He rang up a dozen fares with a steady hand.  The temptation was over.  Six more strokes—­then nine without a falter.  He even imagined the bell rang more distinctly than usual, even encouragingly.  The car stopped.  Jim flung the door open with a triumphant sweep of his arm.  He felt ready to face the world.  But the baby—­his arm dropped.  It was hard.

He turned to help the young girl who was waiting at the step.  Through the whirling snow he saw her eager face, with a quick recognition lighting the steady eyes, and wondered dimly, as he stood with his hand on the signal-strap, where he could have seen her before.

He knew immediately.

“There was a mistake,” she said, with a shy tremor in her voice.  “You gave us too much change and here it is.”  She held out to Jim the piece of silver which had given him such an unhappy quarter of an hour.

He took it like one dazed.  Would the young lady think he was crazy to care so much about so small a coin?  He must say something.  “Thank you, miss,” he stammered as well as he could.  “You see, I thought it was gone—­and there’s the baby—­and it’s Christmas Eve—­and my wife’s sick—­and you can’t understand—­”

It certainly was not remarkable that she couldn’t.

“But I do,” she said, simply.  “I was afraid of that.  And I thought perhaps there was a baby, so I brought my Christmas present for her,” and something else dropped into Jim’s cold hand.

“What you waiting for?” shouted the motorman from the front platform.  The girl had disappeared in the snow.

Jim rang the bell to go ahead, and gazed again at the two shining half dollars in his hand.

“I didn’t have a chance to tell her,” he explained to his wife late in the evening, as he sat in a tiny rocking-chair several sizes too small for him, “that the baby wasn’t a her at all, though if I thought he’d grow up into such a lovely one as she is, I don’t know but I almost wish he was.”

“Poor Jim!” said Mary, with a little laugh as she put up her hand to stroke his rough cheek.  “I guess you’re tired.”

“And I should say,” he added, stretching out his long legs toward the few red sparks in the bottom of the grate, “I should say she had tears in her eyes, too, but I was that near crying myself I couldn’t be sure.”

The little room was sweet with the odour of English violets.  Asleep in the bed lay the boy, a toy horse clasped close to his breast.

“Bless her heart!” said Mary, softly.

“Well, Miss Williams,” said Walter Harris, as he sprang to meet a snow-covered figure coming swiftly along the sidewalk.  “I can see that you found him.  You’ve lost the first number, but they won’t scold you—­not this time.”

The girl turned a radiant face upon him.  “Thank you,” she said, shaking the snowy crystals from her skirt.  “I don’t care now if they do.  I should have lost more than that if I had stayed.”