with a steady hand. The temptation was over.
Six more strokes--then nine without a falter. He even imagined the bell
rang more distinctly than usual, even encouragingly. The car stopped.
Jim flung the door open with a triumphant sweep of his arm. He felt
ready to face the world. But the baby--his arm dropped. It was hard.

He turned to help the young girl who was waiting at the step. Through
the whirling snow he saw her eager face, with a quick recognition
lighting the steady eyes, and wondered dimly, as he stood with his hand
on the signal-strap, where he could have seen her before.

He knew immediately.

"There was a mistake," she said, with a shy tremor in her voice. "You
gave us too much change and here it is." She held out to Jim the piece
of silver which had given him such an unhappy quarter of an hour.

He took it like one dazed. Would the young lady think he was crazy to
care so much about so small a coin? He must say something. "Thank you,
miss," he stammered as well as he could. "You see, I thought it was
gone--and there's the baby--and it's Christmas Eve--and my wife's
sick--and you can't understand--"

It certainly was not remarkable that she couldn't.

"But I do," she said, simply. "I was afraid of that. And I thought
perhaps there was a baby, so I brought my Christmas present for her,"
and something else dropped into Jim's cold hand.

"What you waiting for?" shouted the motorman from the front platform.
The girl had disappeared in the snow.

Jim rang the bell to go ahead, and gazed again at the two shining half
dollars in his hand.

"I didn't have a chance to tell her," he explained to his wife late in
the evening, as he sat in a tiny rocking-chair several sizes too small
for him, "that the baby wasn't a her at all, though if I thought he'd
grow up into such a lovely one as she is, I don't know but I almost wish
he was."

"Poor Jim!" said Mary, with a little laugh as she put up her hand to
stroke his rough cheek. "I guess you're tired."

"And I should say," he added, stretching out his long legs toward the
few red sparks in the bottom of the grate, "I should say she had tears
in her eyes, too, but I was that near crying myself I couldn't be sure."

The little room was sweet with the odour of English violets. Asleep in
the bed lay the boy, a toy horse clasped close to his breast.

"Bless her heart!" said Mary, softly.

"Well, Miss Williams," said Walter Harris, as he sprang to meet a
snow-c