w what a scream of delight would greet him as
he poked his head in; and out in the darkness and cold John Clark smiled
and smacked his lips as he thought of the kisses and squeezes, and
renewed kisses that would be his lot as he told how he would be with
them all the evening.

Yes, he was undoubtedly sorry for Livingstone, a poor lonely man in that
great house; and he determined that he would not say much about his
being ill. Women did not always exactly understand some men, and when he
left home, Mrs. Clark had expressed some very strong views as to
Livingstone which had pained Clark. She had even spoken of him as
selfish and miserly. He would just say now that Livingstone on his
arrival had sent him straight back home.

No, Mr. Clark never thought of himself, and this made him richer than
Mr. Livingstone.

When Mr. Clark reached home his expectation was more than realized. From
the way in which he noiselessly opened the front door and then stole
along the little passage to the back room, from which the sound of many
voices was coming as though it were a mimic Babel, you might have
thought he was a thief.

And when he opened the door softly and, with dancing eyes, poked his
head into the room, you might have thought he was Santa Claus himself.
There was one second of dead silence as a half-dozen pair of eyes
stretched wide and a half-dozen mouths opened with a gasp, and then,
with a shout which would have put to the blush a tribe of wild Indians,
a half-dozen young bodies flung themselves upon him with screams and
shrieks of delight. John Clark's neck must have been of iron to
withstand such hugs and tugs as it was given.

The next instant he was drawn bodily into the room and pushed down
forcibly into a chair, whilst the whole half-dozen piled upon him with
demands to be told how he had managed to get off and come back. No one
but Clark could have understood them or answered them, but somehow, as
his arms seemed able to gather in the whole lot of struggling,
squeezing, wriggling, shoving little bodies, so his ears seemed to catch
all the questions and his mind to answer each in turn and all together.

"'How did I come?'--Ran every step of the way.--'Why did I come
back?'--Well! that's a question for a man with eight children who will
sit up and keep Santa Claus out of the house unless their father comes
home and puts them to bed and holds their eyelids down to keep them from
peeping and scaring Santa Claus away