“I—­I didn’t mean nothing, Jimmie.”

“I ain’t sore, Doll.  I like you and I like your style.  I always did, even in the days when you turned me down, you great big beautiful doll, you!”

“Aw—­you!”

“If you’re the real little sport I think you are, you’re going to lemme blow you to the liveliest Christmas a little queen like you ever seen.  I didn’t make that winnin’ down in Atlanta for nothing.  When I got the telegram I says to myself:  ‘Here goes!  I’m goin’ to make last Tuesday night look like a prayer-meeting, I am.’  Eh, Doll?”

“I—­I can’t, Jimmie.  I—­’S-s-s-s-h!”

A tide flowed in about the counter, separating them, and she was suddenly the center of a human whorl, a battle of shoulders and elbows and voices pitched high with gluttony.  Mr. Fitzgibbons skirted its edge, patient.

Outside a flake floated down out of the dark pocket of packed clouds, then another and yet another, like timid kisses blown down upon the clownish brow of Broadway.  A motorman shielded his eyes from the right merry whirl and swore in his throat.  A fruit-cheeked girl paused in the flare of a Mammoth Store show-window, looked up at her lover and the flaky star that lit and died on his mustache, and laughed with the musical glee of a bird.  A beggar slid farther out from his doorway and pushed his hat into the flux of the sidewalk.  More flakes, dancing upward like suds blown in merriment from the palm of a hand—­light, lighter, mad, madder, weaving a blanket from God’s own loom, from God’s own fleece, whitening men’s shoulders with the heavenly fabric.

Mrs. Violet Smith cast startled eyes upon the powdered shoulders and snow-clumped shoes passing down the aisleway, and her hand flew to her throat as if to choke its gasp.

“My!  It ain’t snowin’, is it?  It ain’t snowin’?”

Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons wormed back to the counter.  His voice was sunk to the golden mezzo of an amorous whisper.

“Snowin’ is right, Doll!  A real dyed-in-the-wool white Christmas for you and me!”

“Snowin’!”

“Don’t you like snow, baby doll?  Cheer up, I’m going to hire a taxicab by the hour.  I’m—­”

“Snowin’!”

She breathed inward, shivering, stricken, and her mouth, no older than a child’s, trembled at the corners and would not be composed.

“He—­he can’t stand no snow-storm.  That’s why the doctor said if—­if we could get him South before the first one, if we could get him South before the first one—­South, where the sun shines and he could feel it clear through him, he—­Oh, ain’t I—­ain’t I in a mess!”

“Poor little filly!” He focused his small eyes upon her plump and throbbing throat.  “Poor little filly, all winded!”

“I—­oh, I—­”

“There’s the bell, Doll.  Poor, tired little girlie, hurry and I’ll buy you a taxicab.  Hear it—­there’s the closing bell!  Merry Christmas, Doll!  Merry Christmas!”