d the curtains.

There were a good many people passing, but they seemed too preoccupied to
glance down at the sidewalk. They were nearly all hurrying in one
direction. Some were running in the middle of the street.

"They are in a great hurry," sniffed Miss Terry disdainfully. "One would
think they had something really important on hand. I suppose they are going
to hear the singing. Fiddlestick!"

A man hastened by under the window; a woman; two children, a boy and a
girl, running and gesticulating eagerly. None of them noticed the Noah's
ark lying at the foot of the steps.

Miss Terry began to grow impatient. "Are they all blind?" she fretted.
"What is the matter with them? I wish somebody would find the thing. I am
tired of seeing it lying there."

She tapped the floor impatiently with her slipper. Just then a woman
approached. She was dressed in the most uncompromising of mourning, and she
walked slowly, with bent head, never glancing at the lighted windows on
either side.

"She will see it," commented Miss Terry. And sure enough, she did. She
stopped at the doorstep, drew her skirts aside, and bent over to look at
the strange-shaped box at her feet. Finally she lifted it But immediately
she shivered and acted so strangely that Miss Terry thought she was about
to break the toy in pieces on the steps or throw it into the street.
Evidently she detested the sight of it.

Just then up came a second woman with two small boys hanging at her skirts.
They were ragged and sick-looking. There was something about the expression
of even the tiny knot of hair at the back of the woman's head which told of
anxious poverty. With envious curiosity she hurried up to see what a
luckier mortal had found, crowding to look over her shoulder. The woman in
black drew haughtily away and clutched the Noah's ark with a gesture of
proprietorship.

"Go away! This is my affair." Miss Terry read her expression and sniffed.
"There is the Christmas spirit coming out again," she said to herself.
"Look at her face!"

The black-gowned woman prepared to move on with the toy under her arm. But
the second woman caught hold of her skirt and began to speak earnestly. She
pointed to the Noah's ark, then to her two children. Her eyes were
beseeching. The little boys crowded forward eagerly. But some wicked
spirit seemed to have seized the finder of the ark. Angrily she shook off
the hand of the other woman, and clutching the box yet more firmly unde