The Christmas ballad of the stoker, even though writ from the fiery bowels of amidships and with a pen reeking with his own sweat, could find no holiday sale; nor the story of the waiter who serves the wine he dares only smell, and weary stands attendant into the joyous dawn. Such social sores the drayman, back bent to the Christmas box whose mysteries he must never know; the salesgirl standing on her swollen feet on into the midnight hour such sores may run and fester, but not to sicken public eyes.

For the Christmas spirit is the white flame of love burning in men’s hearts and may not be defiled. Shop-windows, magazine covers, and post-cards proclaim good-will to all men; bedtime stories crooned when little heads are drowsy are of Peace on Earth; corporations whose draymen’s backs are bent and whose salesgirls’ feet are swollen plaster each outgoing parcel with a Good-Will-Toward-Men stamp, and remove the stools from behind the counters to give space to more of the glittering merchandise.

In the Mammoth Store the stools have long since been removed and the holiday hysteria of Peace on Earth rose to its Christmas Eve climax, as a frenzied gale drives upward the sea into mountains of water, or scuds through black-hearted forests, bending them double in wild salaam.

Shoppers pushed through aisles so packed that the tide flowed back upon itself. A narrow-chested woman, caught in the whorl of one such vortex, fainted back against the bundle-laden arms that pressed her on. Above the thin orchestra of musical toys, the tramp of feet like an army marching, voices raucous from straining to be heard, a clock over the grand central stairway boomed nine, and the crowd pulled at its strength for a last hour of bartering, tearing, pushing, haggling, sweating.

Behind the counters workers sobbed in their throats and shifted from one swollen foot to the other. A cash-girl, her eyeballs glazed like those of a wounded hare in the torture of the chase, found a pile of pasteboard boxes behind a door, and with the indifference of exhaustion dropped on to it asleep. The tide flowed on, and ever and again back upon itself. A Santa Claus in a red canton-flannel coat lost his white canton-flannel beard, nor troubled to recover it. A woman trembling with the ague of terror drew an imitation bisque doll off a counter and into the shallow recesses of her cape, and the cool hand of the law darted after her and closed over her wrist and imitation bisque evidence. A prayer, a moan, the crowd parting and closing again.

The mammoth Christmas tree beneath the grand central stairway loped ever so slightly of its own gorgeousness, and the gold star at its apex titillated to the tramp-tramp of the army. Across the novelty leather-goods counter Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons leaned the blue-shaven, predacious face that head waiters and underfed salesgirls know best over a hot bird and a cold bottle. Men’s hands involuntarily close into tight fists when his well-pressed sleeve accidentally brushes their wives or sisters. Six-dollar-a-week salesgirls scrape their luscious rare birds to the bone, drink thin gold wine from thin, gold-edged glasses, and curse their God when the reckoning comes.

Behind the novelty leather-goods counter Mrs. Violet Smith, whose eyes were the woodland blue her name boasted, smiled back and leaned against the stock-shelves, her face upturned and like a tired flower.

“If the rush hadn’t quit right this minute I I couldn’t have lasted it out till closing, honest I couldn’t.”

“Poor tired little filly!”

“Even them ten minutes I got leave to go up to old Ingram’s office they made up for when I came back, and put another batch of them fifty-nine-cent leatherette purses out in the bin.”

“Poor little filly! What you need is a little speed. I wanna blow you to-night, Doll. You went once and you can make it twice. Come on, Doll, it ain’t every little girl I’d coax like this.”

“I Jimmie I ”

“I wanna blow you to-night, Doll. A poor little blue-eyed queenie like you, all froze up with nothing but a sick husband for a Christmas tree a poor little baby doll like you!”

“The kid, too, Jimmie, I oughtn’t!”

“Didn’t you tell me yourself it sleeps through the night like a whippersnapper? Don’t be a quitter Doll, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but ”

“A poor little baby doll like you! Why, there just ain’t nothing too good for you. Some little time I showed you last Tuesday night eh, Doll?”

“Yes Jimmie!”

“Well, if you think that was some evening, you watch me to-night!”

“I can’t go, Jimmie, him layin’ there, and the kid and all!”

“Didn’t I have to coax you last time just like to-night? And wasn’t you glad when you looked out and seen how blasted cold and icy it was that you lemme blow you wasn’t you?”

“Yes, Jimmie, but ”

“Didn’t I blow you to a bottle of bubble water to take home with you even after the big show was over, and wouldn’t I have blown you to yellow instead of the red if you hadn’t been a little cheap skate and wanted the red? Didn’t I pin a two-dollar bunch of hothouse grapes on your hat right out of the fruit-bowl? Didn’t I blow you for proper?”

“It was swell, Jimmie!”

“Well, I’m going to blow in my winnings on you to-night, Doll. It’s Christmas Eve and ”

“Yes, it’s Christmas Eve, Jimmie, and he he had one of his bad hemorrhages last night, and the kid, she she’s too little to know she’s getting cheated out of her Christmas, but, gee a a kid oughtta have something a tree or something.”

He leaned closer, hemmed in by the crowd. “It’s you oughtta have something, Doll.”

“I I never oughtta gone with you last Tuesday night, Jimmie. When I got home, he he was laying there like a rag.”

“I like you, Doll. I’m going to blow in the stack of my winnings on you that’s how much I like you. There ain’t nothing I wouldn’t do for a little filly like you.”

“Jimmie!”

“There ain’t!”

“Aw!”

“You wouldn’t be in the hole you are now, Doll, if you hadn’t sneaked off two years ago and done it while I wasn’t looking. Nearly two whole years you lemme lose track of you! That ain’t a nice way to treat a fellow that likes you.”

“We went boarding right away, Jimmie, and I only came back to the department two months ago, after he got so bad. ’Ain’t I told you how things just kinda happened?”

“I liked you myself, Doll, but you fell for a pair of shoulders over in the gents’ furnishing that wasn’t wide from nothing but padding. I could have told you there was all cotton batting and no lungs there. I could have told you.”

“Jimmie, ain’t you ashamed! Jimmie!”

“Aw, I was just kidding. But you ain’t real on that true-blue stuff, Doll. I can look into your eyes and see you’re bustin’ to lemme blow you. That’s what you get, sweetness, when you don’t ask your Uncle Fuller first. If you’d have asked me I could have told you he was weak in the chest when you married him. I could have told you that you’d be back here two years later selling leatherette vanity-cases and supportin’ a ”

“You! Jimmie Fitzgibbons, you ”

“Gad, Doll, go to it! When you color up like that you look like a rose a whole bouquet of them.”

