her and telling her how well she sang and how pretty she looked,
Scott only said, as we came out of the dressing-room:

"Have you got your high shoes on?"

"No; but I've got rubbers on over my low ones. Mother doesn't care."

"Well, you just go back and put 'em on as fast as you can."

Nell made a face at him and ran back, laughing. Her mother, fat,
comfortable Mrs. Deane, was immensely amused at this.

"That's right, Scott," she chuckled. "You can do enough more with
her than I can. She walks right over me an' Jud."

Scott grinned. If he was proud of Nelly, the last thing he wished to
do was to show it. When she came back he began to nag again. "What
are you going to do with all those flowers? They'll freeze stiff as
pokers."

"Well, there won't none of _your_ flowers freeze, Scott Spinny, so
there!" Nell snapped. She had the best of him that time, and the
Assyrian youths rejoiced. They were most of them high-school boys,
and the poorest of them had "chipped in" and sent all the way to
Denver for _Queen Esther's_ flowers. There were bouquets from half a
dozen townspeople, too, but none from Scott. Scott was a prosperous
hardware merchant and notoriously penurious, though he saved his
face, as the boys said, by giving liberally to the church.

"There's no use freezing the fool things, anyhow. You get me some
newspapers, and I'll wrap 'em up." Scott took from his pocket a
folded copy of the Riverbend "Messenger" and began laboriously to
wrap up one of the bouquets. When we left the church door he bore
three large newspaper bundles, carrying them as carefully as if they
had been so many newly frosted wedding-cakes, and left Nell and me
to shift for ourselves as we floundered along the snow-burdened
sidewalk.

Although it was after midnight, lights were shining from many of the
little wooden houses, and the roofs and shrubbery were so deep in
snow that Riverbend looked as if it had been tucked down into a warm
bed. The companies of people, all coming from church, tramping this
way and that toward their homes and calling "Good night" and "Merry
Christmas" as they parted company, all seemed to us very unusual and
exciting.

When we got home, Mrs. Deane had a cold supper ready, and Jud Deane
had already taken off his shoes and fallen to on his fried chicken
and pie. He was so proud of his pretty daughter that he must give
her her Christmas presents then and there, and he went into the
sleeping-chamber behind th