“Dick Larrabee home?”

The blood started in Letty’s heart and sped hither and thither, warming her from head to foot.

“Yes, looking as fit as a fiddle; the way a man looks when things are coming his way.”

“But what did the card mean to him?  Did he seem to like Reba’s verses?”

“Yes, but I guess the card just spelled home to him; and he recognized this house in a minute, of course.  I showed him my card and he said:  ‘That’s Letty fast enough:  I know the cape.’  He recognized you in a minute, he said.”

He knew the cape!  Yes, the old cape had been close to his shoulder many a time.  He liked it and said it matched her hair.

“He was awfully funny about your ear, too!  I told him I never noticed women’s ears, and he said he did, when they were pretty, and their eyelashes, too.—­Anything remarkable about your eyelashes, Letty?”

“Nothing that I’m aware of!” said Letty laughingly, although she was fibbing and she knew it.

“And he said he’d call and say ‘Merry Christmas’ to you the first thing to-morrow; that he would have been here to-night but you’d know his father had to come first.  You don’t mind being second to the parson, do you?”

No, Letty didn’t mind.  Her heart was unaccountably light and glad, like a girl’s heart.  It was the Eve of Mary when all women are blest because of one.  The Wise Men brought gifts to the Child; Letty had often brought hers timidly, devoutly, trustfully, and perhaps to-night they were coming back to her!

[Illustration]

VIII

“Put the things down on the front steps,” said Dick to the driver as he neared the parsonage.  “If there’s nobody at home I’ll go on up to the church after I’ve got this stuff inside.”

“Got a key?”

“No, don’t need one.  I’ve picked all the locks with a penknife many a time.  Besides, the key is sure to be under the doormat.  Yes, here it is!  Of all the unaccountable customs I ever knew, that’s the most laughable!”

“Works all right for you!”

“Yes, and for all the other tramps,”—­and Dick opened the door and lifted in his belongings.  “Good-night,” he called to the driver; “I’ll walk up to the church after I’ve found out whether mother keeps the mince pie and cider apple sauce in the same old place.”

A few minutes later, his hunger partially stayed, Dick Larrabee locked the parsonage door and took the well-trodden path across the church common.  It was his father’s feet, he knew, that had worn the shoveled path so smooth; his kind, faithful feet that had sped to and fro on errands of mercy, never faltering in all the years.