[Illustration: The open fire]

II

THE OPEN FIRE

It is a January night.

". . . . . . . Enclosed
From Chaos and the inroad of Darkness old,"

we sit with our book before the fire. Outside in the night ghostly
shapes pass by, ghostly faces press against the window, and at the
corners of the house ghostly voices pause for parley, muttering thickly
through the swirl and smother of the snow. Inside burns the fire,
kindling into glorious pink and white peonies on the nearest wall and
glowing warm and sweet on her face as she reads. The children are in
bed. She is reading aloud to me:

"'I wish the good old times would come again,' she said, 'when we were
not quite so rich. I do not mean that I want to be poor, but there was
a middle state'--so she was pleased to ramble on--'in which, I am sure,
we were a great deal happier.'"

Her eyes left the familiar page, wandering far away beyond the fire.

"Is it so hard to bear up under two thousand five hundred a year?" I
asked.