Jim hung his head and glanced at his shining new shoes.

"No, sir!" he said and gulped.

"Bless me," said the Doctor, adjusting his spectacles, "I thought you
were lame and if I hadn't forgotten it last night you'd have had no
skates this morning."

"I didn't have no heel on one shoe," blurted Jim in confusion, and
Roger, in relief, hoorayed himself into hoarseness.

But Jim, like Muggs, was something of a mystery, and after a time the
Doctor, with a sigh, abandoned his effort to break through the boy's
sullen shyness. Still Jim was the first at the chopping block when Annie
wanted wood, and when the task took on something of the charm of Tom
Sawyer's fence by reason of a winter wren, so tame from overfeeding that
he perched himself now and then upon the handle of the ax, Jim fell back
with resentment and resigned the ax to Marty Fay who spat upon his
hands, doubled up his fists, sparred, in an excess of good spirits, with
an invisible antagonist, and thereafter made the chips fly so fast that
the little wren departed.

Already there were great Christmas bunches of oats upon glistening trees
and fences, but, while Asher was carrying double portions of food to
cattle and horses, to Toby, the cat, and Rover, the dog, the Doctor went
about, with an eager pack of boys at his heels, distributing further
Christmas largess for his feathered friends--suet and crumbs and seed.
For there were chickadees in the clump of red cedars by the barn, and
juncos and nuthatches, white-throated sparrows and winter wrens, all so
frank in their overtures to the Doctor that the boys with one accord