“You ain’t sick, are you, Mommy?”

“I guess so.  Come, you’d better say your prayers and go to bed.  We don’t have to keep the fire going so hard when you’re all covered up.”

It did not take long for the three little youngsters to divest themselves of the rags of clothing they wore.  They slept in what passed for their underclothes, so there was no donning of white gowns for the night.

“Here are our stockings, Mommy,” said the oldest, handing three ragged, almost footless, black stockings to the woman.

“It’s no use, I tell you.  I can’t do it.”

“It won’t do any harm, Mommy,” urged the girl.

“Do you believe in it, too?” asked the mother, and the girl shook her head.  “You won’t be disappointed in the morning if there’s nothing in ’em?”

“No, I suppose it will be because Santa Claus was too busy.”

With nervous fingers the woman hung the three stockings near the window.  She was hungry, she was cold, she was broken, she was a mother.  She could scarcely keep from crying.

“Maybe you’ll be glad you did it,” said the littlest girl drowsily.

“Ain’t you comin’ to bed, too, Mommy?” asked the oldest, beneath the covers over the mattress on the floor.

“In a little while.”

“And you won’t forget to say your prayers?”

“I ain’t said ’em for months, ever since your father was killed, and we got so poor.”

“But you’ll say ’em to-night ’cause it’s Christmas eve?”

“Yes, to-night,” said the mother; “now you go to sleep.”

“Are you waitin’ for him to come, Mommy?” asked the littlest girl, who was very sleepy.

“Yes,” said the mother.

Presently, as she sat in the dark, having turned out the light, the deep breathing of the children told her they were asleep.  She rose quietly, stepped to the window, and stood looking at the three shapeless, tattered stockings.  She was high up in the tenement and the moonlight came softly over the house roofs of the city into the bare, cold, cheerless room.  She stared at the stockings and tears streamed down her wasted cheeks.  She had hung them low at the suggestion of the littlest girl so the children could easily get at them in the morning.

[Illustration:  She pressed them against her face.]

After a time she fell down on her knees.  She pressed them against her face.  She did not say anything.  She could scarcely think anything.  She just knelt there until something gently drew her head around.  She dropped the stockings.  She put her right hand on the window-ledge to steady herself and looked backward.

No sound save the breathing of the children and her own stifled sobs had broken the silence; the door was shut, but a man was there, a man of strange vesture seen dimly in the moon’s radiance, yet there was a kind of light about his face.  She could see his features.  They were those of a man in middle years.  They were lined with care.  He had seen life on its seamy side.  The woman felt that he had known poverty and loneliness.  She stared up at him.