She had told Jim that she would marry him as she had agreed if he looked at matters in that way, and had passed Aggie Bemis's window leaning on Jim's arm with a side stare of triumph.
"Be you goin' to get married next month after what you said this mornin' ?" her sister asked, half joyfully, half anxiously.
"Yes, I be," was all Eva replied, and Fanny stared at her; she was so purely normal in her inconsistency as to seem almost the other thing.
The preparations for the wedding went on, but Eva never seemed as happy as she had done before the closing of Lloyd's.

Jim Tenny could get no more work, and neither could Andrew.
Fanny lamented that the shop had closed at that time of year, for she had planned a Christmas tree of unprecedented splendor for Ellen, but Mrs.Zelotes was to be depended upon as usual, and Andrew told his wife to make no difference.

"That little thing ain't goin' to be cheated nohow," he said one night after Ellen had gone to bed and his visiting companions of the cutting-room had happened in.
"I know my children won't get much," Joseph Atkins said, coughing as he spoke; "they wouldn't if Lloyd's hadn't shut down.

I never see the time when I could afford to make any account of Christmas, much as ever I could manage a turkey Thanksgiving day." "The poor that the Lord died for can't afford to keep his birthday; it is the rich that he's going to cast into outer darkness, that keep it for their own ends, and it's a blasphemy and a mockery," proclaimed Nahum Beals.

He was very excited that night, and would often spring to his feet and stride across the room.