"What ails me?" she said aloud, and got up to kindle a light. She was amazed to see that it was seven o'clock, and long past her supper hour. As she took from the clock shelf the key to the barn, some one rapped at the back door and came through the cold kitchen with friendly familiarity. It was Jenny, a shawl over her head, her face glowing with the cold, and in her mittened hands a flat parcel. "My hand's most froze," Jenny admitted. "I didn't want to roll this thing, so I carried it flat out, and it blew consider'ble. It's the picture." "Get yourself warm," Mary bade her. "I'll undo it. Who is it of?" she added, as the papers came away. "That's what I don't know," said Jenny, "but I've always liked it around. I thought maybe you'd know." It was a picture which, in those days, had not before come to Old Trail Town. The figure was that of a youth, done by a master of the times--the head and shoulders of a youth who seemed to be looking passionately at something outside the picture. "There it is, anyhow," Jenny added. "If you like it enough to hang it up, hang it up. It's a Christmas present!" Jenny laughed elfishly. Mary Chavah held the picture out before her. "I do," she said; "I could take a real fancy to it. I'll have it up on the wall. Much obliged, I'm sure. Set down a minute." But Jenny could not do this, and Mary, the key to the barn still in her hands, followed her out. They went through the cold kitchen where the refrigerator and the ironing board and the clothes bars and all the familiar things stood in the dark. To Mary these were sunk in a great obscurity and insignificance, and even Jenny being there was unimportant beside the thing that her letter had brought to think about. They stepped out into the clear, glittering night, with its clean, white world, and its clean, dark sky on which some story was written in stars. Capella was shining almost overhead--and another star was hanging bright in the east, as if the east were always a dawning place for some new star. "Mary!" said Jenny, there in the dark. "Yes," Mary answered. "You know I said I just couldn't bear not to have any Christmas--_this_ Christmas?" "Yes," Mary said. "Did you know why?" "I thought because it's your and Bruce's first--" "No," Jenny said, "that isn't all why. It's something else." She slipped her arm within Mary's and stood silent. And, Mary still not understanding,-- "It's somebody else," Jenny said faintly. Mary stirred, turned to her in the dimness. "Why, Jenny!" she said. "Soon," said Jenny. The two women stood for a moment, Jenny saying a little, Mary quiet. "It'll be late in December," Jenny finished. "That seems so wonderful to me--so wonderful. Late in December, like--" The cold came pricking about them, and Jenny moved to go. Mary, the shawled figure on the upper step, looked down on the shawled figure below her, and abruptly spoke.