“You you don’t know nothing about him. He he never knew he had a lung till a month after the kid came, and they moved the gents’ furnishing over by the Broadway door where the draught caught him.”

“Sure, he didn’t, Doll; no harm meant. That’s right, stand by him. I like to see it. Why, a little queen across the counter from you tole me you’d have married him if he’d had three bum lungs, that crazy you was!”

“Like fun! If me or him had dreamt he wasn’t sound we I wouldn’t be in this mess, I we I wouldn’t!”

Her little face was pale as a spray of jessamine against a dark background, and, try as she would to check them, tears sprang hot to her eyes, dew trembled on her lashes.

“Poor little filly!”

More tears rushed to her eyes, as if he had touched the wellsprings of her self-compassion. “You gotta excuse me, Jimmie. I ain’t cryin’, only I’m dog tired from nursin’ and drudgin’, drudgin’ and nursin’.”

“Hard luck, little un!”

“Him layin’ there and me tryin’ to to make things meet. You gotta excuse me, Jimmie, I’m done up.”

“That’s why I wanna blow you, sweetness. I can’t bear to see a little filly like you runnin’ with the odds dead agin her.”

“You been swell to me, Jimmie.”

“The sky’s my limit, Doll.”

“Maybe it wasn’t right for me to go with you last Tuesday night, him layin’ there, and the kid and all, but a girl’s gotta have something, don’t she, Jimmie? A girl that’s got on her shoulders what I got has gotta have something a laugh now and then!”

“That’s the goods, Doll. A little filly like you has got to.”

“Honest, the way I laughed when you stuck them hothouse grapes on my hat for trimming the other night, just like they didn’t cost nothing honest, the way I laughed gimme enough strength for a whole night’s nursin’. Honest, I felt like in the old days before before I was married.”

“Gad! if you had treated me white in them days, Doll if you hadn’t pulled that saint stuff on me and treated me cold storage there ain’t nothing I wouldn’t have done for you.”

“I I didn’t mean nothing, Jimmie.”

“I ain’t sore, Doll. I like you and I like your style. I always did, even in the days when you turned me down, you great big beautiful doll, you!”

“Aw you!”

“If you’re the real little sport I think you are, you’re going to lemme blow you to the liveliest Christmas a little queen like you ever seen. I didn’t make that winnin’ down in Atlanta for nothing. When I got the telegram I says to myself: ‘Here goes! I’m goin’ to make last Tuesday night look like a prayer-meeting, I am.’ Eh, Doll?”

“I I can’t, Jimmie. I ’S-s-s-s-h!”

A tide flowed in about the counter, separating them, and she was suddenly the center of a human whorl, a battle of shoulders and elbows and voices pitched high with gluttony. Mr. Fitzgibbons skirted its edge, patient.

Outside a flake floated down out of the dark pocket of packed clouds, then another and yet another, like timid kisses blown down upon the clownish brow of Broadway. A motorman shielded his eyes from the right merry whirl and swore in his throat. A fruit-cheeked girl paused in the flare of a Mammoth Store show-window, looked up at her lover and the flaky star that lit and died on his mustache, and laughed with the musical glee of a bird. A beggar slid farther out from his doorway and pushed his hat into the flux of the sidewalk. More flakes, dancing upward like suds blown in merriment from the palm of a hand light, lighter, mad, madder, weaving a blanket from God’s own loom, from God’s own fleece, whitening men’s shoulders with the heavenly fabric.

Mrs. Violet Smith cast startled eyes upon the powdered shoulders and snow-clumped shoes passing down the aisleway, and her hand flew to her throat as if to choke its gasp.

“My! It ain’t snowin’, is it? It ain’t snowin’?”

Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons wormed back to the counter. His voice was sunk to the golden mezzo of an amorous whisper.

“Snowin’ is right, Doll! A real dyed-in-the-wool white Christmas for you and me!”

“Snowin’!”

“Don’t you like snow, baby doll? Cheer up, I’m going to hire a taxicab by the hour. I’m ”

“Snowin’!”

She breathed inward, shivering, stricken, and her mouth, no older than a child’s, trembled at the corners and would not be composed.

“He he can’t stand no snow-storm. That’s why the doctor said if if we could get him South before the first one, if we could get him South before the first one South, where the sun shines and he could feel it clear through him, he Oh, ain’t I ain’t I in a mess!”

“Poor little filly!” He focused his small eyes upon her plump and throbbing throat. “Poor little filly, all winded!”

“I oh, I ”

“There’s the bell, Doll. Poor, tired little girlie, hurry and I’ll buy you a taxicab. Hear it there’s the closing bell! Merry Christmas, Doll! Merry Christmas!”

A convulsion tore through the store, like the violent asthma of a thirty-thousand-ton ocean liner breathing the last breath of her voyage and slipping alongside her pier. On that first stroke of ten a girl behind the candy-counter collapsed frankly, rocking her left foot in her lap, pressing its blains, and blubbering through her lips salty with her own bitter tears. A child, qualified by legislation and his fourteen years to brace his soft-boned shoulder against the flank of life, bent his young spine double to the weight of two iron exit doors that swung outward and open. A gale of snow and whistling air danced in. The crowd turned about, faced, thinned, died.

Mrs. Violet Smith turned a rose-white face to the flurry. “Snowin’!”

“A real, made-to-order white Christmas for you and me, Doll. The kind you read about.”

“It it don’t mean nothing to me, but ”

“Sure, it does; I’m goin’ to blow you right, Doll. Half the money is yourn, anyways. You made that winning down in Atlanta yesterday as much as me, girlie. If I hadn’t named that filly after you she’d ‘a’ been left at the post.”

“You you never had the right to name one of your race-horses after me. There ain’t a girl ever went out with you that you ’ain’t named one after. You you never had the right to!”

“I took it, kiddo, ’cause I like you! Gad! I like you! Nix, it ain’t every little girl I’d name one of my stable after. ’Violet!’ some little pony that, odds ag’in her and walks off with the money.”

“I honest, I sometimes I just wish I was dead!”

“No, you don’t, Doll. You know you just wanna go to-night, but you ’ain’t got the nerve. I wanna show you a Christmas Eve that’ll leave any Christmas Eve you ever spent at the post. Gad! look out there, will you? I’m going to taxicab you right through the fuzz of that there snow-storm if it costs every cent the filly won for us!”

Mrs. Smith leaned back against the shelves limp, as if the blood had run from her heart, weakening her, but her eyes the color of lake-water when summer’s moment is bluest. Her lips, that were meant to curve, straightened in a line of decision.

