aning against the door. "Have you plenty of
coal?" she asked, in an undertone.

"Oh, yes'm, thank you," said Mrs. Wiggs, smiling reassuringly. Her
tone might have been less confident, but for Jim's warning glance.
Every fiber of his sensitive nature shrank from asking help.

The girl was puzzled; she noticed the stamp of poverty on everything
in sight except the bright face of the little woman before her.

"Well," she said doubtfully, "if you ever want--to come to see me,
ask for Miss Lucy Olcott at Terrace Park. Good night, and a happy
Christmas!"

She was gone, and the doorway looked very black and lonesome in
consequence. But there was the big basket to prove she was not
merely an apparition, and it took both Jim and his mother to carry
it in. Sitting on the floor, they unpacked it. There were
vegetables, oatmeal, fruit, and even tea and coffee. But the
surprise was at the very bottom! A big turkey, looking so comical
with his legs stuck in his body that Jim laughed outright.

"It's the first turkey that's been in this house fer many a day!"
said Mrs. Wiggs, delightedly, as she pinched the fat fowl. "I 'spect
Europena'll be skeered of it, it's so big. My, but we'll have a
good dinner to-morrow! I'll git Miss Hazy an' Chris to come over
an' spend the day, and I'll carry a plate over to Mrs. Schultz, an'
take a little o' this here tea to ole Mrs. Lawson."

The cloud had turned inside out for Mrs. Wiggs, and only the silver
lining was visible. Jim was doing a sum on the brown paper that came
over the basket, and presently he looked up and said slowly:

"Ma, I guess we can't have the turkey this year. I kin sell it fer a
dollar seventy-five, and that would buy us hog-meat fer a good
while."

Mrs. Wiggs's face fell, and she twisted her apron-string in silence.
She had pictured the joy of a real Christmas dinner, the first the
youngest children had ever known; she had already thought of half a
dozen neighbors to whom she wanted to send "a little snack." But one
look at Jim's anxious face recalled their circumstances.

"Of course we'll sell it," she said brightly. "You have got the
longest head fer a boy! We'll sell it in the mornin', an' buy
sausage fer dinner, an' I'll cook some of these here nice
vegetables an' put a orange an' some candy at each plate, an' the
childern'll never know nothin' 'bout it. Besides," she added, "if
you ain't never et turkey meat you don't know how good it is."

But in spite of her