“A real blow-out, Vi-dee.”

“A bear for the kid, Harry!”

“Vi!”

“Yeh, a real brown grizz, with the grin and all, like she cried for in the window that Sunday—­a real big brown one with the grin and all.”

“That cost a real bunch of money, sweet!”

“Yeh, I blew me like sixty for it, hon, but she cried for it that Sunday and she had to have a Christmas, didn’t she, darlin’, even if she is too little.  It—­it would ‘a’ broke my heart to have her wake up to-morrow without one.”

He regarded her through the glaze of tears.  “My little kiddo!”

’"S-s-s-s-h!”

“It just don’t seem fair for you to have to—­”

“‘S-s-s-s-h!  Everything’s fair, darlin’, in love and war.  All the rules for the game of living ain’t written down—­the Eleventh Commandment and the Twelfth Commandment and the Ninth Commandment.”

“My little kiddo!”

“To-morrow, Harry, to-morrow, Harry, we’re going!  South, darlin’, where he says the sun is going to warm you through and through.  To-morrow, darlin’!”

“The next day, sweetness.  You’re all worn out and to-morrow’s Christmas, and—­”

But the shivering took hold of her again, and when she pressed her hand over his mouth he could feel it trembling.

“To-morrow, darlin’, to-morrow before eight.  Every day counts.  Promise me, darlin’.  I—­I just can’t live if you don’t.  To-morrow before eight.  Promise me, darlin’!  Oh, promise me, darlin’!”

“Poor, tired little kiddo, to-morrow before eight, then, to-morrow before eight we go.”

Her head relaxed.

“You’re tired out, darlin’.  Get to bed, baby.  We got a big day to-morrow.  We got a big day to-morrow, darlin’!  Get to bed, Vi-dee.”

“I wanna spread out her Christmas first, Harry.  I want her to see it when she wakes up.  I couldn’t stand her not seem’ it.”

She scurried to the hall and back again, and at the foot of the bed she spread her gaudy wares:  An iridescent rubber ball glowing with six colors; a ribbon of gilt paper festooned to the crib; a gleaming Christmas star that dangled and gave out radiance; a huge brown bear standing upright, and with bead eyes and a grin.

T.B.

The figurative underworld of a great city has no ventilation, housing or lighting problems.  Rooks and crooks who live in the putrid air of crime are not denied the light of day, even though they loathe it.  Cadets, social skunks, whose carnivorous eyes love darkness, walk in God’s sunshine and breathe God’s air.  Scarlet women turn over in wide beds and draw closer velvet curtains to shut out the morning.  Gamblers curse the dawn.

But what of the literal underworld of the great city?  What of the babes who cry in fetid cellars for the light and are denied it?  What of the Subway track-walker, purblind from gloom; the coal-stoker, whose fiery tomb is the boiler-room of a skyscraper; sweatshop workers, a flight below the sidewalk level, whose faces are the color of dead Chinese; six-dollar-a-week salesgirls in the arc-lighted subcellars of six-million-dollar corporations?