in
the sky. Too much rapt by his vision to feel impatience, the boy sat and
waited; and by and by a jingling in the lock showed Grandfather at
hand,--the door opened, and he came in.

You can guess his surprise when his little grandson flew to meet him
with his wonderful story. As for the story, he pooh-poohed
_that_,--sleeping in such a strange place might well bring about a queer
dream, he said; but he took the boy home to the cottage, and Granny,
full of wonderment and sympathy, speedily prepared a breakfast for her
darling after his adventure. But, even with his mouth full of scalding
bread and milk, Roger would go on telling of angels and fairies, and the
owls' talk in their nest, till both grandparents began to think him
bewitched.

Perhaps he was, for to this day he persists in the story. And though the
villagers that morning exclaimed that at no time had their old church,
in its Christmas dress, looked so beautiful before, and though the organ
sent forth a rarer, sweeter music than fingers had ever drawn from it,
still nobody believed a word of it. And though the poor mother, kneeling
in her lonely pew, and missing her darling from beside her, felt a
strange peace and patience enter her heart, and came away calmed and
blessed, still no one listened to the story. "Roger had dreamed it all,"
they said; and perhaps he had,--only the owls knew.

* * * * *

MR. BLUFFS EXPERIENCES OF HOLIDAYS

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 dreariest and saddest 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 at
birth. And so, when holidays come around, there is no place anywhere for
me.