Читать книгу From the Land of the Snow-Pearls: Tales from Puget Sound онлайн

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He promised her solemnly that he would not drink a drop that Christmas—so solemnly that she believed him. He had helped her to wash the dishes and put the children to bed. And he had kissed her.

Her face had been radiant when they came into Mr. Jenkins’s store. That poor, gray face with its sunken cheeks and eyes! They bought a turkey—and with what anxious care she had selected it, testing its tenderness, balancing it on her bony hands, examining the scales with keen, narrowed eyes when it was weighed; and a quart of cranberries, a can of mince meat and a can of plum pudding, a head of celery, a pint of Olympia oysters, candy, nuts—and then the toys! She trembled with eagerness. Her husband stood watching her, smiling good-humoredly, his hands in his pockets. Mr. Jenkins indulged in some serious speculation as to where the money was coming from to pay for all this “blow-out”. He set his lips together and resolved that the “blow-out” should not leave the store, under any amount of promises, until the cash paying for it was in his cash-drawer.