A surprise holiday post! I am on Internet vacation this week. But it so happens that in the week leading up to Christmas, I wrote most of a short Christmas story (which didn’t turn out as short as I expected, incidentally), to which I’ve been trying to write an ending in my spare time this week. I very often get the impulse to write something Christmasy at this time of year! So I thought I’d share a few bits for December’s Snippets of Story. These are all from the same story, which is set in the 1930s; its working title is “Some Christmas Camouflage.”Kitty went to answer [the door], and found Professor Alden, looking rather like a snow-frosted barber pole in the long striped scarf that had wound itself several times around him with the wind.
He flicked over another page idly, with the pardonable air of world-weariness acquired over years of endeavoring to instill an appreciation for the past in endless successions of young people interested only in the present and their own part in the present.
But Wesley did not at once notice [the room’s] plainness nor the sparseness of the furniture, and that was perhaps because the light from the single lamp fell in such a way that it struck the gold hair of the girl sitting on the sofa, and in so doing seemed to fill the room with an aura of richness.
The icy fire-escape seemed to creak and rattle as if with annoyance on his way down, where it had been a willing conspirator on the way up.
As Wesley trudged back through the streets toward the college with his hands in his coat pockets, the street lamps, the lights in other windows, the faint moonlight now tinting the dark-blue sky all seemed cold and mocking lights, which before had been laughing and cheerful.