Stand and Wait by Edward Everett Hale

This last Christmas party is Huldah's own. It is hers, at least, as much as it is any one's. There are five of them, nay, six, with equal right to precedence in the John o' Groat's house, where she has settled down. It is one of those comfortable houses which are still left three miles out from the old State House in Boston. It is not all on one floor; that would be, perhaps, too much like the golden courts of heaven. There are two stories; but they are connected by a central flight of stairs of easy tread (designed by Charles Cummings); so easy, and so stately withal, that, as you pass over them, you always bless the builder, and hardly know that you go up or down. Five large rooms on each floor give ample room for the five heads of the house, if, indeed, there be not six, as I said before.

Into this Saints' Rest, there have drifted together, by the eternal law of attraction, -- Huldah, and Ellen Philbrick (who was with her in Virginia, and in France, and has been, indeed, but little separated from her, except on duty, for twenty years), and with them three other friends. These women, -- well, I cannot introduce them to you without writing three stories of true romance, one for each. This quiet, strong, meditative, helpful saint, who is coming into the parlor now, is Helen Touro. She was left alone with her baby when "The Empire State" went down; and her husband was never heard of more. The love of that baby warmed her to the love of all others; and, when I first knew her, she was ruling over a home of babies, whose own mothers or fathers were not, -- always with a heart big enough to say there was room for one more waif in that sanctuary.