The Christmas Angel

Phoebe watched the two unhappily, sighed when they disappeared around the corner of the house, and set her bowl of butter upon the broad, flat rock which just missed being overflowed with water, and sighed again.

"I'm afraid it isn't going to work," she murmured aloud; for Phoebe, having lived much of her life in the loneliness which the West means to women, frequently talked to herself. "She's such a nice little thing--but the boys don't take to her like I thought they would. I don't see as she's having a mite of influence on their manners, unless it's to make them act worse, just to shock her. Clark USED to take off his hat when he come into the house most every time. And great grief! Now he'd wear it and his chaps and spurs to the table, if I didn't make him take them off. She's nice--she's most too nice. I've got to give that girl a good talking to."

She mounted the steps to the back porch, tried the kitchen door, and found it locked. She went around to the door on the west side, opposite the gate, found that also secured upon the inside, and passed grimly to the next.

"My grief! I didn't know any of these doors COULD be locked!" she muttered angrily. "They never have been before that I ever heard of." She stopped before Evadna's window, and saw, through a slit in the green blind, that the old-fashioned bureau had been pulled close before it. "My grief!" she whispered disgustedly, and retraced her steps to the east side, which, being next to the pond, was more secluded. She surveyed dryly a window left wide open there, gathered her brown-and-white calico dress close about her plump person, and crawled grimly through into the sitting-room, where, to the distress of Phoebe's order-loving soul, the carpet was daily well-sanded with the tread of boys' boots fresh from outdoors, and where cigarette stubs decorated every window-sill, and the stale odor of Peaceful's pipe was never long absent.