She responded
with unwonted vigour, proving that she had been wide awake for some
time.
"I shall get up, Thomas," she declared, much to his surprise.
"It's pretty cold," said he. "Better stay where you are."
"I thought I heard Uncle Joe moving about in the sitting-room quite a
while ago," she said. "Do you suppose he needed a hot-water bottle?"
Mr. Bingle sighed. "If he did, you may be quite sure he would have got
the whole house up with his roars, Mary."
"You will take cold, Thomas, standing around without your--"
"I'll just run in and see if Uncle Joe needs anything," he
interrupted, a note of anxiety in his voice. Pausing at the bedroom
door, with his hand on the knob, he turned toward her with a merry
grin on his deeply-seamed face. His sparse hair was as tousled and his
eyes as full of mischief as any child's. "Maybe it was old Santa you
heard out there, Mary--filling the stockings."
She was too matter-of-fact for anything like that. "If you knew what
was good for you, Tom Bingle, you'd fill that pair of stockings lying
at the foot of the bed instead of running around in your bare feet,"
she said, pulling the covers up about her chin.
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