He stood silently regarding them for some time, and then said:  “The world is strangely divided.  It is one of the reasons that makes me doubt the existence of a beneficent All-Father.”

“But these may get safely into the light and fullness of Heaven.”

“Yes,” he said, thoughtfully; “but how few of them will live up to the requirements of admittance to that perfect place?”

“The rich have as many shortcomings as the poor.  Sometimes I think they have even more.”

“You are very democratic.”

“Is that a serious charge against me?  The one perfect Being our world has seen chose poverty, and a lot among the lowly.  When the world grows older, and men get wiser, possibly they will make the same choice.”

“There have been solitary instances of the like along the ages—­men of whom the world was not worthy—­but the most of us are not such stuff as heroes are made of.”

I turned to him with kindling eyes:  “Wouldn’t you like to be one of them, Mr. Bovyer?”

He gave me a look that some way I did not care to meet, and turned my eyes away quickly to a restless black-eyed little girl who was stretching eager hands to a pink-cheeked dollie.

“You feel the sorrows of the poor and suffering more keenly than the most of us, I fear, Miss Selwyn,” he said—­more to draw me into conversation than anything else.

“My sympathies are of a very easy-going, aesthetic kind.  Some of your splendid music makes me cry.  While I listen, I think of the hungry and broken-hearted.  I seem to hear their moans in the sob and swell of the music.  It was that which made Beethoven’s Symphony so sad.”

He did not say anything for a good while, and fell to watching the longing in the children’s faces, and my heart grew very pitiful towards them.  They were so near and yet so far from the objects of their desire.  So I resolved while the supper table was being cleared to begin the distribution of my gifts, or rather, of Mr. Winthrop’s.

I set Mr. Bovyer to work gathering the bags of confectionery, while I carried them around to the excited children, taking bench by bench in regular order, and filling the little outstretched hands, usually so empty of any such dainties.  The people came crowding around to watch, while I began stripping the tree of its more enduring fruits.  Mothers with tears in their eyes, as they saw their little tots growing rapturous over an unclothed dollie, or some other toy, beautiful to the unaccustomed eyes of the poor little creatures.  The tree was stripped at last, and the children absorbed in the examination of their own or each other’s presents.  Most of them seemed perfectly content, but a few of the little boys looked enviously at the jack-knife in a companion’s hand, while casting dissatisfied glances at what had fallen to themselves.

It was time at last for the little folks to go home, and mothers soon were busy hunting up children and their wraps.