He turned with a dark scowl.

On a doorstep sat a little girl, gazing up at him with blue eyes beneath a tousled mop of auburn hair.

William’s eye travelled sternly from her Titian curls to her bare feet.  He assumed a threatening attitude and scowled fiercely.

“You better not say that again,” he said darkly.

“Why not?” she said with a jeering laugh.

“Well, you’d just better not,” he said with a still more ferocious scowl.

“What’d you do?” she persisted.

He considered for a moment in silence.  Then:  “You’d see what I’d do!” he said ominously.

“Garn! Swank!” she repeated.  “Now do it!  Go on, do it!”

“I’ll—­let you off this time,” he said judicially.

“Garn! Softie.  You can’t do anything, you can’t!  You’re a softie!”

“I could cut your head off an’ scalp you an’ leave you hanging on a tree, I could,” he said fiercely, “an’ I will, too, if you go on calling me names.”

“Softie!  Swank! Now cut it off!  Go on!”

He looked down at her mocking blue eyes.

“You’re jolly lucky I don’t start on you,” he said threateningly.  “Folks I do start on soon get sorry, I can tell you.”

[Illustration:  “GARN!  SWANK!” WILLIAM TURNED WITH A DARK SCOWL.]

“What you do to them?”

He changed the subject abruptly.

“What’s your name?” he said.

“Sheila.  What’s yours?”

“Red Hand—­I mean, William.”

“I’ll tell you sumpthin’ if you’ll come an’ sit down by me.”

“What’ll you tell me?”

“Sumpthin’ I bet you don’t know.”

“I bet I do.”

“Well, come here an’ I’ll tell you.”

He advanced towards her suspiciously.  Through the open door he could see a bed in a corner of the dark, dirty room and a woman’s white face upon the pillow.

“Oh, come on!” said the little girl impatiently.

He came on and sat down beside her.

“Well?” he said condescendingly, “I bet I knew all the time.”

“No, you didn’t!  D’you know,” she sank her voice to a confidential whisper, “there’s a chap called Father Christmas wot comes down chimneys Christmas Eve and leaves presents in people’s houses?”

He gave a scornful laugh.

“Oh, that rot!  You don’t believe that rot, do you?”

“Rot?” she repeated indignantly.  “Why, it’s true—­true as true!  A boy told me wot had hanged his stocking up by the chimney an’ in the morning it was full of things an’ they was jus’ the things wot he’d wrote on a bit of paper an’ thrown up the chimney to this ’ere Christmas chap.”

“Only kids believe that rot,” persisted William.  “I left off believin’ it years and years ago!”

Her face grew pink with the effort of convincing him.