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.

"Luke," he whispered, "d'ye think I'd orta tell 'em?"

"Aw," said Luke sleepily, "dry up, Jim! Gosh, ain't the bed soft!"

Jim sighed.

Christmas came to the old farmhouse with the distant echo of village
bells at midnight but, long before that, Christmas, in a fur cap and
great-coat had swept up the driveway with a jingle of sleigh-bells,
behind old Polly, the Doctor's mare, his sleigh packed high with
bundles. By the light of a late moon, flinging festal silver on the
snow, it might be seen that Christmas resembled a somewhat guilty