“Do you really think he’ll have a happier Christmas, mamma?”

“Yes, I truly think so.  We are so made that we cannot do a kind act without feeling the better for it.”

“Well, I think he was a queer sort of a man if he was kind.  I never knew any one to walk so fast.  I spoke to him once, but he did not answer.  Perhaps the wind roared so he couldn’t hear me.”

“No doubt he was hurrying home to his wife and children,” she said with a deep sigh.

When his boy disappeared within the door of the cottage, Marlow turned and walked rapidly toward the city, first going to the grocery at which he had been in the habit of purchasing his supplies.  The merchant stared for a moment, then stepped forward and greeted his customer warmly.

“Well,” he said, after his first exclamations of surprise were over, “the snow has made you almost as white as a ghost; but I’m glad you’re not one.  We scarce ever thought to see you again.”

“Has my wife an open account here now?” was the brief response.

“Yes, and it might have been much larger.  I’ve told her so too.  She stopped taking credit some time ago, and when she’s had a dollar or two to spare she’s paid it on the old score.  She bought so little that I said to her once that she need not go elsewhere to buy; that I’ d sell to her as cheap as any one:  that I believed you’d come back all right, and if you didn’t she could pay me when she could.  What do you think she did?  Why, she burst out crying, and said, ’God bless you, sir, for saying my husband will come back!  So many have discouraged me.’  I declare to you her feeling was so right down genuine that I had to mop my own eyes.  But she wouldn’t take any more credit, and she bought so little that I’ve been troubled.  I’d have sent her something, but your wife somehow ain’t one of them kind that you can give things to, and—­”

Marlow interrupted the good-hearted, garrulous shopman by saying significantly, “Come with me to your back-office”; for the soldier feared that some one might enter who would recognize him and carry the tidings to his home prematurely.

“Mr. Wilkins,” he said rapidly, “I wanted to find out if you too had thriftily shut down on a soldier’s wife.  You shall not regret your kindness.”

“Hang it all!” broke in Wilkins, with compunction, “I haven’t been very kind.  I ought to have gone and seen your wife and found out how things were; and I meant to, but I’ve been so confoundedly busy—­”

“No matter now; I’ve not a moment to spare.  You must help me to break the news of my return in my own way.  I mean they shall have such a Christmas in the little cottage as was never known in this town.  You could send a load right over there, couldn’t you?”

“Certainly, certainly,” said Wilkins, under the impulse of both business thrift and goodwill; and a list of tea, coffee, sugar, flour, bread, cakes, apples, etc., was dashed off rapidly; and Marlow had the satisfaction of seeing the errand-boy, the two clerks, and the proprietor himself busily working to fill the order in the shortest possible space of time.