the complex, steam- 
heated hot-houses off-shoot of that rugged flower of simpler 
times when homes were further apart that they would prefer, 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 sim¬ 
plicity and sympathy and home 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 inter¬ 
larded 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 Christ¬ 
mas 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 ex¬ 
citement 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 up with a flourish before the 
lonely little house among the forest pines, 
his earlier depression had vanished. 
So with a prodigious stamping of snow 
from his feet and a cheerful wave of his 
mittened hand to the boy by the window, 
the doctor bustled cheerily indoors and with 
kindly eyes averted from the single tell-tale 
sauce-pan upon the fire, over which Madge 
Hildreth had bent with sudden color, fell to 
bustling about with a queer lump in his 
throat and talking ambiguously of Aunt 
Ellen’s Christmas orders, painfully conscious 
that the girl’s dark face had grown pitifully 
white and tense and that Roger’s wan little 
face was glowing. And when the fire was 
damped by the doctor himself, and his Christ¬ 
mas guests hustled into dazed, protesting 
readiness, the doctor deftly muffled the thin 
little fellow in blankets and gently carried 
him out to the waiting sleigh with arms that 
were splendid and sturdy and wonderfully 
reassuring. 
“There, there, little man!” he said cheer¬ 
fully, “we’ve not hurt the poor lame leg 
once, I reckon. And now we’ll just help 
Sister Madge blow out the lamp and lock 
the door and be off to Aunt Ellen!” 
But, strangely enough, the doctor halted 
abruptly in the doorway and turned his kindly 
eyes away to the shadowy pines. And Sister 
Madge, on her knees by Roger’s bed, sobbing 
and praying in an agony of relief, presently 
blew out the lamp herself and wiped her eyes. 
For nights among the whispering pines are 
sleepless and long when work is scarce and 
Christmas hovers with cold, forbidding eyes 
over the restless couch of a dear and crippled 
brother. 
II. 
Round the doctor’s house frolicked the 
brisk, cold wind of a Christmas eve, boister- 
Under the roof, heavy with the ragged ermine of the newly fallen snow, the Doctor’s old 
house looked gray through the snow-fringed branches of the trees 
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