“I feel better just having her around,” Papa confided in a surge of new spirits, but Grandma and Aunt Lois looked with hostile eyes at the intruder who knew more than they did about Daisy.

That very night Florrie, who had been weeping steadily and with almost mature understanding for her mother, was allowed to go see her, in the care of Mrs. Friend. Marcia and Lena had gone to bed, when the telephone ringing awoke them. Presently their aunt came upstairs and instructed them to get dressed. Their mother had had a spell of loneliness and wanted to see them at once. This rare suggestion, coming after ten o’clock, was most exciting and seemed proof that their mother, as always, was arranging a special treat for them. They struggled into their clothes, with leather leggings and rubbers, for a heavy snow was falling. They wanted to take along their Christmas skates, even though they hadn’t learned to skate, but Aunt Lois brusquely refused this. She would take them on the sled, she said, unless the snow was already too deep.

Outside was a magic night of crisp twinkly stars, snow-muffled cottages and white trees. Aunt Lois drew the sled down the middle of the icy pavement, for the sidewalks were filled with drifts. This was indeed growing up, Marcia felt, to be out after bedtime in the dead of night and in the middle of the street. She sat in front on the sled with Lena’s legs around her and a blanket tucked around them both, their breath curling out in the frosty air like smoke. Sounds were grown-up sounds, too, at this hour; the constant jangle of engine bells, a warm jolly sound that cut through blizzards and darkness like a dog’s welcome bark. Aunt Lois’s arctics crunched swiftly over the snow, and the snowflakes whirled like tiny stars around the street lamps. Down the street they could see their house with all the lights on, downstairs and up, as if it was Christmas Eve. Night was the best time of all to be outdoors, they thought, especially in winter and in London Junction where the smell of train smoke mingled with the tangy snow-flecked air and tickled the nose. Darkness, snow, smoke, and stars made a special London Junction smell, just as mittens and their wool mufflers drawn tightly up to their noses and moist from chewing had a fuzzy snowball taste.

At the door of the house they were met and shushed into silence by Mrs. Friend. Miss Hawkins stood primly by their mother’s bed, and Doctor Andrews was gravely holding their mother’s wrist. Grandma sat in the sewing chair in the corner, tears sliding down her cheeks, silently rocking Florrie.

“Mama doesn’t like Florrie rocked any more,” Lena stated. “Florrie’s too big to be rocked to sleep every night, Mama says. It will spoil her, won’t it, Papa?”

No one paid any attention to this. Papa sat on the other side of Mama, staring at her with an expression of bewilderment and pain. It was clear that something dreadful was happening but it seemed to be happening to Papa instead of to their mother.