ike you--"

"And St. Nicholas said, 'Will you keep your pink slippers clean and
your nice pink frock clean if I give you to a poor little girl?' and the
Fluffy Ruffles doll said 'Yes,' so St. Nicholas looked and looked for a
poor little girl, and at last he came to a window--with a red candle--"

The fat little hand was still and Pussy was breathing hard.

"With a red candle, and there was a little girl who--didn't have any
doll--"

Pussy threw herself on him bodily. "Is it true? Is it true?" she
shrieked.

Milly, a little flushed and excited by the story, tried to say sedately:
"Of course it isn't true. It couldn't be--true--"

"Let's wish it to be true--" Ostrander said, "all three of us, with our
eyes shut--"

With this ceremony completed the little girls were advised gravely to go
to bed. "If Fluffy Ruffles and old St. Nick come by and find you up they
won't stop--"

"Won't they?"

"Of course not. You must shut the door and creep under your quilt and
cover up your head, and if you hear a noise you mustn't look."

Milly eyed him dubiously. "I think it is a shame to tell Pussy such--"

"Corking things?" He lifted her chin with a light finger and looked into
her innocent eyes. "Oh, Milly, Milly, once upon a time there was a
Princess, with eyes like yours, and she lived in a garden where black
swans swam on a pool, and she wore pale-green gowns and there were
poppies in the garden. And a Fool loved her. But she shut him out of the
garden. He wasn't good enough even to kneel at her feet, so she shut him
out and married a Prince with a white feather in his cap."

He had a chuckling sense of Whiting as the white-feathered Prince. But
Milly's eyes were clouded. "I don't like to think that she shut the poor
Fool out of the garden."

For a moment he cupped her troubled face in his two hands. "You dear
kiddie." Then as he turned away he found his own eyes wet.

As he started up-stairs Pussy peeped out at him.

"Wouldn't it be--corking--to see a Fluffy Ruffles doll--a-walking up the
street?"

In a beautiful box up-stairs the Fluffy Ruffles doll stared at him. She
was as lovely as a dream, and as expensive as they make 'em. There was
another doll in blue, also as expensive, also as lovely. Ostrander could
see Milly with the blue doll matching her eyes.

There were toys, too, for the baby. And there was a bunch of violets.
And boxes of candy. And books. And there were things to eat. Besides the
fruits a grea