Constraint in the mellowing halo of a Christmas eve supper where holly and a Yule-log blazed and the winter wind frostily rattled the checker-paned windows of the sitting-room in jealous spleen, fled to join the Doctor’s rheumatism.

By the time the grandfather’s clock struck seven through a haze of holly, the Doctor had pokered the Yule-log into a frenzied shower of gold; apples and nuts were steadily disappearing from a basket by the Doctor’s chair and the Doctor himself was relating an original Christmas tale of adventure, born of uncommon inspiration and excitement, to a huddled group with circular eyes and contented stomachs.  But Muggs—­inimitable workman—­his small face partially obscured by the biggest apple in the basket, had not yet spoken, and Jim, the shy, sullen little boy to whom Roger had taken a fancy because he was lame, had met the Doctor’s eyes but once, and then with a rush of color.

Now, whether it was the scheming excitement of a busy day or the warmth of a busy log or the rambling yarn of a busy Doctor, who may say?  Certainly Roger fell asleep at a fictional crisis and remained asleep for all that Jim furtively nudged him.

“There!” said the Doctor as the clock struck eight, “that’s all.  To bath and beds, every one of you!  Annie’s had a lamp on the kitchen table this half hour ready to light you up the stairs.  My!  My!  My!—­but there’s a busy day ahead.  Roger!  Well, of all ungrateful listeners!  Roger!”

But in the end, the Doctor carried Roger up to bed, preceded by Annie with the lamp.  And while Annie was turning back quilts and smoothing pillows and fumbling at windows, with the freedom of long service she soundly berated the Doctor for postponing the bed-time hour with his Christmas twaddle.

“And Mister Muggs there,” she said severely, “has had one apple too many, I’m thinkin’, and the last one as big as his head.  He’ll need a pill before morning.  The child’s packed himself that hard and round ye fear to touch him.”  And then because Muggs was such a very little boy Annie was minded to assist with his bath, and laid kindly hands upon an indefinite outer garment which began immediately beneath his arm-pits and ended at his shoe-tops in singular fringe.

“An’, ma’am,” she explained to Aunt Ellen a little later, “I had to let him go in to his bath by himself.  No more had I touched his bushel-basket of rags—­an’ they were hitched over his shoulders with school straps and somebody’s shirtwaist underneath—­than he let out a terrific shriek (ye must have heard him) an’ all the boys come runnin’ and crowdin’ round him and starin’ so frightened at me, an’ his brother yelled at him to keep quiet or something or somebody’d get him, and he kept quiet that sudden I could fairly see the child swell.  He’s unnatural still and unnatural full, ma’am, an’ the Doctor better leave his pills handy.”

Bathed and freshly night-gowned, the Doctor’s guests tumbled, a little noisily into bed.  Only Jim lay silent and wakeful.  Once he nudged his bed-fellow.