Keith used to boast to other children of those dainties that, in
addition to their taste, had the fascination of many different
shapes--hearts, crowns, lilies, clubs, diamonds, baskets, and so on.
They really deserved all the praise they got, and he had so little to
boast of on the whole. The jar stood on the floor in the pantry back of
the parlour, and once in a while Keith found his way to it without
maternal permission, although, as a rule, he was little given to
lawbreaking.

One morning three or four days before Christmas Lena was heard calling
from the kitchen:

"Keith, Keith, come and look!"

Eager as always when the slightest excitement was promised, the boy
started so suddenly that his little table was upset with its whole
population of tin soldiers and his mother was moved to remark that "it
was no use behaving as if the house were on fire."

"Look at the snow," said Lena, pointing to the window when Keith reached
the kitchen, relieved at not having had to pick up the spilled toys
before he could go.

Huge, wet, feathery flakes were dropping lazily from the sky. Little by
little they increased in numbers and fell more quickly. At last they
formed a moving veil through which the building at the other end of the
courtyard could barely be seen.

Later in the day Keith was permitted to look out through one of the
front windows. The whole world had changed and looked much brighter in
spite of the failing light. The Quay was covered by a carpet of white
that made the waters beyond look doubly dark and cold. The trees on the
opposite shore looked as if they had been painted from the topmost twig
to the root. Down in the lane, two of the workers in the distillery were
pelting each other with snowballs while a third one was shouting at the
top of his voice:

"We'll have a white Christmas this year, thank heaven."

That same evening Keith's long cherished dream of visiting the open-air
Christmas Fair at Great Square was to come true at last. Like other
affairs of its kind, it had been reduced by the modern shop to a mere
shadow of its former glorious self, and it was kept up only out of
regard for ancient tradition. Keith had been told that it was nothing
but a lot of open booths displaying cheap toys and cheaper candy. To
Keith toys were toys and candy candy, no matter what the price and
quality, and so he kept on begging leave to go, until the night in
question his parents, who were going out with friends,