, of course, I know how pleased you really are--you don't
show it at once to others. That's why I hope you'll show it to-morrow
if--"

"Great Scott! Clytie, let up on it! What do you want me to do--jump up
and down and make a fool of myself?" asked her husband scornfully. "You
leave me alone!"

It was Langshaw's firm rule, vainly protested even by his wife, that the
household should have breakfast on Christmas Day before tackling the
stockings--a hurried mockery of a meal, to be sure, yet to his masculine
idea a reenforcement of food for the infant stomach before the long,
hurtling joy of the day. The stockings and the piles under them were
taken in order, according to age--the youngest first and the others
waiting in rapt interest and admiration until their turn arrived--a
pretty ceremony.

In the delicious revelry of Baby's joy, as her trembling, fat little
fingers pulled forth dolls and their like, all else was forgotten until
it was Mary's turn, and then George's, and then the mother's. And then,
when he had forgotten all about it: "Now father!" There was seemingly a
breathless moment while all eyes turned to him.

"It's father's turn now; father's going to have his presents. Father,
sit down here on the sofa--it's your turn now."

There were only a blue cornucopia and an orange and a bottle of olives
in his stocking, a Christmas card from his sister Ella, a necktie from
grandmamma, and nothing, as his quick eye had noted, under it on the
floor; but now George importantly stooped down, drew a narrow package
from under the sofa and laid it beside his father, pulling off the
paper. Inside was a slim, longish, gray linen bag. Langshaw studied it
for a moment before opening it.

"Well, I'll be jiggered!" he breathed, with a strange glance round at
the waiting group and an odd, crooked smile. "I'll be jiggered!"

There in its neatly grooved sections lay the rod, ready to be put
together--not a rod, but, as his eye almost unbelievingly reassured him,
_the_ rod--the ticket of the shop adorning it--in all its beauty of
golden shellac and delicate tip. His fingers touched the pieces
reverently.

"Well, will you look at that! How did you ever think of getting it?"

"How did I think of it? Because you talked about it all the time," said
his wife scornfully, with her arms round his neck from behind, while the
children flung themselves upon him. "Oh, I know you thought you didn't;
but you did just the same. George hea