“I’ll go, Jimmie.”

“That’s the goods!”

“A girl’s just gotta have something to hold herself together, don’t she? It it ain’t like the kid and Harry was layin’ awake for me last Tuesday they was both asleep when I got home. They don’t let each other get lonesome, and Harry he There ain’t nothing much for me to do round home.”

“Now you’re talkin’ the English language, Doll.”

“I’ll go, Jimmie.”

He extended his cane at a sharper angle until it bent in upon itself, threatening to snap, and flung one gray-spatted ankle across the other.

“Sure, you’re going! A poor little filly like you, sound-kneed, sound-winded, and full of speed, and no thin’ but trouble for your Christmas stockin’. A poor little blue-eyed doll like you!”

“A girl’s gotta have something! You knew me before I was married, Jimmie, and there never was a girl more full of life.”

“Sure I knew you. But you was a little cold-storage queen and turned me down.”

“He Harry, he never asks me nothing when I come in, and the kid’s asleep, anyways.”

“Color up there a little, Doll. Where I’m going to take you there ain’t nothing but live ones. I’m going to take you to a place where the color scheme of your greenbacks has got to be yellow. Color up there, Doll. You ain’t going dead, are you?”

She stretched open her eyes to wide, laughing pools, plowed through the rear-counter debris of pasteboard boxes and tissue-paper, reached for her jacket and tan, boyish hat. A blowy, corn-colored curl caught like a tendril and curled round the brim.

“Going dead! Say, my middle name is Speed! It’s like Harry used to tell me when we wasn’t no farther along in the marriage game than his sneaking over here from the gents’ furnishing three times a day to price bill-folders he used to say that I was a live wire before Franklin flew his kite.”

“Doll!”

“I ain’t tired, Jimmie. Not countin’ the year and a half I was home before Harry took sick, I been through the Christmas hell just six times. The seventh don’t mean nothing in my life. I’ve seen ’em behind these very counters cursing Christmas with tears in their eyes and spending their merry holiday in bed trying to get some of the soreness out. It takes more than one Christmas to put me out of business.”

“Here, lemme tuck that curl in for you, Doll.”

“Quit!”

“Doll!”

“Quit, I say!”

“Color up there, girlie. Look live!”

She rubbed her palms briskly across her cheeks to generate a glow, and they warmed to color as peaches blush to the kiss of the sun.

“See!”

“Pink as cherries!”

“That’s right, kid me along.”

“Tried to dodge me to-night, didn’t you, kitten?”

“I I didn’t think I ought to go to-night.”

“It’s a good thing my feelings ain’t hurt easy.”

“Honest, Jimmie, I didn’t try to dodge you. I I only thought, with the girls here gabbling so much about last Tuesday night and all, it wouldn’t look right. And he had a spell last night again, and the doctor said we we ought to get him South before the first snow South, where the sun shines. But he’s got as much chance of gettin’ South as I have of climbing the South Pole!”

“A pretty little thing like you climbing the South Pole! I’d be there with field-glasses all-righty!”

“I I went up and talked and begged and begged and talked to old Ingram up at the Aid Society to-day, but the old skinflint says they can’t do nothing for an employee after he’s been out of his department more’n eight weeks, and and Harry’s been out twelve. He says the Society can’t do nothing no more, much less send him South. Just like a machine he talked. I could have killed him!”

“Poor little filly! I was that surprised when I seen you was back in the store again! There ain’t been a classy queen behind the counter since you left.”

“Aw, Jimmie, no wonder the girls say you got your race-horses beat for speed.”

“That’s me!”

Aisles thinned and the store relaxed into a bacchanalian chaos of trampled debris, merchandise strewn as if a flock of vultures had left their pickings a battlefield strewn with gewgaws and the tinsel of Christmastide, and reeking with foolish sweat.

“Button up there, Doll, and come on; it’s a swell night for Eskimos.”

Mr. Fitzgibbons folded over his own double-breasted coat, fitted his flat-brimmed derby hat on his well-oiled hair, drew a pair of gray suede gloves over his fingers, and hooked his slender cane to his arm.

“Ready, Doll?”

“The girls, Jimmie look at ’em rubbering and gabbling like ducks! It it ain’t like I could do any good at home, it ain’t.”

“I’d be the first to ship you there if you could. You know me, Doll!”

His words deadened her doubts like a soporific. She glanced about for the moment at the Dionysian spectacle of the Mammoth Store ravished to chaos by the holiday delirium; at the weary stream of shoppers and workers bending into the storm as they reached the doors; at the swift cancan of snowflakes dancing whitely and swiftly without; at Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons standing attendant. Then she smiled.

“Come on, Jimmie!”

“Come on yourself, Doll!”

Snow beat in their faces like shot as they emerged into the merry night.

She shivered in her thin coat. “Gee! ain’t it cold!”

“Not so you can notice it. Watch me, Doll!” He hailed a passing cab with a double flourish of cane and half lifted her in, his fingers closing tight over her arm. “Little Doll, now I got you! And we understand one another, don’t we, Doll?”

“Yes, Jimmie.”

She leaned back, quiescent, nor did his hold of her relax. A fairy etching of snow whitened the windows and wind-shield, and behind their security he leaned closer until she could feel the breath of his smile.

“Doll, we sure understand each other, don’t we, sweetness? Eh? Answer me, sweetness, don’t we? Eh? Eh?”

“Yes, Jimmie.”

Over the city bells tolled of Christmas.

The gentle Hestia of Christmas Eve snug beside her hearth, with little stockings dangling like a badly matched row of executed soldiers, the fire sinking into embers to facilitate the epic descent from the chimney, the breathing of dreaming children trembling for their to-morrow this gentle Hestia of a thousand, thousand Christmas Eves was not on the pay-roll of Maxwell’s thousand-dollar-a-week cabaret.

A pandering management, with its finger ever on the thick wrist of its public, substituted for the little gray lady of tradition the glittering novelty of full-lipped bacchantes whose wreaths were grape, and mistletoe commingling with the grape.

An electric fountain shot upward its iridescent spray, now green, now orange, now violet, and rained down again upon its own bosom and into a gilt basin shaped like a grotto with the sea weeping round it. And out of its foam, wraithlike, rose a marble Aphrodite, white limbed, bathed in light.

