way, their holiday mood giving place to resentment as they stared into the windows of the limousine.  With the American inability to sit still I shifted from one corner of the seat to another, impatient at the slow progress of the machine:  and I felt a certain contempt for human beings, that they should make all this fuss, burden themselves with all these senseless purchases, for a tradition.  The automobile stopped, and I fought my way across the sidewalk into the store of that time-honoured firm, Elgin, Yates and Garner, pausing uncertainly before the very counter where, some ten years before, I had bought an engagement ring.  Young Mr. Garner himself spied me, and handing over a customer to a tired clerk, hurried forward to greet me, his manner implying that my entrance was in some sort an event.  I had become used to this aroma of deference.

“What can I show you, Mr. Paret?” he asked.

“I don’t know—­I’m looking around,” I said, vaguely, bewildered by the glittering baubles by which I was confronted.  What did Maude want?  While I was gazing into the case, Mr. Garner opened a safe behind him, laying before me a large sapphire set with diamonds in a platinum brooch; a beautiful stone, in the depths of it gleaming a fire like a star in an arctic sky.  I had not given Maude anything of value of late.  Decidedly, this was of value; Mr. Garner named the price glibly; if Mrs. Paret didn’t care for it, it might be brought back or exchanged.  I took it, with a sigh of relief.  Leaving the store, I paused on the edge of the rushing stream of humanity, with the problem of the children’s gifts still to be solved.  I thought of my own childhood, when at Christmastide I had walked with my mother up and down this very street, so changed and modernized now; recalling that I had had definite desires, desperate ones; but my imagination failed me when I tried to summon up the emotions connected with them.  I had no desires now:  I could buy anything in reason in the whole street.  What did Matthew and Moreton want? and little Biddy?  Maude had not “spoiled” them; but they didn’t seem to have any definite wants.  The children made me think, with a sudden softening, of Tom Peters, and I went into a tobacconist’s and bought him a box of expensive cigars.  Then I told the chauffeur to take me to a toy-shop, where I stood staring through a plate-glass window at the elaborate playthings devised for the modern children of luxury.  In the centre was a toy man-of-war, three feet in length, with turrets and guns, and propellers and a real steam-engine.  As a boy I should have dreamed about it, schemed for it, bartered my immortal soul for it.  But—­if I gave it to Matthew, what was there for Moreton?  A steam locomotive caught my eye, almost as elaborate.  Forcing my way through the doors, I captured a salesman, and from a state bordering on nervous collapse he became galvanized into an intense alertness and respect when he understood my desires.  He didn’t know the price of the objects in question.  He brought the proprietor, an obsequious little German who, on learning my name, repeated it in every sentence.  For Biddy I chose a doll that was all but human; when held by a young woman for my inspection, it elicited murmurs of admiration from the women shoppers by whom we were surrounded.  The proprietor promised to make a special delivery of the three articles before seven o’clock....