aving no poor to invite to dinner we must necessarily
try the rich. That's logical, isn't it?"

"Who?" asked Harriet, which is just like a woman. Whenever you get a
good healthy argument started with her, she will suddenly short-circuit
it, and want to know if you mean Mr. Smith, or Joe Perkins's boys, which
I maintain is _not_ logical.

"Well, there are the Starkweathers," I said.

"David!"

"They're rich, aren't they?"

"Yes, but you know how they live--what dinners they have--and besides,
they probably have a houseful of company."

"Weren't you telling me the other day how many people who were really
suffering were too proud to let anyone know about it? Weren't you
advising the necessity of getting acquainted with people and finding
out--tactfully, of course--you made a point of tact--what the trouble
was?"

"But I was talking of _poor_ people."

"Why shouldn't a rule that is good for poor people be equally as good
for rich people? Aren't they proud?"

"Oh, you can argue," observed Harriet.

"And I can act, too," I said. "I am now going over to invite the
Starkweathers. I heard a rumor that their cook has left them and I
expect to find them starving in their parlour. Of course they'll be very
haughty and proud, but I'll be tactful, and when I go away I'll casually
leave a diamond tiara in the front hall."

"What _is_ the matter with you this morning?"

"Christmas," I said.

I can't tell how pleased I was with the enterprise I had in mind: it
suggested all sorts of amusing and surprising developments. Moreover, I
left Harriet, finally, in the breeziest of spirits, having quite
forgotten her disappointment over the non-arrival of the cousins.

"If you _should_ get the Starkweathers----"

"'In the bright lexicon of youth,'" I observed, "'there is no such word
as fail.'"

So I set off up the town road. A team or two had already been that way
and had broken a track through the snow. The sun was now fully up, but
the air still tingled with the electricity of zero weather. And the
fields! I have seen the fields of June and the fields of October, but I
think I never saw our countryside, hills and valleys, tree spaces and
brook bottoms more enchantingly beautiful than it was this morning. Snow
everywhere--the fences half hidden, the bridges clogged, the trees
laden: where the road was hard it squeaked under my feet, and where it
was soft I strode through the drifts. And the air went to one's head
like wi