“A buryin' on Christmas Eve, the minister said, and how sad it were, and I felt like tellin' him Ann an' me never knowed Christmas from enny other day, even to vittles, for turkeys fetched better prices then, an' we sold ourn.” She went into a frozen bedroom, for Corinth folks would have thought a man crazy to have a fire in a sleeping-room except in sickness; she folded her shawl and cape and laid them carefully on the feather bed, covered with its gay quilt, the fruit of her lonely hours. Mechanically she set about getting supper, stirring the fire, putting a pan of soda biscuits in to bake, and setting a dish of dried-apple sauce and a plate of ginger cookies on the table. “Berried on Chrismus Eve, but little she ever thought of it, nor me, and little of it Jimmy hed here to home.” She looked at her biscuits, slammed the oven door, glanced cautiously around to see if Silas, who had gone to milk the cow, were coming; then drawing her thin lips tighter, went back into the cold bedroom. With ruthless hand tearing open an old wound, she unlocked a drawer in the old mahogany bureau and took out something rolled in a handkerchief--only a tiny vase, blue and gilt, woefully cheap, laughed at by the cultured, scorned by the children of today. She held it tenderly in her cold hand and brought back the memory that would never die. It was years and years ago in that very room, and a little child came in holding one chubby hand behind him, and he looked at her with her own bright eyes under his curly hair. “Muver, Jimmy's got a s'prise.” She remembered she told him crossly to go out of the cold room and not bother her. She remembered, too, that his lip quivered, the lip that had yet the baby curve. “It was a present, muver, like the minister sed. I got candy on the tree, but you didn't git nawthin', and I buyed you this with my berry money.” The poor little vase in that warm chubby hand--ay, she forgot nothing now; she told him he was silly to spend good money on trash, and flung the vase aside, but that grieved childish face came back always. Ah, it would never fade away, it had returned for a quarter of a century. “I never was used to young ones,” she said aloud, “nor kindness,” but that would not heal the wound; no self-apology could. She went hurriedly to the kitchen, for Silas was stamping the snow off his feet in the entry. “I got fifty dollars for old Tige,” he said, as he poured his tea into his saucer to cool; “he was wuth it, the honest old creetur!” The little black-eyed woman did not answer; she only tightened her lips. Over the mantel where the open fireplace had been bricked up, was a picture in a narrow black frame, a colored print of Washington on a fine white horse, and maidens strewing flowers in his pathway.