On the topmost of a flight of marble steps a woman sang of love who had defiled it. At candle-shaded tables thick tongues wagged through thick aromas and over thick foods, and as the drama was born rhythmic out of the noisy dithyramb, so through these heavy discords rose the tink of Venetian goblets, thin and pure the reedy music of grinning Pan blowing his pipes.

Rose-colored light lay like a blush of pleasure over a shining table spread beside the coping of the fount. A captain bowed with easy recognition and drew out two chairs. A statue-like waiter, born but to obey and, obeying, sweat, bowed less easy recognition and bent his spine to the backaching, heartbreaking angle of servitude. And through the gleaming maze of tables, light-footed as if her blood were foaming, Mrs. Violet Smith, tossing the curling ribbon of a jest over one shoulder. Following her Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons, smiling.

“Here, sit on this side of the table, Doll, so you can see the big show.”

“Gee!”

“It’s the best table in the room to see the staircase dancing.”

“Gee!”

“Told you I was going to show you a classy time to-night, didn’t I, Doll?”

“Yeh, but but I ain’t dressed for a splash like this, Jimmie, I I ain’t.”

“Say, they know me round here, Doll. They know I’d fall for a pair of eyes like yourn, if you was doing time on a rock-pile and I had to bring you in stripes.”

“I’m a sight!”

“If you wasn’t such a little pepper-box I’d blow you to a feather or two.”

“Ain’t no pepper-box!”

“You used to be, Doll. Two years back there wasn’t a girl behind the counter ever gimme the cold storage like you did. I liked your nerve, too, durned if I didn’t!”

“I I only thought you was guyin’.”

“I ’ain’t forgot, Doll, the time I asked you out to dinner one night when you was lookin’ pretty blue round the gills, and you turned me down so hard the whole department gimme the laugh. It’s a good thing I ’ain’t got no hard feelings.”

“Honest, Jimmie, I ”

“That was just before you stole the march on me with the Charley from the gents’ furnishing. I ain’t holding it against you, Doll, but you gotta be awful nice to me to make up for it, eh?”

A shower of rose-colored rain from the fountain threw its soft blush across her face.

“Aw, Jimmie, don’t rub it in! Ain’t I tryin’ hard enough to to square myself? I I was crazy with the heat two years ago. I aw, I Now it’s different. I It’s like you say, Jimmie, you ’ain’t got no hard feelings.” She swallowed a rising in her throat and took a sip of clear, cold water. A light film of tears swam in her eyes. “You ’ain’t, have you, Jimmie?”

He leaned across the table and out of the hearing of the attendant waiter. “Not if we understand each other, Doll. You stick to me and you’ll wear diamonds. Gad! I bet if I had two more fillies like Violet I’d run Diamond Pat Cassidy’s string of favorites back to pasture, you little queenie, you!”

Her timid glance darted like the hither and thither of a wind-blown leaf. “I ain’t much of a looker for a Broadway palace like you’ve brought me to, Jimmie. Look at ’em, all dolled up over there. Honest, Jimmie, I I feel ashamed.”

“Just you stick to me, peaches, and there ain’t one at that table that’s got on anything you can’t have twice over. I know that gang the pink queen and all. ‘Longside of you they look like stacks o’ bones tied up in a rag o’ satin.”

“Aw, Jimmie, look at ’em, so blond and all!”

“They’re a broken-winded bunch. Look at them bottles on their table! We’re going to have twice as many and only one color in our glasses, kiddo. Yellow, the same yellow as your hair, the kinda yellow that’s mostly gold. That’s the kind of bubble water we’re going to buy, kiddo!”

“Jimmie, such a spender!”

“That’s me!”

“It’s sure like the girls say the sky’s your limit.”

“Look, Doll, there’s the swellest little dancer in this town one swell little pal and a good sport. Watch her, kiddo watch her do that staircase dance. Ain’t she a lalapaloo!”

A buxom nymph of the grove, whose draperies floated from her like flesh-colored mist, spun to the wild passion of violins up the eight marble steps of the marble flight. A spotlight turned the entire range of the spectrum upon her. She was like a spinning tulip, her draperies folding her in a cup of sheerest petals, her limbs shining through.

“Classy, ain’t she, Doll?”

“Well, I guess!”

“Wanna meet her? There ain’t none of ’em that ’ain’t sat at my table many a time.”

“I like it better with just you, Jimmie.”

“Sweetness, don’t you look at me like that or you’ll get me so mixed up I’ll go out and buy the Metropolitan Tower for your Christmas present. Whatta you want for Christmas eh, Doll?”

“Aw, Jimmie, I don’t want nothing. I ’ain’t got no right to take nothing from you!” She played with the rich, unpronounceable foods on her plate and took a swallow of golden liquid to wash down her fiery confusion. “I ’ain’t got no right.”

“When I get to likin’ a little girl there ain’t nothing she ’ain’t got a right to.”

“Aw, Jimmie, when you talk like that I feel so so ”

“So what, Doll?”

“So so ”

“Gowann, Doll.”

“Aw, I can’t say it. You’ll think I’m fresh.”

But she regarded him with the nervous eyes of a gazelle and the red swam high up into her hair, and he drained his glass down to the bottom of its hollow stem and leaned his warming face closer.

“You treat me white, sweetness, and understand me right, and you won’t be sorry for nothing you say. Drink, Doll, drink to you ‘n’ me you ‘n’ me.”

Their bubble-thin glasses met in a tink and a pledge and her ready laughter rose in duet with his. She caught the lilt of a popular song from, the tenpiece orchestra and sang upward with the tirralirra of a lark, and the group at the adjoining table threw her a shout. Mr. Fitzgibbons beat a knife-and-fork tattoo on his plate and pinched her cheek lightly, gritting his teeth in a fine frenzy of delight.

“That’s the way to make ’em sit up and take notice, Doll, that’s the way I like ’em. Live! As live and frisky as colts!”

An attendant placed a souvenir of the occasion beside her plate a white wool bear, upright and with bold bead eyes and a flare of pink bow beneath its chin.

“Oh-h-h!”

“See, Doll, a Teddy bear! By Gad! a Teddy bear with his arms stretched out to hug her! Gad! if I was that Teddy I’d hug the daylight out of her, too! Gad! wouldn’t I!”

Mrs. Violet Smith wafted the bead-eyed toy a kiss, then slapped him sharply sidewise, toppling him in a heap, and her easy laughter mingled with her petulance.

“I wanna big grizzly, Jimmie; a great big brown grizzly bear with a grin. I wanna big brown grizzly.”

“’Ain’t you got one, Doll? A little white one with a pink bow. Here, let’s give him a drink!”

