Page:Letters from an Oregon Ranch.djvu/116

 Meantime Tom had donned the scarlet bib, and a voice was saying, “Well, I don’t know how you feel, but that thing would be gall and wormwood to me.”

“Think so, Bert? It is balm of Gilead compared with the note that came from the hand that dealt the blow.”

Being all in the same boat, we grew rather jolly over it, and began laughingly to picture Christmases to come, when we should sit around this fireplace surrounded by such heart-rending tokens of affection as bottles of liniment, porous plasters, hot-water bottles, stout canes with arched necks, spectacle cases, red flannel nightcaps, earmuffs, and woollen scarfs and nubias to wind about our neuralgic heads. Of course old people wouldn’t be supposed to care for works of fiction, and they would send us “Pilgrim’s Progress” in very large type, “No Cross No Crown,” “FoxFoxe [sic]’s Book of Martyrs,” “Stepping Heavenward,” and similarly consoling literature.

At dinner-time the heavens grew black, the rain was pouring in torrents, and Mary and I were glad that we had previously arranged for lighting the dining-room. With candles and lamps blazing, radiating cheerfulness, our decorations showed up finely. The “Plymouth Rock,” occupying a position of honor, tried hard to look as big as a turkey; we stood by him loyally, praising his appearance and reviling turkey. When the time for dessert arrived and the steaming plum