CHAPTER X

Christmas Day came and went with a host of bitter-sweet memories for Claire Robson.  Not that she could look back on any holiday season with unalloyed happiness, but time had drawn the sting from the misfortune of the old days.  Through the mist of the years outlines softened, and she was more prone to measure the results by the slight harvest that their efforts had brought.  For instance, they had never been too poor to deny themselves the luxury of a tree.  And a tree to Mrs. Robson meant none of the scant, indifferent affairs that most of the neighbors found acceptable strung with a few strands of dingy popcorn and pasteboard ornaments.  No, the Robson tree was always an opulent work of art, freighted with bursting cornucopias and heavy glass balls and yards of quivering tinsel.  The money for all this dazzling beauty usually came a fortnight or so before the eventful day in the shape of a ten-dollar bill tucked away in the folds of Gertrude Sinclair’s annual letter to Mrs. Robson.  As Claire had grown older she had grown also impatient of the memory of her mother squandering what should have gone for thick shoes and warm plaid dresses upon the ephemeral joys of a Christmas tree.  But now she suddenly understood, and she felt glad for a mother courageous enough to lay hold upon the beautiful symbols of life at the expense of all that was hideously practical.  Shoes wore out and plaid dresses finally found their way to the rag-bag, but the glories of the spirit burned forever in the splendor of all this truant magnificence, and the years stretched back in a glittering procession of light-ladened fir-trees.

Then some time between Christmas and New-Year came the Christmas pantomime at the Tivoli, with its bewildering array of scantily clad fairies and dashing Amazons and languishing princes in pale-blue tights; to say nothing of the Queen Charlottes consumed between acts through faintly yellow straws.  How Claire would mark off each day on the calendar which brought her nearer to this triumph!  And what a hurry and bustle always ensued to get dinner over and be fully dressed and down to the box-office before even the doors were opened, so that they could get first choice of the unreserved seats which sold at twenty-five cents.  Then there would ensue the long, tedious wait in the dimly lighted cavern of the playhouse, smelling with a curious fascination of stale cigars and staler beer, and the thrill that the appearance of the orchestra produced, followed by the arrival of all the important personages fortunate enough to afford fifty-cent seats, which gave them the security to put off their appearance until the curtain was almost ready to rise.  And when the curtain really did rise upon the inevitable spectacle of villagers dancing upon the village green!  And Mrs. Robson carefully picked out in the chorus the stout sister of a former servant who had worked for her mother!  And the wicked old witch swept