“Tell me what ails you.  Why, you aren’t any more like—­Don’t you remember that morning, a’most four years ago, when I found you sitting by the blackberry bushes on the Fontenoy road?  Yes, you do.  The blackberries were in bloom, and you had on a pink sunbonnet, and I broke you a lot of wild cherry for your very same parlour in there.  You had been crying that day, too,—­oh, I knew!—­but you plucked up spirit and put the wild cherry all around the parlour.  And now, look at you!—­you aren’t a partridge any longer, you’re a dove without a mate.  Well, why don’t you cry, little dove?”

“I don’t feel like crying,” said Vinie.  “There isn’t anything the matter with me.  I’m going to put the green stuff up, and Tom’s got ever so many wax candles and two bottles of Madeira, and you’ll come to supper—­”

“I’ll send you a brace of wild turkeys Christmas Eve.  I’ll shoot them over on Indian Run.”

Vinie shrank back.  “You look,” exclaimed Adam, “as though you were on Indian Run, and I had turned my gun on you!  Why did you go white and sick like that?”

He glanced at her again with keen, deep blue eyes.  “Now the colour has come back.  Were you frightened over there in those woods when you really were a bird?  Indian Run!  It is more than three months, isn’t it, since Mr. Cary’s death?”

“December,” answered Vinie, in a fluttering voice, “December, November, October, and part of September—­yeth, more than three months.  Suppose we go now and put the holly up?”

“Let’s stay here a little in the sun.  The holly won’t wither.  I don’t know a doorstep, East or West, that I like to sit on better than this.  There’s a variety of log cabins that I’m fond of, and maybe as many as four or five wigwams, but I’d like to grow old sitting in the sun before this little grey house!  It isn’t going to be long before the sap runs in the sugar trees and it’s spring.  Then all the pretty flowers will come up again and I’ll help you draw cool water from the well.  Don’t you ever wear that Spanish comb I brought you?”

“I’ve got it put away.  It’s lovely.”

“It oughtn’t to be put away.  It ought to be stuck there, dark shell above your yellow hair.  You’ll wear it, won’t you, Christmas Day?”

“Yeth, I’ll wear it, Mr. Adam.  Who’s coming now, Smut?”

“He hears a horse.  Wear the Spanish comb, and Tom shall brew us a bowl of punch, and we might get in some gay folk and a fiddle and have a dance.  I’d like to stand up with you, little partridge.”

Vinie put down her head and began to cry.  “It’s nothing, nothing!  There isn’t anything the matter!  Don’t think it, Mr. Adam.  I jutht get tired and cold, and Christmas isn’t like it used to be.  Now I’ve stopped—­and I’ll dance with you with pleasure, Mr. Adam.”

“That’s right,” said Adam.  “Now, you dry your eyes, and we’ll go into the parlour and I’ll make a fire, and we’ll put leaves and berries all around.  Who is it coming by?  Mr. Fairfax Cary.”