removed it gently from her fingers and dropped it into his pocket.
His face was very white.

"Santy isn't that kind of a man," he said, without rhyme or reason.
"Now, don't cry, dearie. Here's another present from mamma. See!"

Later in the morning, after she had quite forgotten the slipper, he
put it back in the box, wrapped it carefully, and addressed the
package to L. Z. Fairfax, in New York City, without explanation or
comment.

[Illustration: Copyright, 1911, by Dodd, Mead & Company
Phoebe]

Before the morning was half over he was playing with Phoebe and her
toys quite as childishly and gleefully as she, his heart in the fun
she was having, his mind almost wholly cleared of the bitterness and
rancour that so recently had filled it to overflowing.

The three of them floundered through the snowdrifts to the station,
laughing and shouting with a merriment that proved infectious. The
long-obscured sun came out and caught the disease, for he smiled
broadly, and the wind gave over snarling and smirked with an
amiability that must have surprised the shivering horses standing
desolate in front of certain places wherein their owners partook of
Christmas cheer that was warm.

Harvey took Phoebe and the nurse to the theatre in a cab. He went up
to the box-office window and asked for the two tickets. The seller was
most agreeable. He handed out the little envelope with the words:--

"A packed house to-day, Mr.--Mr.--er--ah, and--sold out for to-night.
Here you are, with Miss Duluth's compliments--the best seats in the
house. And here is a note for--er--yes, for the nurse."

Annie read the note. It was from Nellie, instructing her to bring
Phoebe to her dressing-room after the performance, where they would
have supper later on.

Harvey saw them pass in to the warm theatre and then slowly wandered
out to the bleak, wind-swept street. There was nothing for him to do;
nowhere that he could go to seek cheerful companions. For an hour or
more he wandered up and down Broadway, his shoulders hunched up, his
mittened hands to his ears, water running from his nose and eyes, his
face the colour of the setting sun. Half-frozen, he at last ventured
into a certain cafe, a place where he had lunched no fewer than
half-a-dozen times, and where he thought his identity might have
remained with the clerk at the cigar stand.

There were men at the tables, smoking and chatting hilariously. At one
of them sat three men, two of whom wer