However, they were all united in pretending to believe that it wasn’t reasonable to expect them yet.

Mother Devereaux listened respectfully to her husband and then she smiled and said, “Well, it won’t do any harm to have my oven hot.” So she hurried into the kitchen. And if she lingered before she lighted the oven to kneel by her work chair in the dark corner of the kitchen and pray for her girl, and her boy, and the stranger who was out in the storm with her boy, no one but God knew. She came back into the living room just as quietly and calmly as she had gone and sat down to listen to the singing again.

But when the song was finished Father said, “It’s Christmas Eve, Mother! Girls! Don’t you think we ought to be planning where to hang the stockings? How would it be if I were to put up six hooks around the fireplace to hang them on? There’s always so much fuss getting them hung, and the boys will be tired when they get in. Daryl, you and Ruth get the stockings together and sew some tapes or something on them to hang them by. Get one of Lance’s for the stranger, and have it all ready. He’ll probably be shy about producing his stocking. He won’t likely be prepared for that ceremony among strangers.”

“Oh, you think the stranger will stay all night, do you?” asked Ruth with a hint of dismay in her voice.

“Well, I don’t see how he could well help it, do you, seeing the morning isn’t so far away, and his car is broken down and has been hauled down to the village garage? I don’t suppose he’d feel quite like starting out again so soon on foot.”

Daryl whirled around and stared thoughtfully at her father, and then looked dubiously toward her mother.

“What about something to fill his stocking?” she asked, aghast.

“Oh, that’ll be easy enough. We’ll hunt around and find some little things. You might be thinking about it now. It’ll help fill up the time while we’re waiting.”

Brave Father, keeping up the courage of his little frightened woman household.

“What about Harold? You say he can’t get here, daughter?”

“No! He’s not coming!” Daryl spoke sharply. “Of course! We can give him Harold’s things! I hadn’t thought of that!” She said it in a matter-of-fact tone that did not deceive her mother, although it fell right in with what her father, bless his man soul, had been thinking.

“Why, sure! Of course that’s the solution if you think they’ll be appropriate. Well, I’ll just slip out to the barn and see how Chrystobel and the hens are doing. I don’t know but I ought to take the oil stove out there and light it. Lucky the kitchen shed opens into the barn, and I don’t have to bundle up to go outdoors. I know Mother here would raise the roof if I did.” He turned a nice old grin toward his wife, and not one of his adoring women was in the least deceived. They knew he was going out to look at the storm, and see what was the prospect of the wanderers reaching home. He put on his overcoat surreptitiously, too, and they heard him stamping into his galoshes, but they pretended not to hear while they bustled about getting stockings together and sewing loops on them. It was clever of Father Devereaux to think of that to occupy their time during that anxious waiting.

The little stir and bustle of everyday duties, no matter how trivial and unnecessary, was a relief, the running up and down stairs for stockings and searching for scissors and thimbles and needles and tape. And where was the thread? Not in its drawer in the sewing table. Oh, in the kitchen where Mother had it sewing up the vest of the turkey! A little laugh ringing out bravely was managed now and then, just as if everything was quite normal and natural, and those two weren’t out there in the storm at least two hours overdue. Oh, God! Aren’t You guiding them? Aren’t You going to answer our prayers?

Daryl’s heart cried out now and then in anguish. It seemed that everything had come upon her at once, and her life was ruined forever, yet as the hours went by and Lance did not return, his absence overtopped everything else. Her mind went back to the sane early fundamental things of her life, and the safe sweet home things. And if anything should happen to Lance, how could life go on! Gradually her other anguish, the one that when it first smote her seemed to her the most terrible sorrow that could ever come to her, seemed less important, a thing to shrink from, to keep from thinking about, but not to compare with her anxiety about her brother, which grew from minute to minute until somehow his peril seemed hopelessly her fault, though she knew it was not.

So she sewed tapes with trembling fingers on a pair of long stockings of Lance’s. They had bright red and orange and green stripes around them, and he never wore them because they were so loud. She made silly jokes about them, whether they would fit the stranger, as she talked in a high, unnatural voice, and tried not to look out the window nor hear the wind howling, tried not to see how fast the clock was racing. Near midnight now, almost Christmas morning, and the storm was worse than ever! Would her bright strong brother never come again?

But the mother in the shadows of the kitchen arose from her knees and went and stirred the soup. And the father coming in with a halo of snow around his white hair sang softly, clearly, with his sweet old voice:

“God’s way is the best way,

God’s way is the right way,

I’ll trust in Him always,

He knoweth the best.”

“I’ve made the coffee,” said his wife. “They ought to be here soon now, don’t you think, Father?”

“Yes, soon now,” said the old voice hopefully.

“Girls, have you got those stockings ready to hang?” called the mother. “Then you’d better come out here and get the bread and butter and things on the table.