“‘It’s a good idea—­I’m with you,’ he said.  ’If we can get the boys an’ girls to marry while the bloom is on the rye, it’s worth while, an’ I wouldn’t wonder if indirectly we’d increase the crop of Yankees an’ the yield of happiness to the acre.’

“‘Bill, you’re a good fellow,’ I said.  ’You only need to be reminded of your duty—­you’re like many another man.’

“’And I’ll think you the best fellow in the world if you’ll let us keep those kids.  We enjoy them.  We’ve been having a lot of fun lately.’

“‘I can’t do that,’ I said, ’but I’ll keep ’em here until we can get some more.  There are thousands of them as beautiful, as friendless, as promising as these were.’

“‘I wish you could let us have these,’ he urged.  ’We wouldn’t adopt them, probably, but we’d do our best for them—­our very best.’

“‘I can’t,’ I answered.

“‘Why?’

“’Because they’ve got hold of my old heart—­that’s why.  I hadn’t looked for that, Bill, but the little cusses have conquered me.’

“‘Great God!’ he exclaimed.  ’I hadn’t thought of that.  And my wife told me this morning that she loves that three-year-old boy as dearly as she loves me.  They’ve all won her heart.  What shall I do?’

“‘Let me think it over,’ I said, an’ shook his hand an’ left, an’ I knew that I was likely to indulge in the makin’ of history right away.

“I went home an’ sat down an’ wrote the best brief of my career—­an appeal to the Supreme Court o’ this planet—­a woman’s heart.  It was a letter to one whose name I honored although I had not written it in years.

“Next mornin’ I plunged into a lawsuit an’ was workin’ night an’ day, until the jury came in with a verdict an’ court adjourned for the Christmas holidays.

“An’ that day a decision was handed down in my appeal to the court of last resort.  It was a cablegram from an Italian city, an’ a verdict in my favor.  I am to get in that case the best fee on record—­a wife and the love of a dear and beautiful woman.  We went to school together, and I am ashamed that I didn’t ask her to marry me years ago.  So much for me had Lizzie an’ the kids accomplished.

“I was to dine with the Warburtons Christmas Eve, and be Santa Claus for the children.  I bought a set o’ whiskers an’ put on my big fur coat and two sets o’ bells on the mare, an’ drove to the villa, with a full pack in the buggy an’ a fuller heart in my breast.

“Bill an’ Mrs. Bill an’ I went over to the farm-house together with our arms full.  The children were in a room up-stairs with Mrs. Hammond waiting for Santa Claus.  Below we helped the two maids, who were trimming the Christmas tree—­and a wonderful tree it was when we were done with it—­why, sir, you’d have thought a rainbow was falling into a thicket on the edge of a lake.  My friend, it was the tree of all fruits.