But the petulance grew upon her, nor would she be gainsaid. “I wanna big brown grizzly a great big brown one with a grin.”

“Aw, Doll, look at this little white one a classy little white one. Look at his nose, cutie, made out of a button. Look, ain’t that some nose! Look, ain’t ”

“A big brown one that I can dance with, Jimmie. I wanna dance. Gee! who could dance with a little dinky devil like that! I wanna dance, Jimmie, honest I could dance with a great big brown one if he was big enough. I Gee, I wanna dance. Jimmie, honest, I could dance with a great big brown one if he was big enough. I Gee! I wanna dance, Jimmie! Gee, I wanna ”

He whacked the table and flashed the twinkle of a wink to the waiter. “Gad! Doll, if you look at me with them frisky eyes I ”

“I wanna bear, Jimmie, a great big brown ”

“Waiter!”

“A great big brown one, Jimmie, with a grin. Tell him a great big brown one!”

“Waiter, that ain’t no kind of a souvenir to bring a lady a cheap bunch o’ wool like that. Bring her a great big brown one ”

“A great big brown one with a grin, tell him, Jimmie.”

“We have no brown ones, sir; only the small white ones for the ladies.”

“Get one, then! Get out and buy the biggest one they got on Broadway. Get out and get one then!”

“But, sir, the ”

“If the stores ain’t open, bust ’em open! I ain’t the best customer this joint has got not to get service when my lady friend wants to dance with a great big brown bear. If my lady friend can’t get a great big brown bear ”

“With a grin, Jimmie.”

“ with a grin, there are other places where she can get two great big brown bears if she wants ’em.”

“I’ll see, sir. I’ll see what I can do.”

Mr. Fitzgibbons brought a fist down upon the table so that the dishes rattled and the wine lopped out of the glasses. “Sure you’ll see, and quick, too! A great big brown bear, d’you hear? My lady friend wants to dance, don’t you, Doll? You wanna dance, and nothing but a great big brown bear won’t do eh, Doll?”

“With a grin, Jimmie!”

“With a grin, d’ye hear?” He whacked at her hand in delight and they laughed in right merry duet.

“Oh, Jimmie, you’re killing!”

“The sky’s my limit!”

She nibbled at a peach whose cheeks were pink as her own, and together from the great overflowing bowl of fruits they must trim her hat with its boyish brim. First, a heavy bunch of black hothouse grapes that she pinned deftly to the crown, a cluster of cherries, a purple plum, a tangerine stuck at a gay angle. They surveyed their foolish labor of caprice with little rills of laughter that rose and fell, and when she replaced her hat the cherries bobbed and kissed her cheek and the adjoining group leaned to her in the kinship of merriment.

“It’s a sweller trimming than I gave it last Tuesday, Jimmie. Look how tight it’s all pinned on. Look at the cherries! I’m going to blow ’em right off and then eat ’em eat ’em! Pf-f-f-f!”

She made as if to catch them with pursed lips, but they bobbed sidewise, and he regarded her with a swelling pride, then glanced about the room, pleased at the furor that followed her little antics.

“Gad, Doll, you’re a winner! I can pick ’em every time! You ain’t dolled up like the rest of ’em, but you’re a winner!”

“Oh-oh-oh!”

“That’s the ticket, waiter! I knew there wasn’t nothing round here that tin wouldn’t buy. I guess that ain’t some great big brown grizzly with a grin for you, Doll!”

“Oh-oh-oh!”

“I guess they didn’t rustle round when your Uncle Fuller began to get sore, and get a great big brown one for you! Gad! the biggest I ever seen almost as big as you, Doll! That’s the ticket! There ain’t anything in this town tin can’t buy!”

“Oh-oh-oh!” She lifted the huge toy off the silver tray held out to her and buried her shining face in the soft, silky wool. “Ain’t he a beauty? Ain’t he the softest, brownest beauty?”

“Now, peaches, now cherries, now you little fancy-fruit stand, there goes the music. Let’s see that dance!”

“Aw, Jimmie, I I was only kiddin’!”

“Kiddin’ nothing! Come now, Doll, I blew me ten bucks if I blew me a cent for that bunch of wool. Come now, let’s see that dance you been blowing about! Go as far as you like, Doll!”

“I honest, I was only guyin’, Jimmie.”

“Don’t be a quitter and make me sore, Doll! I wanna show ’em I pick the live ones every time. There’s the music!”

“Aw, I ”

“Go as far as you like, Doll. Here, gimme your hat! Go to it, sister. If you land in the fountain by mistake I’ll blow you to the swellest new duds on the Avenue.”

“I don’t know no dances no more, Jimmie. I I can’t dance with this big old thing anyways. Look, he’s almost as big as me!”

“Go it alone, then, Doll; but get up and show ’em. Get up and show ’em that I don’t pick nothing but the livest! Get up and show ’em, Doll; get up and show ’em!”

She set down her glass suddenly and pirouetted to her feet. “Here I go Jimmie!”

“Go to it, Doll!”

She leaped forward in her narrow little skirt, laughing. Chairs scraped back and a round of applause went with her. Knives and forks beat tattoo on frail glasses; a tinsel ball flung from across the room fell at her feet. She stooped to it, waved it, and pinned it to her bosom. Her hair, rich as Australian gold, half escaped its chignon and lay across her shoulders. She danced light as the breeze up the marble stairway, and at its climax the spotlight focused on her, covering her with the sheen of mica; then just as lightly down the steps again, so rapidly that her hair was tossed outward in a fairy-like effect of spun gold.

“Go to it, Doll. I’m here to back you!”

“Dare me, Jimmie?”

“Dare what?”

“Dare me?”

“Yeh, I dare you to do anything your little heart desires. Gad! you Gad! if she ’ain’t!”

Like a bird in flight she danced to the gold coping, paused like an audacious Undine in a moment of thrilled silence, and then into the purple and gold, violet and red rain of the electric fountain, her arms outstretched in a radiant tableau vivant, water crowding in about her knees, spray dancing on her upturned face.

“Gad! the little daredevil! I didn’t think she had it in her. Gad! the little devil!”

Clang! Clang! Tink! Tink! “Bravo, kiddo! Who-o-o-p!”

Shaking the spray out of her eyes, her hair, she emerged to a grand orchestral flare. The same obsequious hands that applauded her helped her from the gold coping. Waiters dared to smile behind their trays. Up to her knees her dark-cloth skirt clung dankly. Water glistened on her shoulders, spotted her blouse. Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons lay back in his chair, weak from merriment.

