d me down, you great big beautiful doll,
you!"

"Aw--you!"

"If you're the real little sport I think you are, you're going to lemme
blow you to the liveliest Christmas a little queen like you ever seen.
I didn't make that winnin' down in Atlanta for nothing. When I got the
telegram I says to myself: 'Here goes! I'm goin' to make last Tuesday
night look like a prayer-meeting, I am.' Eh, Doll?"

"I--I can't, Jimmie. I--'S-s-s-s-h!"

A tide flowed in about the counter, separating them, and she was
suddenly the center of a human whorl, a battle of shoulders and elbows
and voices pitched high with gluttony. Mr. Fitzgibbons skirted its edge,
patient.

Outside a flake floated down out of the dark pocket of packed clouds,
then another and yet another, like timid kisses blown down upon the
clownish brow of Broadway. A motorman shielded his eyes from the right
merry whirl and swore in his throat. A fruit-cheeked girl paused in the
flare of a Mammoth Store show-window, looked up at her lover and the
flaky star that lit and died on his mustache, and laughed with the
musical glee of a bird. A beggar slid farther out from his doorway and
pushed his hat into the flux of the sidewalk. More flakes, dancing
upward like suds blown in merriment from the palm of a hand--light,
lighter, mad, madder, weaving a blanket from God's own loom, from God's
own fleece, whitening men's shoulders with the heavenly fabric.

Mrs. Violet Smith cast startled eyes upon the powdered shoulders and
snow-clumped shoes passing down the aisleway, and her hand flew to her
throat as if to choke its gasp.

"My! It ain't snowin', is it? It ain't snowin'?"

Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons wormed back to the counter. His voice was sunk to
the golden mezzo of an amorous whisper.

"Snowin' is right, Doll! A real dyed-in-the-wool white Christmas for you
and me!"

"Snowin'!"

"Don't you like snow, baby doll? Cheer up, I'm going to hire a taxicab
by the hour. I'm--"

"Snowin'!"

She breathed inward, shivering, stricken, and her mouth, no older than a
child's, trembled at the corners and would not be composed.

"He--he can't stand no snow-storm. That's why the doctor said if--if
we could get him South before the first one, if we could get him South
before the first one--South, where the sun shines and he could feel it
clear through him, he--Oh, ain't I--ain't I in a mess!"

"Poor little filly!" He focused his small eyes upon her plump and
throbbing throat. "Poor