Wade no more. He shot out of
bed in tip-top spirits; shouted "Merry Christmas!" at the rising disk of
the sun; looked over the black ice; thrilled with the thought of a long
holiday for skating; and proceeded to dress in a knowing suit of rough
clothes, singing, "_Ah, non giunge_!" as he slid into them.

Presently, glancing from his south window, he observed several matinal
smokes rising from the chimneys of a country-house a mile away, on a slope
fronting the river.

"Peter Skerrett must be back from Europe at last," he thought. "I hope he
is as fine a fellow as he was ten years ago. I hope marriage has not made
him a muff, and wealth a weakling."

Wade went down to breakfast with an heroic appetite. His "Merry Christmas"
to Mrs. Purtett was followed up by a ravished kiss and the gift of a
silver butter-knife. The good widow did not know which to be most charmed
with. The butter-knife was genuine, shining, solid silver, with her
initials, M.B.P., Martha Bilsby Purtett, given in luxuriant flourishes;
but then the kiss had such a fine twang, such an exhilarating titillation!
The late Perry's kisses, from first to last, had wanted point. They were,
as the Spanish proverb would put it, unsavory as unsalted eggs, for want
of a moustache. The widow now perceived, with mild regret, how much she
had missed when she married "a man all shaven and shorn." Her cheek, still
fair, though forty, flushed with novel delight, and she appreciated her
lodger more than ever.

Wade's salutation to Belle Purtett was more distant. There must be a
little friendly reserve between a handsome young man and a pretty young
woman several grades lower in the social scale, living in the same house.
They were on the most cordial terms, however; and her gift--of course
embroidered slippers--and his to her--of course "The Illustrated Poets,"
in Turkey morocco--were exchanged with tender good-will on both sides.

"We shall meet on the ice, Miss Belle," said Wade. "It is a day of a
thousand for skating."

"Mr. Ringdove says you are a famous skater," Belle rejoined. "He saw you
on the river yesterday evening."

"Yes; Tarbox and I were practising to exhibit to-day; but I could not do
much with my dull old skates."

Wade breakfasted deliberately, as a holiday morning allowed, and then
walked down to the Foundry. There would be no work done to-day, except by
a small gang keeping up the fires. The Superintendent wished only to give
his First Semi-Annua