-ah yes,--the
church.

Right in the busiest, most bustling part of the town, its fresco and
bronze and iron quaintly suggestive of mediaeval times. Within, all cool
and dim and restful, with the faintest whiff of lingering incense rising
and pervading the gray arches. Yes, the Virgin would know and have pity;
the sweet, white-robed Virgin at the pretty flower-decked altar, or the
one away up in the niche, far above the golden dome where the Host was.
Holy Mary, Mother of God. Poor little Miss Sophie.

Titiche, the busy-body of the house, noticed that Miss Sophie's bundle
was larger than usual that afternoon. "Ah, poor woman!" sighed Titiche's
mother, "she would be rich for Christmas."

The bundle grew larger each day, and Miss Sophie grew smaller. The
damp, cold rain and mist closed the white-curtained window, but always
there behind the sewing machine drooped and bobbed the little
black-robed figure. Whirr, whirr went the wheels, and the coarse jean
pants piled in great heaps at her side. The Claiborne street car saw her
oftener than before, and the sweet, white Virgin in the flowered niche
above the gold-domed altar smiled at the little penitent almost every
day.

"_Ma foi_," said the slatternly landlady to Madame Laurent and Michel one
day, "I no see how she live! Eat? Nothing, nothing, almost, and las'
night when it was so cold and foggy, eh? I hav' to mek him build fire.
She mos' freeze."

Whereupon the rumor spread that Miss Sophie was starving herself to
death to get some luckless relative out of jail for Christmas,--a rumor
which enveloped her scraggy little figure with a kind of halo to the
neighbors when she appeared on the streets.

November had verged into December and the little pile of coins were yet
far from the sum needed. Dear God! how the money did have to go. The
rent, and the groceries and the coal,--though, to be sure, she used a
precious bit of that. All the work and saving and skimping,--maybe, yes,
maybe by Christmas. What a gift!

Christmas Eve night on Royal Street is no place for a weakling, for the
shouts and carousals of the roisterers will strike fear into the brave.
Yet amid the cries and yells, the deafening blow of horns and tin
whistles and the really dangerous fusillade of fireworks, the little
figure hurried along, one hand clutching tight the battered hat that the
rude merry-makers would have torn off, the other grasping under the
thin, black cape a worn little pocketbook.