As Van Landing listened a sudden impulse to take the children in and get for them the things they wanted came over him; then he walked away.  If only he could find Carmencita and let her do the buying.  Was Christmas like this every year?  These children with no chance—­was there no one to give them their share of childhood’s rights?  Settlement workers, churches, schools, charity associations—­things of that sort doubtless saw to them.  It was not his business.  But wasn’t it his business?  Could it possibly be his business to know—­and care?

“I beg your pardon, sir.”

Van Landing looked up.  A tall, slender man in working-clothes, a basket on one arm, his wife holding to the other, tried to touch his hat.  “The crowd makes walking hard without pushing.  I hope I didn’t step on your foot.”

“Didn’t touch it.”  The man had on no overcoat, and his hands were red and chapped.  He was much too thin for his height, and as he coughed Van Landing understood.  “Shopping, I suppose?”

Why he asked he did not know, and it was the wife he asked, the young wife whose timid clutch of her husband’s arm was very unlike the manner of most of the women he had passed.  She looked up.

“We were afraid to wait until to-morrow, it’s snowing so hard.  We might not be able to get out, and the children—­”

“We’ve got three kiddies home.”  The man’s thin face brightened, and he rubbed his coat sleeve across his mouth to check his cough.  “Santa Claus is sure enough to them, and we don’t want ’em to know different till we have to.  A merry Christmas, sir!”

As they went on Van Landing turned and looked.  They were poor people.  But were they quite so poor as he?  He had seen many for whom he might have made Christmas had he known in time—­might have saved the sacrifices that had to be made; but would it then have been Christmas?  Slowly, very slowly, in the shabby street and snow-filled air, an understanding of things but dimly glimpsed before was coming to him, and he was seeing what for long had been unseen.

CHAPTER IX

“Think hard, Father—­oh, please think hard!  It was Van—­Van—­” Carmencita, hands clutched tightly behind her back, leaned forward on her tiptoes and anxiously peered into her father’s face for sign of dawning memory.  “If I hadn’t been so Christmas-crazy I’d have listened better, but I wasn’t thinking about his name.  Can’t you—­can’t you remember the last part?  It was Van—­Van—­”

Slowly her father shook his head.  “I wish I could, Carmencita.  I don’t hear well of late and I didn’t catch his name.  You called him Mr. Van.”

“I called him that for short.  I’m a cutting-down person even in names.”  The palms of Carmencita’s hands came together and her fingers interlocked.  “If I’d had more sense and manners I’d have called his name right from the first, and we wouldn’t have lost him.  I could have found him to-day if I’d known what to look for in the telephone-book, or if Miss Frances had been at Mother McNeil’s.  She might as well be lost, too, but she’ll be back at seven, and that’s why I am going now, so as to be there the minute she gets in, to ask her what his—­”