esently shot
forth again into the white and quiet world, and as he went, gliding
swiftly past the ghostly spruces by the roadside, oddly enough, despite
his cheerful justification to Aunt Ellen, he was fiercely rebelling at
the defection of his children. John and his lovely wife might well have
foregone their fashionable ball. And Howard and Philip--their
holiday-keeping Metropolitan clubs were shallow artificialities surely
compared with a home-keeping reunion about the Yule log. As for the
children of Anne and Ellen and Margaret--well, the Doctor could just
tell those daughters of his that their precious youngsters liked a
country Christmas best--he _knew_ they did!--not the complex,
steam-heated hot-house off-shoot of that rugged flower of simpler times
when homes were further apart, but a country Christmas of keen, crisp
cold and merry sleigh-bells, of rosy cheeks and snow-balls, of skating
on the Deacon's pond and a jubilant hour after around the blazing
wood-fire: a Christmas, in short, such as the old Doctor himself knew
and loved, of simplicity and sympathy and home-keeping heartiness!

And then--there was Ralph--but here the Doctor's face grew very stern.
Wild tales came to him at times of this youngest and most gifted of his
children--tales of intemperate living interlarded with occasional tales
of brilliant surgical achievement on the staff of St. Michael's. For the
old Doctor had guided the steps of his youngest son to the paths of
medicine with a great hope, long abandoned.

Ah--well! The Doctor sighed, abruptly turning his thoughts to Madge and
Roger. They at least should know the heart-glow of a real Christmas! A
masquerade party of his neighbors Christmas eve, perhaps, such as Aunt
Ellen had suggested, and a Yule-log--but now it was, in the midst of his
Christmas plans, that a daring notion flashed temptingly through the
Doctor's head, was banished with a shrug and flashed again, whereupon
with his splendid capacity for prompt decision, the Doctor suddenly
wheeled old Billy about and went sleighing in considerable excitement
into the village whence a host of night-telegrams went singing over the
busy wires to startle eventually a slumbering conscience or so. And
presently when the Doctor drew up with a flourish before the lonely
little house among the forest pines, his earlier depression had
vanished.

So with a prodigious stamping of snow from his feet and a cheerful wave
of his mittened hand to the