wagon
and deposited there like any express package. From somewhere a longish
something that proved to be a Christmas-tree, very much wrapped and
swathed about, came to keep him company. The doctor climbed up by the
driver, and they were off. Gimpy recalled with a dull sense of impending
events in which for once he had no shaping hand, as he rubbed his ears
where the bitter blast pinched, that to-morrow was Christmas.

A strange group was that which gathered about the supper-table at Sea
Breeze that night. It would have been sufficiently odd to any one
anywhere; but to Gimpy, washed, in clean, comfortable raiment, with his
bad foot set in a firm bandage, and for once no longer sore with the pain
that had racked his frame from babyhood, it seemed so unreal that once or
twice he pinched himself covertly to see if he were really awake. They
came weakly stumping with sticks and crutches and on club feet, the lame
and the halt, the children of sorrow and suffering from the city slums,
and stood leaning on crutch or chair for support while they sang their
simple grace; but neither in their clear childish voices nor yet in the
faces that were turned toward Gimpy in friendly scrutiny as the last
comer, was there trace of pain. Their cheeks were ruddy and their eyes
bright with the health of outdoors, and when they sang about the "Frog in
the Pond," in response to a spontaneous demand, laughter bubbled over
around the table. Gimpy, sizing his fellow-boarders up according to the
standards of the gang, with the mental conclusion that he "could lick the
bunch," felt a warm little hand worming its way into his, and, looking
into a pair of trustful baby eyes, choked with a sudden reminiscent pang,
but smiled back at his friend and felt suddenly at home. Little Ellen,
with the pervading affections, had added him to her family of brothers.
What honors were in store for him in that relation Gimpy never guessed.
Ellen left no one out. When summer came again she enlarged the family
further by adopting the President of the United States as her papa, when
he came visiting to Sea Breeze; and by rights Gimpy should have achieved a
pull such as would have turned the boss of his ward green with envy.

It appeared speedily that something unusual was on foot. There was a
subdued excitement among the children which his experience diagnosed at
first flush as the symptoms of a raid. But the fact that in all the waste
of snow on the way over he had s