vered, and
while Willie dished up the smoking dinner, stories were told on both
sides.

Mr. Barnes had been trying to get through the snow and to find them all
the time, but until the last night had made a stiff crust he had been
unable to do so. Then Mrs. Barnes told her story, winding up with the
account of Willie's Christmas dinner. "And if it hadn't been for his
keeping up our hearts I don't know what would have become of us," she
said at last.

"Well, my son," said papa, "you did take care of mamma, and get up a
dinner out of nothing, sure enough; and now we'll eat the dinner, which
I am sure is delicious."

So it proved to be; even the cake, or pudding, which Tot christened snow
pudding, was voted very nice, and the hickory nuts as good as raisins.
When they had finished, Mr. Barnes brought in his packages, gave Tot and
the rest some "sure-enough waisins," and added his Christmas presents
to Willie's; but though all were overjoyed, nothing was quite so nice in
their eyes as the two live birds.

After dinner the two men and Willie dug out passages from the doors,
through the snow, which had wasted a good deal, uncovered the windows,
and made a slanting way to his shed for old Tim. Then for two or three
days Willie made tunnels and little rooms under the snow, and for two
weeks, while the snow lasted, Nora and Tot had fine times in the little
snow playhouses.

XXX. MR. BLUFF'S EXPERIENCES OF HOLIDAYS*

* Reprinted by permission of Moffat, Yird & Co., from Christmas. R.H.
Schauffler, Editor.

OLIVER BELL BUNCE

"I hate holidays," said Bachelor Bluff to me, with some little
irritation, on a Christmas a few years ago. Then he paused an instant,
after which he resumed: "I don't mean to say that I hate to see people
enjoying themselves. But I hate holidays, nevertheless, because to me
they are always the saddest and dreariest days of the year. I shudder at
the name of holiday. I dread the approach of one, and thank heaven when
it is over. I pass through, on a holiday, the most horrible sensations,
the bitterest feelings, the most oppressive melancholy; in fact, I am
not myself at holiday-times."

"Very strange," I ventured to interpose.

"A plague on it!" said he, almost with violence. "I'm not inhuman. I
don't wish anybody harm. I'm glad people can enjoy themselves. But
I hate holidays all the same. You see, this is the reason: I am a
bachelor; I am without kin; I am in a place that did not know me a