ere
of every color of the rainbow, and he had silver buckles on his shoes,
and brass buttons on his coat, and he was varnished to such an extent
that you could hardly look at him without winking. Then his hair and his
whiskers were so red, and his legs were so pink and so fat and so
lifelike, that it seemed as if you could almost hear him speak; and,
what was more, he had been standing for years at the door of the shop,
proudly holding up a preposterous wooden watch that gave half-past
three as the correct time at all hours of the day and night. In fact, it
would have been no great wonder if the Admiral had stared at him to the
end of his days.

[Illustration: SIR WALTER ROSETTES.]

Then there was Sir Walter Rosettes, a long-bodied little man in a
cavalier's cloak, with a ruff about his neck and enormous rosettes on
his shoes, who stood on a pedestal at old Mrs. Peevy's garden gate,
offering an imitation tobacco-plant, free of charge, as it were, to any
one who would take the trouble of carrying it home. This bold device was
intended to call attention to the fact that Mrs. Peevy kept a
tobacco-shop in the front parlor of her little cottage behind the
hollyhock bushes, the announcement being backed up by the spectacle of
three pipes arranged in a tripod in the window, and by the words
"Smokers' Emporium" displayed in gold letters on the glass; and, by the
way, Dorothy knew perfectly well who _this_ little man was, as somebody
had taken the trouble of writing his name with a lead-pencil on his
pedestal just below the toes of his shoes.

And lastly there was old Mrs. Peevy herself, who might be seen at any
hour of the day, sitting at the door of her cottage, fast asleep in the
shade of her big cotton umbrella with the Chinese mandarin for a handle.
She wasn't much to look at, perhaps, but there was no way of getting at
the Admiral's taste in such matters, so he stared through his spy-glass
year in and year out, and nobody was any the wiser.

Now from sitting so much in the porch and turning these things over in
her mind, Dorothy had come to know the Admiral and the Highlander and
Sir Walter Rosettes as well as she could possibly know persons who
didn't know her, and who couldn't have spoken to her if they _had_ known
her; but nothing came of the acquaintance until a certain Christmas eve.
Of course, nobody knew better than Dorothy what Christmas eve should be
like. The snow should be falling softly, and just enough sho