poor
boy had had for many an hour. Constance Drew heard it, and it did her
heart good. For Billy, pale, wide-eyed and laughless, was not in the
order of things as they should be. She looked at Ruth Dale and
whispered, "Billy is reviving with proper nourishment."

Ruth gave her a sympathetic smile. Ruth was, herself, working under
pressure, but she was successfully playing her part.

"His face was the only grim one here," she said. "Just look at Maggie,
Con!" To view Maggie was to forget any unpleasant thing.

Maggie Falstar was laying up for the future as a camel does for the
desert. Food and drink passed from sight under Maggie's manipulation
like a slight-of-hand performance, and through the effort, and above it,
the girl's expressionless face was bent over her plate.

The Christmas tree, later, was in the hall. The party staggered to it
from the dining room with anticipation befogged by a too, too heavy
meal. But St. Ange digestions were of sturdy fibre, and fulfilled joy
brought about quick relief.

Aunt Sally looked into the grateful eyes upturned toward the glittering
tree, and her own kind eyes were like stars.

It was Ruth Dale who had taught the children to sing, "There's a
Wonderful Tree," and the Christmas anthem now surprised and charmed the
older people.

Above the shrill, exultant voices, Ruth's clear tones rang firm and
true. Drew watched her from his place beside the tree, and his heart
ached for her. And yet--what strength and power she had. She so slight
and girlish. She had lost faith, and had had love wrenched from her. She
was bent upon a martyr's course, and yet she sang, with apparent abandon
of joy, the old Christmas song.

Constance Drew was an adept at prolonging pleasure and thereby
intensifying it. With the tree bowed with fruit, standing glorified
before them, the rapt company listened with amaze to Maggie Falstar as
she sniffled and hitched through a poem so distorted that the only
semi-intelligible words were: "An--snow--they--snelt--at--the manger,
lost in--reverent--raw."

This part of the programme affected Leon Tate in a most unlooked-for
manner.

"Say, Smith," he remarked to the station-agent, who was gazing at
Constance Drew with his lower jaw hanging, "that beats anything I ever
heard in the natural artistic line. Blood's bound to colour its
victims--do you remember Pete's mother?"

Tom Smith had forgotten the old lady.

"Well, as sure as I'm setting here, old Mis'