knock
at their door.

"Oh, you old tight-jaw!" announced he, when on entering, he beheld Carl
grinning at him from across the room. "You might have put me out of my
misery."

The boy laughed.

"It wasn't my secret! I'd have been a cur to butt in on Louise's fun."

"So you would!"

Quietly Mrs. McGregor glanced up from the sea of delicate blue gauze
foaming about her.

"A ready tongue is a gift of silver, but a silent one is a treasure of
pure gold," observed she quaintly.

CHAPTER VII

THE COMING OF THE FAIRY GODMOTHER

With the Harlings safely out of their difficulties Christmas, as Carl
jestingly observed, was free to approach and approach it did with a
speed incredible of belief. A big blizzard a week before it, which
transformed the suburban districts into a wonderland of beauty, merely
worked havoc however in Baileyville, causing muddy streets and slippery
pavements, and wrecking the skating in the park.

"Snow doesn't seem to be made for cities," remarked Mrs. McGregor in
reply to Carl's lamentations. "It is an old-fashioned institution that
belongs to the past. Here in town there is neither a place for it nor
does it do an atom of good to anybody unless it is the unemployed who
hail the work it brings."

"I hate the snow," wailed Timmie. "It isn't snow, anyway; it's just
slush."

"Ah, laddie, you should see one of the snowstorms of the old country!"
protested his Scotch mother reminiscently. "Then you would not say you
hated the snow. It turned everything it touched white as a Tartary
lamb."

"What's a Tartary lamb, Mother?" inquired Tim with interest.

"A Tartary lamb? Ask your big brother; he goes to school."

"I never heard of a Tartary lamb, Ma," flushed Carl.

"Mary had a little lamb," began Nell, who had caught the phrase.

"So she did, darling," laughed her mother as she picked up the child
and kissed her, "and its fleece was white as snow, too, for the song
says so; but it wasn't a Tartary lamb, dearie. It was just a common
one."

"What is a Tartary lamb, anyway, Ma?" Mary demanded.

Mrs. McGregor paused to put a length of silk into her needle.

"Long ago," began she, "before there were ships and trains, to say
nothing of automobiles and aeroplanes people had to stay at home in the
places where they happened to be born. Of course they could go by coach
or on horseback to a near-by city, but they could not go far; nor
indeed did they think of going because they did not k