tching. He himself recognized that in his handling of tricky
drugs there was a danger. The business was getting out of hand. It was
small and growing smaller every month, yet it was too much for Mr.
Ponting to cope with unassisted. They were living, all three of them, in
a state of tension most fretting to the nerves.

The whole house fairly vibrated with it. It was as if the fearful
instability of Mr. Ransome's nervous system communicated itself to
everybody around him. At the cry or the sudden patter of Ranny's
children overhead, Mr. Ransome would be set quivering and shaking, and
this disturbance of his reverberated. Ranny set his teeth and sat tight
and "stuck it"; but he felt the shattering effect of it all the same.

And the children felt it too, subtly, insidiously. Dossie became
peevish, easily frightened; she was neither so good nor so happy with
her Granny and the little girl as she had been with Winny. Baby cried
oftener. Ranny sometimes would be up half the night with him.

All this Mrs. Ransome saw and grieved over and was powerless to help.

In Christmas week the state of Mr. Ransome became terrible, not to be
borne. Ranny was working hard at the counting-house; he was worn out,
and he looked it.

The sight of him, so changed, broke Mrs. Ransome down.

"Ranny," she said, "I wish you'd get away somewhere for Christmas. Me
and Mabel'll look after the children. You go."

He said there wasn't anywhere he cared to go to.

"Well--is there anything you'd like to do?"

"To do?"

"For Christmas, dear. To make it not so sad like. Is there anybody," she
said, "you'd like to ask?"

No, there wasn't. At any rate, if there was he wouldn't ask them. It
wouldn't be exactly what you'd call fun for them, with the poor old
Humming-bird making faces at them all the time.

His mother looked at him shrewdly and said nothing. But she sat down and
wrote a letter to Winny Dymond, asking her to come and spend Christmas
Day with them, if, said Mrs. Ransome, she hadn't anywhere better to go
to and didn't mind a sad house.

And Winny came. She hadn't anywhere better to go to, and she didn't mind
a sad house in the least.

They wondered, Ranny and his mother, how they were ever going to break
it to the Humming-bird.

"Your Father won't like it, Ranny. He's not fit for it. He'll think us
heartless, having strangers in the house when he's suffering so."

But Mr. Ransome, when asked if he was fit for it, replied astound