A convulsion tore through the store, like the violent asthma of a thirty-thousand-ton ocean liner breathing the last breath of her voyage and slipping alongside her pier.  On that first stroke of ten a girl behind the candy-counter collapsed frankly, rocking her left foot in her lap, pressing its blains, and blubbering through her lips salty with her own bitter tears.  A child, qualified by legislation and his fourteen years to brace his soft-boned shoulder against the flank of life, bent his young spine double to the weight of two iron exit doors that swung outward and open.  A gale of snow and whistling air danced in.  The crowd turned about, faced, thinned, died.

Mrs. Violet Smith turned a rose-white face to the flurry.  “Snowin’!”

“A real, made-to-order white Christmas for you and me, Doll.  The kind you read about.”

“It—­it don’t mean nothing to me, but—­”

“Sure, it does; I’m goin’ to blow you right, Doll.  Half the money is yourn, anyways.  You made that winning down in Atlanta yesterday as much as me, girlie.  If I hadn’t named that filly after you she’d ‘a’ been left at the post.”

“You—­you never had the right to name one of your race-horses after me.  There ain’t a girl ever went out with you that you ’ain’t named one after.  You—­you never had the right to!”

“I took it, kiddo, ’cause I like you!  Gad!  I like you!  Nix, it ain’t every little girl I’d name one of my stable after.  ’Violet!’—­some little pony that, odds ag’in her and walks off with the money.”

“I—­honest, I sometimes—­I—­just wish I was dead!”

“No, you don’t, Doll.  You know you just wanna go to-night, but you ’ain’t got the nerve.  I wanna show you a Christmas Eve that’ll leave any Christmas Eve you ever spent at the post.  Gad! look out there, will you?  I’m going to taxicab you right through the fuzz of that there snow-storm if it costs every cent the filly won for us!”

Mrs. Smith leaned back against the shelves limp, as if the blood had run from her heart, weakening her, but her eyes the color of lake-water when summer’s moment is bluest.  Her lips, that were meant to curve, straightened in a line of decision.

“I’ll go, Jimmie.”

“That’s the goods!”

“A girl’s just gotta have something to hold herself together, don’t she?  It—­it ain’t like the kid and Harry was layin’ awake for me—­last Tuesday they was both asleep when I got home.  They don’t let each other get lonesome, and Harry—­he—­There ain’t nothing much for me to do round home.”

“Now you’re talkin’ the English language, Doll.”

“I’ll go, Jimmie.”

He extended his cane at a sharper angle until it bent in upon itself, threatening to snap, and flung one gray-spatted ankle across the other.

“Sure, you’re going!  A poor little filly like you, sound-kneed, sound-winded, and full of speed, and no thin’ but trouble for your Christmas stockin’.  A poor little blue-eyed doll like you!”