Just Sixteen

HE first real snow-storm of the winter had come to Sandyport by the Sea.It had been a late and merciful autumn. Till well into November the leaves still clung to theirboughs, honeysuckles made shady coverts on trellises, and put forth now and then an orange andmilk-white blossom full of frosty sweetness; the grass was still green where the snow allowed it to beseen. Thick and fast fell the wind-blown flakes on the lightly frozen ground. The patter and beat ofthe flying storm was a joyous sound to children who owned sleds and had been waiting the chanceto use them. Many a boy's face looked out as the dusk fell, to make sure that the storm continued;and many a bright voice cried, "Hurrah! It's coming down harder than ever! To-morrow it will besplendid!" Stable-men were shaking out fur robes and arranging cutters. Already the fitful sound ofsleigh-bells could be heard; and all the world-the world of Sandyport that is-was preparing togive the in-coming winter a gay welcome.But in one house in an old-fashioned but still respectable street no one seemed inclined to join inthe general merry-making. Only two lights broke its darkness: one shone from the kitchen at theback, where, beside a kerosene lamp, Bethia Kendrick, the old-time servitor of the Talcott family, was gloomily darning stockings, and otherwise making ready for departure on the morrow. Theother and fainter glow came from the front room, where without any lamp Georgie Talcott sat alonebeside her fire.It was a little fire, and built of rather queer materials. There were bits of lath and box-covers, fence-pickets split in two, shavings, pasteboard clippings, and on top of all, half of an old choppingbowl. The light material burned out fast, and had to be continually replenished from the basketwhich stood on one side the grate.Georgie, in fact, was burning up the odds and ends of her old life before leaving it behindforever. She was to quit the house on the morrow; and there was something significant to her, andvery sorrowful, in this disposal of its shreds and fragments; they meant so little to other people, andso very much to her. The old chopping-bowl, for instance, -her thoughts went back from it to thefirst time she had ever been permitted to join in the making of the Christmas pies. She saw hermother, still a young woman then, and pretty with the faded elegance which had been hercharacteristic, weighing the sugar and plums, and slicing the citron, while her own daring little handsplied the chopper in that very bowl. What joy there was in those vigorous dabs and cross-way cuts!how she had liked to do it! And now, the pretty mother, faded and gray, lay under the frozen turf, on which the snow-flakes were thickly falling. There could be no more Christmases for Georgie inthe old house; it was sold, and to-morrow would close its doors behind her fore