"Surely," smiled the clerk, "you don't want that on the card?"

But Uncle Noah was stubborn; more, he insisted on writing the
inscription himself, his orthography quite as quaint as his penmanship,
and so the card went to be read by the wonderful gray eyes in the
morning.

Back through the snow in his rickety carriage rolled Uncle Noah,
rattling home along the snowy road down which he had trudged in the
early evening, chuckling now intermittently in a mental rehearsal of
his new plan.

"Fifty cents a day!" he thought, "an' to-morrow I'se a-goin' to slip
over to Fernlands in de mornin' an' ask her to lemme buy maself back on
de 'stallment plan. Mos' likely she'll take a dollar a week, an' wid
all de rest o' dat grocer money ol' Mis' doan have to know whut de
Colonel an' me is a-goin' through."

In accordance with Uncle Noah's whispered directions the cab crept
gently up the driveway at Brierwood and paused at the kitchen door,
where the driver, who had taken a great fancy to Uncle Noah, became
transformed into a benevolent stevedore, tiptoeing in and out of the
kitchen with the bundles which the old darky drew from the cavernous
pit of the cab. Job's understudy came last, and Uncle Noah, tightly
pressing the precious fowl in his arms, watched the carriage drive
slowly away. Then, after an interval in the kitchen devoted to hiding
his purchases, he sought the library, striving to simulate a decent
depression over the assumed decapitation of Job.

Colonel Fairfax looked up inquiringly as he entered.

"I'se jus' come to tell yoh, sah," said Uncle Noah with a meaning
glance at Mrs. Fairfax, "dat I has de turkey all ready foh de oven."

A faint red crept through the Colonel's skin, but he met the darky's
eyes squarely. "Thank you, Uncle Noah!" he said, and the negro
shuffled hurriedly away.

In his old rocking-chair by the kitchen fire Uncle Noah, alert and
excited, waited until he heard the Colonel and Mrs. Fairfax go up to
bed; then, chuckling to himself, he extinguished the kitchen lights,
and, carrying one of his Christmas bundles, plodded across the field to
Job's nocturnal hermitage. The light of a match revealed the tyrant
roosting glumly on the summit of a ruined plowshare.

"I'se brought yoh a Christmas surprise, Massa Job Fairfax," said Uncle
Noah, and he sprinkled the floor of the hut thick with corn that the
turkey might find it in the morning.

With his heart full of thanksgiving the negro plod