Christie's Christmas Quotes

“Where had he been all the two years?” demanded Christie, the spirit of the coming woman blazing in her eyes. “I wouldn’t have let him kiss me if he had stayed away all that time, and left me alone.” “Oh, he had been sick, and robbed by a highwayman, and almost killed, and I don’t know what all had happened. He couldn’t help it. And he was rich; he had found a place in the gold mine that nobody knew about, and it had lots of gold. They were married, he and Jennie, and they sent Ben to school, and he had no end of a good time and all the toast and eggs he wanted.” “It is only in books that such things happen,” said Christie, turning cynical, though there was a bit of wistfulness in her voice. “Nobody ever comes knocking at our door with some wonderful news. I wish there would, but I don’t expect it.”
― Pansy, Christie's Christmas

“Oh, yes, I know,” Christie said soothingly. “Mother has had more wonderful sleigh rides than ever Wells Burton had, and more of them. Just think of the winter when she took one the third day of November, and another on the third day of April, and could have taken them any time between! That was snow for you! But then, it was a good while ago, and sometimes it seems to me as though the world was changed now, and there wasn’t so much snow as that anywhere; but Wells Burton was down there only last winter, and had these rides.”
― Pansy, Christie's Christmas

“Of course,” said Karl. “They built the new house for the summer. They didn’t mean to stay here in the winter at all. Nick told me last night; he says they just came down to settle it, and see to things; and the sick young man took a fancy to stay, so they all stayed. Nick said he didn’t think it would last long, but he guessed maybe they would stay all winter.” “Is there a sick young man?” Christie’s voice was changing from wistfulness to pity. “Yes, there is. He can’t walk, only on crutches, and looks pale and weak; and when he goes into the city, Nick says some great strong man takes him right in his arms and lifts him into the cars; and he is twenty years old.” “Poor young man!” said Christie. And she envied the Burton family no more.”
― Pansy, Christie's Christmas

“They are curious things, days are; like enough you may see something today that will help you along all your life; and for the matter of that, you might see plenty of things to hinder you all your life. That’s what makes such solemn business of living. Only there is one comfort: you can shut your eyes to the evil things, and say, I won’t remember one of them; I have nothing to do with them. And the good things you can mark and lay away in your mind for future use.”
― Pansy, Christie's Christmas

“your old grandfather, you know, who died before you were born—he used to say to me, ‘Learn all you can, John, about anything and everything. There is no telling when a chance may pop up for you to use what you thought you never would use.’ It’s a good rule. I practiced on it once when I saw a man making a wagon. I watched just how he fixed the wheel and the holes for the nails, and everything, and I said, right out loud, ‘It isn’t anyways likely that I shall ever make a wagon, but then I might as well know how to do it. And it wasn’t a week after that we broke down going across the prairie, your mother and me and two children; and if I hadn’t known just how to fix that wheel we would have frozen to death likely enough before we could get anywhere.”
― Pansy, Christie's Christmas

“Christie,” said Mr. Keith, “come here and tell us what you would do if you were told to choose one book out of all there were in the world, because the rest were to be burned.” “Why!” said Christie. “How dreadful! Oh, I would take the Bible, of course.” “Why ‘of course?’” “Oh, because it is the only book that shows us the way to Heaven; and we could get along without knowing anything else, if we knew what was in the Bible; and if we knew all that there was in all the other books, and had no Bible, in a little bit of a while what good would it do us?” “Sure enough; but do you believe these boys don’t think so!” Christie turned on them two troubled eyes. Wells laughed, but Karl said stoutly, “Why, we didn’t say any such thing!”
― Pansy, Christie's Christmas

“Karl opened his eyes wider, and Wells questioned: “Why, you don’t suppose the Bible will be taken to Heaven, do you?” Mr. Keith laughed a little. “Well, as to that, I don’t know as it would be a very interesting book in Heaven. We shall probably not care much more about it than we would for a good guide book about Europe, after it had shown us the way there, and we were perfectly familiar with the country and had not the least desire to go from it to any other country. I meant that it was the only book which told us anything about the other world where all our life is to be spent, except the very little bit that we spend on this side. It is strange to be so taken up with the things we are to use here, that we forget all about what we are here for, and forget to get ready for our journey; now isn’t it?”
― Pansy, Christie's Christmas

“I don’t understand writing letters very well,” Christie explained. “This is the first one I ever wrote, and I kept forgetting it was a letter and thought I was talking with him. He talked to me a good deal on the cars, and seemed to want to know about the children and everything.” “Of course he did,” Mr. Keith said, and then he added something over which Christie pondered curiously for many a day. “See here, Christie, if I were you, I would not try to learn how to write letters, I would just keep on talking to people when I wrote to them; I think it is the best way for you.”
― Pansy, Christie's Christmas

“Christie did not know before that so many things could be crowded into a basket. Bread and butter, piles of it; a soup-plate piled high with slices of ham, thin, and done to a crisp, and smelling, oh, so appetizing! Sheets of gingerbread, great squares of cheese, a bowl of doughnuts, another bowl of quince sauce, and a pail full of milk. “Mother said you could give some to anybody you pleased,” explained Sarah Ann, who seemed to have recovered her spirits. “She said father wouldn’t grudge anything to the girl who saved Jimmy from getting hurt. My, but I was scared!” she added confidentially. “Whose baby is that? Isn’t he your little brother? What makes him so good with you if he don’t belong? Jimmy would yell awful if a strange girl took him. My sakes! I hope his mother will find him. Do you mean to keep him always if she doesn’t, and bring him up for yours? Wouldn’t that be funny, for a little girl like you to adopt a baby! Oh, wouldn’t it?” What a tongue Sarah Ann had!”
― Pansy, Christie's Christmas

“It’s a forlorn little place,” he said, trying to raise himself on one elbow to see it, frowning deeply with pain as he did so. “I don’t believe they have any milk there that is fit to drink. Besides, how could a body get to it? They would get up to their ears in mud. Those fields look as though they had no bottom to them. My, how quick I would skip over there if I had the use of my feet!” Christie could not help smiling again at the apparent contradictions in his words; but she kept looking out at the little house, between her soothing of the baby.”
― Pansy, Christie's Christmas

“But I know this: the more you pray, the surer you get that Jesus stays right beside you and listens to all you say. I’m a great deal surer of this than I used to be, and it keeps growing surer all the time.”
― Pansy, Christie's Christmas

“That is just what baby did not know, and in spite of the kiss, he made up his mind to cry. It was very distressing. Christie walked up and down in the bit of a space, and cuddled the poor fellow, and whispered loving words to him, and cooed a lullaby in to his ear, but he would have none of them. He wanted just one thing, and that was his mother’s face. The gentlemen began to interest themselves in the matter, though the velvet-dressed young lady was still deep in her Seaside Library, only taking time to dart a frown at baby for being so noisy. One and another asked who had been with the child, and what had become of her; and Wells told his story about seeing her leave the car at the last station. “A case of desertion,” said one man, looking severely at Christie as though she might be the cause; but she looked back at him out very cross eyes, and was glad that she did. The idea of any mother deserting her baby!”
― Pansy, Christie's Christmas