our friend, because--because that's all we can be--just friends. And
he hasn't any. I mean anybody to make Christmas for. He said so
himself. And can't he go with us to-night and see the shops? I know
he's nice, Father. Please, please let him!"

The look of terrified helplessness which for a moment swept over the
gentle face, wherein suffering and sorrow had made deep impress, but
in which was neither bitterness nor complaint, stirred the heart
within him as not for long it had been stirred, and quickly Van
Landing spoke.

"It may not be a good plan generally, but this time it was all right,"
he said. "She spoke to me because she thought I could not see what
was going on across the street, and very kindly shared her better
position with me. I--" He hesitated. His name would mean nothing to
the man before him. Their worlds were very different worlds. It was
possible, however, that this gentle, shrinking creature, with a face
so spiritualized by life's denials that it shamed him as he looked,
knew more of his, Van Landing's, world than he of the blind man's, and
suddenly, as if something outside himself directed, he yielded to a
strange impulse.

It was true, what the child had said. He had few friends--that is,
friends in the sense the child meant. Of acquaintances he had many,
very many. At his club, in business, in a rather limited social set,
he knew a number of people well, but friends--If he were to die
to-morrow his going would occasion but the usual comment he had often
heard concerning others. Some years ago he had found himself
continually entertaining what he called his friends, spending foolish
sums of money on costly dinners, and quite suddenly he had quit. As