“He says he’s been here three times, but you were out.”

“Have you any money for it, Clytie?” asked her husband.

Clytie looked as if a thunderbolt had struck her.

“Yes, I have; but—­oh, I don’t want to take it for that!  I need every penny I’ve got.”

“Well, there’s no need of feeling so badly about it,” said Langshaw resignedly.

“Give the ten-dollar bill to the man, George, and see if he can change it.”  He couldn’t resist a slight masculine touch of severity at her incapacity.  “I wish you’d tend to these things at the time, Clytie, or let me know about them.”  He took the money when George returned.  “Here’s your dollar now, Mary—­don’t lose it again!—­and your five, George.  You might as well take another dollar yourself, Clytie, for extras.”

He pocketed the remainder of the change carelessly.  After his first pang at the encroachment on the reserve fund the rod had sunk so far out of sight that it was almost as if it had never been.  He had, of course, known all along that he would not buy it.  Even the sting of the “Amount due” quickly evaporated.

Little Mary gave a jump that bumped her brown curly head against him.

“You don’t know what I’m going to give you for Christmas!” she cried joyously.

II

Langshaw was one of those men who have an inherited capacity for enjoying Christmas.  He lent it his attention with zest, choosing the turkey himself with critical care as he went through the big market in town, from whence he brought also wreaths and branches of holly that seemed to have larger and redder berries than could be bought in the village.  On Christmas Eve he put up the greens that decorated the parlour and dining-room—­a ceremony that required large preparations with a step-ladder, a hammer, tacks, and string, the removal of his coat, and a lighted pipe in one corner of his mouth; and which proceeded with such painstaking slowness on account of his coming down from the ladder every other moment to view the artistic effect of the arrangements, that it was only by sticking the last branches up any old way at Clytie’s wild appeal that he ever got it finished at all.

Then he helped her fill the stockings, his own fingers carefully giving the crowning effect of orange and cornucopia in each one, and arranging the large packages below, after tiptoeing down the stairs with them so as not to wake the officially sleeping children, who were patently stark awake, thrashing or coughing in their little beds.  The sturdy George had never been known to sleep on Christmas Eve, always coming down the next day esthetically pale and with abnormally large eyes, to the feast of rapture.

On this Saturday—­Christmas Eve’s eve—­when Langshaw finally reached home, laden with all the “last things” and the impossible packages of tortuous shapes left by fond relatives at his office for the children—­one pocket of his overcoat weighted with the love-box of really good candy for Clytie—­it was evident as soon as he opened the hall door that something unusual was going on upstairs.  Wild shrieks of “It’s father!  It’s father!” rent the air.