The publishers’ check to the minister’s wife had been accompanied by a dozen complimentary copies, but these had been sent to Reba’s Western friends and relations; and although the card was on many a marble-topped table in Beulah, it had not been bought by all the inhabitants, by any means.  Fifteen cents would purchase something useful, and Beulah did not contain many Croesuses.  Still, here the cards were,—­enough of them for everybody,—­with a linen handkerchief for every woman and every man in the meeting-house, and a dozen more sticking out of the pack, as the people in the front pews could plainly see.  Modest gifts, but plenty of them, and nobody knew from whence they came!  There was a buzzing in the church, a buzzing that grew louder and more persistent when Santa Claus threw a lace scarf around Mrs. Larrabee’s shoulders and approached her husband with a fine beaver collar in his hands:  hands that trembled, as everybody could see, when he buttoned the piece of fur around the old minister’s neck.

And the minister?  He had been half in, and half out of, a puzzling dream for ten minutes, and when those hands of Santa Claus touched him, his flesh quivered.  They reminded him of baby fingers that had crept around his neck years ago when he patiently walked the parsonage floor at night with his ailing child in his arms.  Every drop of blood in his veins called out for answer.  He looked above the white cotton beard and mustache to a pair of dark eyes; merry, mischievous, yet tender and soft; at a brown wavy lock escaping from the home-made wig.  Then those who were near heard a weak voice say, “My son!” and those who were far away observed Santa Claus tear off his wig and beard, heard him cry, “Father!”—­and, as Mrs. Todd said afterwards, saw him “fall on to the minister’s neck right there before the whole caboodle, an’ cling to him for all the world like an engaged couple, only they wouldn’t ‘a’ made so free in public.”

No ice but would have thawed in such an atmosphere!  Grown-up Beulah forgot how much trouble Dick Larrabee had caused in other days, and the children had found a friend for all time.  The extraordinary number of dolls, trumpets, handkerchiefs, and Christmas cards circulating in the meeting-house raised the temperature considerably, and induced a general feeling that if Dick Larrabee had really ever been a bit wild and reckless, he had evidently reformed, and prospered, besides.

Yes, no one but a kind and omniscient Providence could have so beautifully arranged Dick Larrabee’s homecoming, and so wisely superintended his complete reinstatement in the good graces of Beulah village.  A few maiden ladies felt that he had been a trifle immodest in embracing, and especially in kissing, his father in front of the congregation; venturing the conviction that kissing, an indecorous custom in any event, was especially lamentable in public.