allow the sweets of anticipation--though no one knew better than
he the danger of delay where money was concerned: it melted like snow in
the pocket. Extra funds always seemed to bring an extra demand.

The last time there was ten dollars to spare there had been a letter
from Langshaw's mother, saying that his sister Ella, whose husband was
unfortunately out of a position, had developed flat-foot; and a pair of
suitable shoes, costing nine-fifty, had been prescribed by the
physician. Was it possible for her dear boy to send the money? Ella was
so depressed.

The ten dollars had, of course, gone to Ella. Both Langshaw and his wife
had an unsympathetic feeling that if they developed flat-foot now they
would have to go without appropriate shoes.

"You look quite gay!" said his wife as she greeted him on his return,
her pretty oval face, with its large dark eyes and dark curly locks,
held up to be kissed. "Has anything nice happened?"

"You look gay, too!" he evaded laughingly, as his arms lingered round
her. Clytie was always a satisfactory person for a wife. "What's this
pink stuff on your hair--popcorn?"

"Oh, goodness! Baby has been so bad, she has been throwing it round
everywhere," she answered, running ahead of him upstairs to a room that
presented a scene of brilliant disorder.

On the bed was a large box of tinselled Christmas-tree decorations and
another of pink-and-white popcorn--the flotsam and jetsam of which
strewed the counterpane and the floor to its farthest corners, mingled
with scraps of glittering paper, an acreage of which surrounded a table
in the centre of the room that was adorned with mucilage pot and
scissors. A large feathered hat, a blue silk dress, and a flowered skirt
were on the rug, near which a very plump child of three, with straggling
yellow hair, was trying to get a piece of gilt paper off her shoe. She
looked up with roguish blue eyes to say rapidly:

"Fardie doesn't know what baby goin' agive 'm for Kissemus!"

"Hello! This looks like the real thing," said Langshaw, stepping over
the debris; "but what are all these clothes on the floor for?"

"Oh, Mary was dressing up and just dropped those things when she went to
the village with Viney, though I called her twice to come back and pick
them up," said the mother, sweeping the garments out of the way. "It's
so tiresome of her! Oh, I know you stand up for everything Mary does,
Joe Langshaw; but she is the hardest child to manage!"