“Why, Miss Florence, that ‘ud be too bad, afther bein’ that good in yer heart, to let the poor folks alone for fear of goin’ to them.  But ye needn’t do that, for, now I think of it, there’s John Morley’s wife.”

“What, the gardener father turned off for drinking?”

“The same, miss.  Poor boy, he’s not so bad, and he’s got a wife and two as pretty children as ever you see.”

“I always liked John,” said the young lady.  “But papa is so strict about some things!  He says he never will keep a man a day if he finds out that he drinks.”

She was quite silent for a minute, and then broke out: 

“I don’t care; it’s a good idea!  I say, Betty, do you know where John’s wife lives?”

“Yes, miss, I’ve been there often.”

“Well, then, this afternoon I’ll go with you and see if I can do anything for them.”

[Decoration]

SCENE II.

An attic room, neat and clean, but poorly furnished; a bed and a trundle-bed, a small cooking-stove, a shelf with a few dishes, one or two chairs and stools, a pale, thin woman working on a vest.

Her face is anxious; her thin hands tremble with weakness, and now and then, as she works, quiet tears drop, which she wipes quickly.  Poor people cannot afford to shed tears; it takes time and injures eyesight.

This is John Morley’s wife.  This morning he has risen and gone out in a desperate mood.  “No use to try,” he says.  “Didn’t I go a whole year and never touch a drop?  And now just because I fell once I’m kicked out!  No use to try.  When a fellow once trips, everybody gives him a kick.  Talk about love of Christ!  Who believes it?  Don’t see much love of Christ where I go.  Your Christians hit a fellow that’s down as hard as anybody.  It’s everybody for himself and devil take the hindmost.  Well, I’ll trudge up to the Brooklyn Navy Yard and see if they’ll take me on there—­if they won’t I might as well go to sea, or to the devil,” and out he flings.

“Mamma!” says a little voice, “what are we going to have for our Christmas?”

It is a little girl, with soft curly hair and bright, earnest eyes, that speaks.

A sturdy little fellow of four presses up to the mother’s knee and repeats the question, “Sha’n’t we have a Christmas, mother?”

It overcomes the poor woman; she leans forward and breaks into sobbing,—­ a tempest of sorrow, long suppressed, that shakes her weak frame as she thinks that her husband is out of work, desperate, discouraged, and tempted of the devil, that the rent is falling due, and only the poor pay of her needle to meet it with.  In one of those quick flashes which concentrate through the imagination the sorrows of years, she seems to see her little home broken up, her husband in the gutter, her children turned into the street.  At this moment there goes up from her heart a despairing cry, such as a poor, hunted, tired-out creature gives when brought to the last gasp of endurance.  It was like the shriek of the hare when the hounds are upon it.  She clasps her hands and cries out, “O my God, help me.”