“Gad! I didn’t think she had it in her! Gad! I didn’t!”

“Bo-o-o-o!” She shook herself like a dainty spaniel, and he grasped the table to steady himself against his laughter.

“Gad! I didn’t!”

“Fine weather for ducks!”

“Gad!”

“I’m a nice girl and they treat me like a sponge.”

“Gad!”

“April weather we’re havin’, ain’t it?”

“You ain’t much wet, are you, Doll?”

“Bo-o-o-o!”

“Here, waiter, get the lady a coat or something. Gad! you’re the hit of the place, Doll! Aw, you ain’t cold, hon? Look, you ain’t even wet through what you shaking about?”

She drew inward little breaths of shivery glee. “I ain’t wet! Say, whatta you think that fountain’s spouting gasoline? I ain’t wet! Looka my hair curling up like it does in a rain-storm! Feel my skirt down here at the hem! Can you beat it? I ain’t wet, he says!”

“Here, drink this, Doll, and warm up.”

“No.”

She threw a dozen brilliant glances into the crowd, tossed an invitational nod to the group adjoining, and clapped her hands for the iridescent Christmas ball that dangled over their table.

“Here, send ’er over here, give you leave. I’m some little catcher myself.”

It bounded to her light as air, and she caught it deftly, tossed it ceilingward until it bounced against an incandescent bulb, tossed it again, caught it lightly, nor troubled to heed the merry shouts for its return.

From across the room some one threw her a great trailing ribbon of gilt paper. She bound it about her neck like a ruff. A Christmas star with a fluted tissue-paper edge floated into her lap. She wore it like an earring, waggling it slyly so that her curls were set a-bobbing.

“Gimme my bear.”

She hugged the woolly image to her as if she would beg its warmth, her teeth clicking the while with chill.

“Take a little swallow or two to warm you up, Doll!”

“Gee! I took your dare, Jimmie and and br-r-r-r!”

“A little swallow, Doll!”

“I took your dare, Jimmie, and I I can feel my skirt shrinking up like it was rigging. I I guess I’ll have to go to work next week in a sheet.”

“Didn’t I tell you I was backing this toot, sister?”

“I didn’t have no right to dive in there and spoil my duds, Jimmie. I ”

“Who had a better right?”

“Ain’t it just like a nut like me? But I ’ain’t had a live time for so long I I lost my head. But I ’ain’t got no right to spoil the only duds I got to my back. Looka this waist; the color’s running. I ought to I Oh, like I wasn’t in enough of a mess already without without acting the crazy nut!”

“Aw, Doll, cut the tragedy! Didn’t I tell you I was going to blow you to anything your little heart desires?”

“But the only duds I got to my back, Jimmie! Oh, ain’t I a nut when I get started, Jimmie! Ain’t I a nut!”

She regarded him with tears in her eyes and the wraith of a smile on her lips. A little drop escaped and she dashed it away and her smile broke out into sunshine.

“Ain’t I a nut, though!”

“You’re a real, full-blooded little winner, that’s what you are, and you can’t say I ain’t one, neither, Doll. Here’s your damages. Now go doll yourself up like a Christmas tree!”

He tossed a yellowback bill lightly into her lap, and she made a great show of rejecting it, even pushing it toward him across the table and to the floor.

“I Aw, what kind of a girl do you think I am? There, take your money. I honest, I What kind of a girl do you think I am?”

“Now, now, sister, don’t we understand each other? Them’s damages, kiddo. Wasn’t it me dared you? Ain’t it my fault you doused your duds?”

“Yes, but ”

“Aw, come now, Doll, don’t pull any of that stuff on me! You and me understand each other not?”

“Yes, but ”

“Take and forget it. You won it. That ain’t even interest on the filly’s winnings. Take it. I never started nothing in my life I couldn’t see the finish to. Take it and forget it!” He crammed the bill into her reluctant fingers, closed them over it, and sealed her little fist with a grandiose pat. “Forget it, Doll!”

But her lids fluttered and her confusion rose as if to choke her. “I honest, I Aw, what kind of a girl do you think I am?”

“I told you I think you’re the sweetest, livest little queen I know.”

“Aw!”

“Come on, little live wire. Put on your swell, hothouse-trimmed hat. I’m going to take you to a place farther up the street where there are two staircases and a fountain twice as big for you to puddle your little footsies in. Waiter here check get a cab! Here, little Doll, quit your shivering and shaking and lemme help you on lemme help you.”

She was suddenly pale, but tense-lipped like a woman who struggles on the edge of a swoon. “Jimmie, honest, I I’m shaking with chills! Jimmie I I can’t go in these duds, neither. I I gotta go home now. He’ll be wakin’ and I I gotta go home now. I’m all shaking.” In spite of herself her lips quivered and an ague shot through her body. “I I gotta go home now, Jimmie. Look at me shivering, all shivering!”

“Home now!” His eyes retreated behind a network of calculating wrinkles and she paled as she sat. “Home now? Say, Doll, I thought ”

“Honest, I wanna go to the other place, but I’m cold, Jimmie, and wet through. I gotta keep well, Jimmie, and I I oughtta go home.”

“Pah!” he said, spluttering out the end of a bitten cigar. “If I’d ‘a’ known you was a puny Doll like that!”

“I ain’t, Jimmie; I ”

“If I’d ‘a’ known you was that puny! It’s like I been sayin’, Doll, it ain’t like you and me don’t understand each other. I ”

“Sure we do, Jimmie. Honest, I To-morrow night I I can fix it so that that the sky’s my limit. I’ll meet you at Hinkley’s at eight, cross my heart on a wishbone, Jimmie.”

“Cross it!”

“There!”

“To-night, Jimmie, I’m chilled all in. Look at me in these duds, Jimmie. I’m cold. Oh, Jimmie, get me a cab quick, please; I’m co-old!”

She relaxed frankly into a chill that rumbled through her and jarred her knees together. A little rivulet of water oozed from her hair, zigzagged down her cheek and seeped into her blouse, but her blue-lipped smile persisted.

“Ain’t I a nut, though! But wait till you see me dolled up to-morrow night, Jimmie! Eight at Hinkley’s. I didn’t have a hunch how cold how cold that water was. Next time they gotta heat it.”

“Got to heat it is good, Doll! All I got to do is ask once, and my word’s law round here. Here, take a swallow and warm up, hon. You don’t need to go home if you warm up right.”

But the glass tinked against her teeth.

“I I can’t’”

“Gowann, kiddo!”

