mean? He drew a long breath.

Christmas Eve! A dark dreary little room upstairs in a noisy tenement
house. A pale, thin woman on a shabby lounge vainly trying to quiet a
fretful child. The child is thin and pale, too, with a hard, racking
cough. There is a small fire in the stove, a very small fire; coal is so
high. The medicine stands on the shelf. "Medicine won't do much good,"
the doctor had said; "he needs beef and cream."

Jim's heart sank at the thought. He could almost hear the baby asking;
"Isn't papa coming soon? Isn't he, mamma?"

"Poor little kid!" Jim said, softly, under his breath. "And I shan't
have a thing to take home to him; nor Mary's violets, either. It'll be
the first Christmas that ever happened. I suppose that chap would think
it was ridiculous for me to be buying violets. He wouldn't understand
what the flowers mean to Mary. Perhaps he didn't notice I gave him too
much. That kind don't know how much they have. They just pull it out as
if it was newspaper."

The conductor went out into the snow to help the nurse, who was
assisting the old gentleman to the ground. Then the car swung on again.
Jim turned up the collar of his coat about his ears and stamped his
feet. There was the florist's shop where he had meant to buy the
violets, and the toy-shop was just around the corner.

A thought flashed across his tired brain. "Plenty of men would do it;
they do it every day. Nobody ever would be the poorer for it. This car
will be crowded going home. I needn't ring in every fare; nobody could
tell. But Mary! She wouldn't touch those violets if she knew. And she'd
know. I'd have to tell her. I couldn't keep it from her, she's that
quick."

He jumped off to adjust the trolley with a curious sense of unreality.
It couldn't be that he was really going home this Christmas Eve with
empty hands. Well, they must all suffer together for his carelessness.
It was his own fault, but it was hard. And he was so tired!

To his amazement he found his eyes were blurred as he watched the people
crowding into the car. What? Was he going to cry like a baby--he, a
great burly man of thirty years?

"It's no use," he thought. "I couldn't do it. The first time I gave Mary
violets was the night she said she'd marry me. I told her then I'd do
my best to make her proud of me. I guess she wouldn't be very proud of a
man who could cheat. She'd rather starve than have a ribbon she couldn't
pay for."

He rang up a dozen fares