a
frog with the toothache."

"Oh, Dr. Pierce, do you think you can cure him?" Mrs. Dore asked,
clasping her hands.

"Cure him!" Dr. Pierce answered with his jolliest laugh. "Of course
we can. He's not in half so bad a condition as Maida was when we
straightened her out. Greinschmidt taught us a whole bag of tricks.
Dicky could almost mend himself if he'd only stay still long enough.
Look at Maida. Would you ever think she'd been much worse than
Dicky?"

Everybody stared hard at Maida, seated on her father's knee, and she
dimpled and blushed under the observation. She was dressed all in
white--white ribbons, white sash, white socks and shoes, the softest,
filmiest white cobweb dress. Her hair streamed loose--a cascade of
delicate, clinging ringlets of the palest gold. Her big, gray eyes,
soft with the happiness of the long day, reflected the firelight.
Her cheeks had grown round as well as pink and dimpled.

She did not look sick.

"Oh, Dicky," she cried, "just think, you're going to be cured.
Didn't I tell you when my father saw you, he'd fix it all right? My
father's a magician!"

But Dicky could not answer. He was gulping furiously to keep back
the tears of delight. But he smiled his radiant smile. Billy took
everybody's attention away from him by turning an unexpected
cartwheel in the middle of the floor.

Finally, Maida announced that it was time for the tree. They formed
in line and marched into the shop to a tune that Billy thumped out
of the silver-toned old spinet.

I wish you could have heard the things the children said.

----------------------

The tree went close to the ceiling. Just above it, with arms
outstretched, swung a beautiful Christmas angel. Hanging from it
were all kinds of glittery, quivery, sparkly things in silver and
gold. Festooned about it were strings of pop corn and cranberries.
At every branch-tip glistened a long glass icicle. And the whole
thing was ablaze with candles and veiled in a mist of gold and
silver.

At the foot of the tree, groups of tiny figures in painted plaster
told the whole Christmas Day story from the moment of the first
sight of the star by the shepherds who watched their flocks to the
arrival, at the manger, of the Wise Men, bearing gold, frankincense
and myrrh.

Billy Potter disappeared for a moment and came in, presently, the
most chubby and pink-faced and blue-eyed of Santa Clauses, in purple
velvet trimmed with ermine,