“I’ll take some home with me to warm me up when I get in bed, Jimmie. I Not that kind, give it to me red like you did last Tuesday night, without the sparkles. That’s the kind to warm me up. Order a bottle of red without the sparkles, Jimmie without the sparkles. I I can’t stand no more bubbles to-night.”

He helped her into her coat, and she leaned to him with a little movement of exhaustion that tightened his hold of her.

“Hurry a cab, waiter; the lady’s sick!”

“Ain’t I a nut, though!”

“Poor wet little Doll, I didn’t think you was much more’n damp! You gotta make up for this to-morrow night, Doll. Eight sharp, Doll, and no funny business to-morrow night.”

“Eight sharp!”

“Swell little sport you are, gettin’ the chills! But we understand each other, don’t we, Doll?”

“Sure, Jimmie!”

“Come on, hon. Shakin’ like a leaf, ain’t you? Wait till I get you out in the cab, I’ll warm you up. You look just like a Christmas doll, all rigged up in that hat and that star and all just like a Christmas doll.”

“My grizzly, my brown grizzly! Gee, I nearly forgot my grizzly!”

And she packed the huge toy under her arm, along with the iridescent ball and the gewgaws of her plunder, and out into the cab, where an attendant tucked a bottle of the red warming wine between them.

“Ready, Doll?”

“Ready.”

The silent storm had continued its silent work, weaving its blanket softer, deeper. The straggling pedestrians of early morning bent their heads into it and drove first paths through the immaculate mantle. The fronts of owl cars and cabs were coated with a sugary white rime. Broadway lay in a white lethargy that is her nearest approach to sleep.

Snow-plows were already abroad clearing tracks, dry snow-dust spinning from under them. At Longacre Square the flakes blew upward in spiral flurries, erratic, full of antics. The cab snorted, plunged, leaped forward. Mr. Fitzgibbons inclined toward the little huddle beside him.

“Sweetness, now I got you! You little sweetness you, now I got you, sweetness!”

“Jimmie! Quit! Quit! You you old you you ”

The breath of a forgotten perfume and associations webby with age stir through the lethargy of years. Memories faded as flowers lift their heads. The frail scent of mignonette roused with the dust of letters half a century old, and eyes too dim and watery to show the glaze of tears turn backward fifty years upon the mignonette-bowered scene of love’s young dream. A steel drawing-room car rolling through the clean and heavy stench of cow pasture, and a steady-eyed, white-haired capitalist, rolling on his rolling-stock, leans back against the upholstery and gazes with eyes tight closed upon a steady-eyed, brown-haired youngster herding in at eventide. The whiff of violets from a vender’s tray, and a young man dreams above his ledger. The reek of a passing brewer’s wagon, and white faces look after, suddenly famished.

When the familiar pungency of her boarding-house flowed in and round Mrs. Violet Smith, she paused for a moment and could not push through the oppression. Then, with the associations of odor crowding in about her, she stripped herself of her gewgaws, as if here even the tarnished tinsel of pleasure could have no place, and tiptoed up the weary wind of three unlighted flights and through the thick staleness of unaired halls.

At the third landing a broom and a dirty tangled debris of scrub-cloths lay on the topmost stair, as if an aching slavey had not found the strength to remove them. They caught the heel of her shoe, pitching her forward so that she fell sharply against her own door. In the gloom she paused for a palpitating moment, her hands pressing her breast, listening; then deposited her laden hat, the little pile of tinsel and the woolen bear on the floor outside the door.

“Vi! Vi! That you, dear?”

She pulled at her strength and opened the door suddenly, blowing in like a gale. “It’s me, darlin’.”

She was suddenly radiant as morning, and a figure on the bed in the far corner of the dim-lit room raised to greet her with vague, white-sleeved arms outstretched. She flew to their haven.

“Darlin’, darlin’, how you feeling?”

“Vi, poor tired little girl!”

“Harry, how you feeling, darlin’? They worked the force all night first time ever. How you feeling, darlin’ how?” And she burrowed kisses on the poor, white face, and then deep into the tiny crib and back again into the vague white arms. “Oh, my babies, both of you! How you feeling, darlin’? So worried I’ve been. And the kid! Oh, God, darlin’, I I been so busy rightin’ stock and all all night they kept the force. I got such news, darlin’. We should worry that it’s snowing! Such news, darlin’! The kid, Harry did Mrs. Quigley bring her milk on time? How you feeling, darlin’! You ’ain’t coughed, have you?”

He kissed her damp hair and turned her face up like a flower, so that his deep-sunk eyes read into hers. “I ’ain’t coughed once since noon, darlin’. We should worry if it snows is right! A doctor’s line of talk can’t knock me out. I can buck up without going South. I ’ain’t coughed once since noon, Vi; I ”

A strangling paroxysm shook him in mockery of his words, and she crouched low beside the bed, her face etched in the agony of bearing each rack and pain with him.

“Oh, my darlin’! Oh oh ”

“It’s all right now, Vi! It’s all right! It’s all right!”

“Oh, my darlin’, yes, yes, it’s all right now! All right now!”

She ran her hands over his face, as if to reassure herself of his very features, nor would she let him read into her streaming eyes.

“Lay quiet, Harry darlin’; it’s all right! Oh, my darlin’!”

“’S-s-s-s-h, Vi dear! Sure it’s all right. ’S-s-s-s-h! Don’t cry, Vi!”

“I I-oh oh ”

“‘S-s-s-s-h, darlin’! Don’t!”

“I oh, I can’t help it; but I ain’t cryin’, Harry, I ain’t!”

“All worn out and cold and wet, that’s what’s a-hurtin’ you. All worn out and hysterical and all! Poor little Vi-dee!”

“I I ain’t.”

“It’s all over now, Vi. See, I’m all right! Everything’s all right! Just my luck to have the first one since noon right when you get home. It’s all over now, Vi. Everything’s over, Christmas rush and all. Don’t you worry about the snow, neither, darlin’. I knew it would scare you up, but it takes more than a doctor’s line of talk to down-and-out me.”

“I I ain’t worryin’, darlin’.”

“You’re the one I been worryin’ about, Vi. It’s just like the kid was worried too cried when Mrs. Quigley sung her to sleep.”

“Oh, my baby! Oh, my baby!”

“Don’t worry, dear. She don’t even know it’s Christmas a little thing like her. And, anyways, look, Vi-dee, Mrs. Quigley brought her up that little stuffed lamb there. But she don’t even know it’s Christmas, dear; she don’t even know. You poor, tired little kiddo!”

“I ain’t tired.”

