e to do his best by the one friend
who helped him.

[Illustration]

Quite unconscious of the scandalized flutter in this quiet room whose
oval portraits of ancestral Sawyers might well have tumbled down at the
notion of any one being anything but sober, the boy moved closer to the
fire as if the ride had chilled him.

[Illustration]

"Gee!" he said with a long, quivering breath, "ain't that a fire, now,
ain't it!" and because his keen young eyes could not somehow be evaded,
Abner Sawyer accepted the responsibility of the reply and said hastily
that it was. Then feeling his dignity imperilled in the presence of
Judith, though why he could not for the life of him explain, he moved
forward a chair for the Christmas guest and returned to his paper.

Aunt Judith went back to a region of tinkling china and humming kettle.
The room became quiet enough for any one to read, but the first citizen
somehow could not read. He was ridiculously conscious of that tense
little figure by the fire with the disturbingly friendly eyes. How on
earth could a boy be noisy who was absolutely quiet? Yet his very
presence seemed to clamor--the clamor of an inherent sociability
repressed with difficulty.

Jimsy glanced at the checkerboard window beyond which snowy hills lay
beneath a sunset afterglow.

"Gee whiz!" he burst forth. "_Ain't_ the snow white!"

The first citizen jumped--much as one may jump when he has waited in
nerve-racking suspense for a pistol shot. The boy had done exactly what
he had expected him to do--broken that sacred ante-prandial hour with
the Lindon _Evening News_ which Judith had not broken this twenty years.

[Illustration]

"Snow," he said discouragingly, for all he had determined to ignore the
remark, "snow is always white."

Jimsy shook his head.

"Naw," he said. "N'York snow's gray an' dirty. Specks said the snow we
seen on the hills from the train winder was Christmas card snow, and
with that the minister he up an' tells Specks an' me 'bout reg'lar
old-fashioned country Christmases, fire like this an' Christmas trees
an'--an' sleigh-bells an' gifts an' wreaths an' skatin' an'
holly--Gee--"

"That," said Abner Sawyer with cold finality, "will be quite enough."

"Sure," agreed Jimsy. "A Christmas like that 'snuff fur any kid."

Irritably conscious that his reproof had been misinterpreted, the first
citizen riveted his gaze upon the Lindon _Evening News_. But he could
not read. Jimsy's irreverent ai