“I never knew how I got off that train of cars.

“Well, I oughtn’t to have been scart—­it was the littlest, thinnest, palest, tremblingest woman you ever saw—­why, there wasn’t a Mrs. Scraggs on the face of the earth that couldn’t ‘a’ dandled her in her arms like a baby.

“‘Is this the Reverend Silas Hardcrop?’ says she.

“‘Yes, madam,’ says I, thinkin’ it best to humor her, even if she was small.

“’I wanted to meet you first—­I wanted to say—­to speak—­there’s something I felt I must tell you,’ she says.

“Thinks I:  ’No, you don’t.  So long’s I’ve got a gun in each hind pocket I reckon the men folks and me will get long all right, but private conversations with ladies is off the bill-of-fare.’  So I says: 

“‘Y-a-a-s?’ in a tone of voice to put out a bonfire.

“‘Oh, it doesn’t matter,’ she said quick and shaky; ’it was silly of me.  I only thought——­’ Well, she was tremblin’ with cold or somethin’, and kind of near cryin’, too—­one of them women that wears themselves out by botherin’ to be good, and if they are good, botherin’ about what ought to be done next.  In short, as the saying is, I forgot my part.

“‘Why, you poor little critter,’ says I; ’you’re near froze to death—­take a drop of this,’ pullin’ out a flask of Peg-leg’s best.

“‘What?’ she says, starting back in horror.  ‘Can that be whisky?’

“‘Madam!’ says I, rememberin’, ’how dast you?  That’s a prescription put up by my favorite physician—­a small dose will do you a large good.  Try a piece, and we’ll go in the station, where it’s warmer, I hope, and talk it over.’

“She strangled some, but downed a trifle.

“There was a good old lignite fire blazin’ away ’n the station.

“‘Now that you’ve been so kind to me,’ she says, ’I dare tell you what I thought.’

“She had stopped shiverin’—­Peg-leg’s best knocked shivers quick.

“’I don’t want you to think I do not believe in our tenets, because I do, I do!’ says she; ’but it’s been such a hard and weary year, with no brightness in it, and the old times come to me so, and they haven’t had anything—­really, you know, and it’s awful to think of Christmas going by without—­without—­I know it’s a Pagan festival, and that Christians should pass the day in meditation and fasting, but—­don’t you see?’

“‘Certainly,’ says I.  ’If there ever was a guilty party that didn’t do it, why, she’s not him—­you and me agree there, entirely.’

“‘I beg your pardon?’ says she, lookin’ at me with them scart-deer eyes of hers.  ‘I don’t quite understand—­I’m so stupid.’

“‘Yes, that’s what’s apt to come of vegetables,’ says I.  ’But tell me more about the Pagan festival.’

“I fancy Peg-leg’s best couraged her up some.

“’I don’t think it’s a Pagan festival for children to have fun and toys for Christmas.  I don’t,’ she says, ’I can’t.  And to think of them sitting there in that cold church for hours to-morrow—­ugh!’ she says.