“I been lying here all night, sweet, thinking and thinking a little doll like you hustling and a big hulk like me lying here.”

“’S-s-s-s-h! Honest, Harry, it’s fun being back in the store again till you get well honest!”

“I never ought to let you done it in the beginning, darlin’. Remember that night, even when I was strong enough to move a ox team, I told you there was bum lungs ’way back somewhere in my family? I never ought to let you take a chance, Vi-dee I never ought!”

“‘S-s-s-s-h! Didn’t I say I’d marry you if you was playin’ hookey from the graveyard? Wasn’t that the answer I give you even when you was strong as a whole team?”

“I didn’t have no right to you, baby the swellest little peach in the store! I I didn’t have no right to you! Vi-dee, what’s the matter? You look like you got the horrors the horrors, hon! Vi-dee!”

“Oh, don’t, Harry, don’t. I I can’t stand it, hon. I I’m tired, darlin’, darlin’, but don’t look like that, darlin’. I got news I got news.”

’"S-s-s-s-h, baby, you’re all hysterical from overwork and all tired out from worry. There ain’t no need to worry, baby. Quigley’ll say it can go over another week. She ain’t dunning for board, she ain’t, baby.”

“I oh I ”

“Shaking all over, baby, just like you got the horrors! I bet you got scared when you see the snow coming and tackled Ingram to-day, and you’re blue. What you got the horrors about, baby Ingram?”

“No! No!”

“I told you not to ask the old skinflint. I told you they won’t do nothing after twelve weeks. I ain’t bluffed off by snow-storm, Vi. I don’t need South no more’n you do, I don’t, baby. I ain’t a dead one by a long shot yet! Vi, for God’s sake, why you got the horrors?”

She tried to find words and to smile at him through the hot rain of her tears, and the deep-rooted sobs that racked her subsided and she snuggled closer and burrowed into his pillow.

“I I can’t keep it no longer, darlin’. I ain’t cryin’, I I ’ain’t got the horrors. I’m laffin’. I I seen him, Harry Ingram I seen him just before closin’, and and oh, Harry, you won’t believe it, he said he I I’m laffin’ for joy, Harry!”

“What? What, Vi? What?”

She fumbled into the bosom of her blouse and slid a small folded square of yellowback bill into his hand.

“What? What, Vi? What?”

“A cool hundred, darlin’. Ingram the Aid Society, because it’s Christmas, darlin’. They opened up a cool hundred! We we can light out To-morrow, darlin’. A cool hundred! Old Ingram, the old skinflint, he opened up like like a oyster. South, all of us, to-morrow, darlin’; it ain’t nothing for me to get a job South. When I seen it was snowin’ I’d ‘a’ killed somebody to get it. I I had to have it and we got it, darlin’, we we got it a cool hundred!”

He lay back on the pillow, suddenly limp, the bill fluttering to the coverlet, and she slid her arm beneath his head.

“You could have knocked me down, too, darlin’. Easy, just like that he forked over. ‘What’s a Aid Society for?’ he kept sayin’. ’What’s a Aid Society for?’”

“Vi, I ”

“Don’t cry, darlin’, don’t cry. I just can’t stand it!”

“I ”

“’S-s-s-s-h! Easy, just like that he gimme it, darlin’.”

“And me lying here hatin’ him for a skinflint and his store for a bloodsucker and the Aid Society for a fake!”

“Yes, yes, darlin’.”

“I feel new already, Vi. I can feel the sun already shining through me. If he was here, I I could just kiss his hand; that’s how it feels for a fellow to get his nerve back. I got my chance now, Vi; there ain’t nothing can keep me down. Just like he says I’ll be a new man out there. Look, hon, just talking about it! Feel how I got some strength back already. An hour ago I couldn’t hold you like this.”

“Oh, my darlin’!”

He sat up suddenly in bed and drew her into his arms and she laid her cheek against his, and in the silence, from the trundle crib beside them, the breathing of a child rose softly, fell softly.

“I I blew us to a real Christmas, darlin’, us and the kid. I I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t bear to have her wake up without it, Harry, her and you and me.”

“A real Christmas, baby!”

“Red wine for you, darlin’, like I brought you last Tuesday night and warmed you up so nice. The kind the doctor says is so grand for you, darlin’ red wine without bubbles like he says you gotta have.”

“Red wine!”

“Yeh, and black grapes like I brought you last Tuesday, and like he says you oughtta have black grapes and swell fruit that’s good for you, darlin’.”

“A real blow-out, Vi-dee.”

“A bear for the kid, Harry!”

“Vi!”

“Yeh, a real brown grizz, with the grin and all, like she cried for in the window that Sunday a real big brown one with the grin and all.”

“That cost a real bunch of money, sweet!”

“Yeh, I blew me like sixty for it, hon, but she cried for it that Sunday and she had to have a Christmas, didn’t she, darlin’, even if she is too little. It it would ‘a’ broke my heart to have her wake up to-morrow without one.”

He regarded her through the glaze of tears. “My little kiddo!”

’"S-s-s-s-h!”

“It just don’t seem fair for you to have to ”

“‘S-s-s-s-h! Everything’s fair, darlin’, in love and war. All the rules for the game of living ain’t written down the Eleventh Commandment and the Twelfth Commandment and the Ninth Commandment.”

“My little kiddo!”

“To-morrow, Harry, to-morrow, Harry, we’re going! South, darlin’, where he says the sun is going to warm you through and through. To-morrow, darlin’!”

“The next day, sweetness. You’re all worn out and to-morrow’s Christmas, and ”

But the shivering took hold of her again, and when she pressed her hand over his mouth he could feel it trembling.

“To-morrow, darlin’, to-morrow before eight. Every day counts. Promise me, darlin’. I I just can’t live if you don’t. To-morrow before eight. Promise me, darlin’! Oh, promise me, darlin’!”

“Poor, tired little kiddo, to-morrow before eight, then, to-morrow before eight we go.”

Her head relaxed.

“You’re tired out, darlin’. Get to bed, baby. We got a big day to-morrow. We got a big day to-morrow, darlin’! Get to bed, Vi-dee.”

“I wanna spread out her Christmas first, Harry. I want her to see it when she wakes up. I couldn’t stand her not seem’ it.”

She scurried to the hall and back again, and at the foot of the bed she spread her gaudy wares: An iridescent rubber ball glowing with six colors; a ribbon of gilt paper festooned to the crib; a gleaming Christmas star that dangled and gave out radiance; a huge brown bear standing upright, and with bead eyes and a grin.