raciousness on the part of her chum, and wondered what had
come over Flibbertigibbet lately.

* * * * *

A few hours afterwards when they went up to bed, they whispered together
again concerning the dance, and begged Sister Angelica to let them have
just one peep from the dormitory window at their house of delight--a
request she was glad to grant. They opened one of the inside blinds a
little way, and exclaimed at the sight. It was snowing. The children
oh'ed and ah'ed under their breath, for a snowstorm at Christmas time in
the great city is the child's true joy. At their opposite neighbor's a
faint light was visible in the balcony room; the wet soft flakes had
already ridged the balustrade, powdered the dwarf evergreens, topped the
cap of the electric arc-light and laid upon the concrete a coverlet of
purest white.

The long bare dormitory filled with the children--the fatherless and
motherless children we have always with us. Soon each narrow cot held
its asylum number; the many heads, golden, brown, or black, busied all
of them with childhood's queer unanchored thoughts, were pillowed in
safety for another night.

And without the snow continued to fall upon the great city. It graced
with equal delicacy the cathedral's marble spires and the forest of
pointed firs which made the numberless Christmas booths that surrounded
old Washington Market. It covered impartially, and with as pure a white,
the myriad city roofs that sheltered saint and sinner, whether among the
rich or the poor, among the cherished or castaways. It fell as thickly
upon the gravestones in Trinity's ancient churchyard as upon the freshly
turned earth in a corner of the paupers' burying ground; and it set upon
black corruption wherever it was in evidence the seal of a transient
stainlessness.

VI

"Really, I am discouraged about that child," said Sister Agatha just
after Easter. She was standing at one of the schoolroom windows that
overlooked the yard; she spoke as if thoroughly vexed.

"What is it now--208 again?" Sister Angelica looked up from the copybook
she was correcting.

"Oh, yes, of course; it's always 208."

"Oh, she doesn't mean anything; it's only her high spirits; they must
have some vent."

"It's been her ruin being on the stage even for those few weeks, and
ever since the Van Ostends began to make of her and have her over for
that Christmas luncheon and the Sunday nights, the child is neit