little filly, all winded!"

"I--oh, I--"

"There's the bell, Doll. Poor, tired little girlie, hurry and I'll buy
you a taxicab. Hear it--there's the closing bell! Merry Christmas, Doll!
Merry Christmas!"

A convulsion tore through the store, like the violent asthma of a
thirty-thousand-ton ocean liner breathing the last breath of her voyage
and slipping alongside her pier. On that first stroke of ten a girl
behind the candy-counter collapsed frankly, rocking her left foot in her
lap, pressing its blains, and blubbering through her lips salty with her
own bitter tears. A child, qualified by legislation and his fourteen
years to brace his soft-boned shoulder against the flank of life, bent
his young spine double to the weight of two iron exit doors that swung
outward and open. A gale of snow and whistling air danced in. The crowd
turned about, faced, thinned, died.

Mrs. Violet Smith turned a rose-white face to the flurry. "Snowin'!"

"A real, made-to-order white Christmas for you and me, Doll. The kind
you read about."

"It--it don't mean nothing to me, but--"

"Sure, it does; I'm goin' to blow you right, Doll. Half the money is
yourn, anyways. You made that winning down in Atlanta yesterday as much
as me, girlie. If I hadn't named that filly after you she'd 'a' been
left at the post."

"You--you never had the right to name one of your race-horses after me.
There ain't a girl ever went out with you that you 'ain't named one
after. You--you never had the right to!"

"I took it, kiddo, 'cause I like you! Gad! I like you! Nix, it ain't
every little girl I'd name one of my stable after. 'Violet!'--some
little pony that, odds ag'in her and walks off with the money."

"I--honest, I sometimes--I--just wish I was dead!"

"No, you don't, Doll. You know you just wanna go to-night, but you
'ain't got the nerve. I wanna show you a Christmas Eve that'll leave any
Christmas Eve you ever spent at the post. Gad! look out there, will you?
I'm going to taxicab you right through the fuzz of that there snow-storm
if it costs every cent the filly won for us!"

Mrs. Smith leaned back against the shelves limp, as if the blood had run
from her heart, weakening her, but her eyes the color of lake-water
when summer's moment is bluest. Her lips, that were meant to curve,
straightened in a line of decision.

"I'll go, Jimmie."

"That's the goods!"

"A girl's just gotta have something to hold herself together, don't
she? It--it a