explained. "I made
one for you, once, and you liked it like everything. Mebbe a boy won't?"
he added doubtfully.

"Oh, but a boy will!" Ellen cried, and tied the doll above the blue
paper soldier.

"Hadn't they ought to be here pretty soon?" Matthew asked nervously.
"Where's mother?"

"She's watching from the front room window," Ellen answered.

Once more Helders came stamping on the kitchen porch, but this time
there was a patter of other steps, and Ellen caught open the door before
he summoned. Helders stepped into the room, and with him was a little
boy.

"This one?" Ellen asked, her eyes alive with her eagerness.

But Helders shook his head.

"Mis' Bourne," he said, "I'm real dead sorry. They wa'n't but the one.
Just the one we'd spoke for."

"_One!_" Ellen said; "you said Orphan Asylum."

"There's only the one," Helders repeated. "The others is little bits of
babies, or else spoke for like ours--long ago. It seems they do that
way. But I want you should do something: I want you and Matthew should
take this one. Mother and I--are older ... we ain't set store so much...."

Ellen shook her head, and made him know, with what words she could find,
that it could not be so. Then she knelt and touched at the coat of the
child, a small frightened thing, with cap too large for him and one
mitten lost. But he looked up brightly, and his eyes stayed on the
Christmas tree. Ellen said little things to him, and went to take down
for him some trifle from the tree.

"I'm just as much obliged," she said quietly to Helders. "I never
thought of there not being enough. We'll wait."

Helders was fumbling for something.

"Here's your candles, I thought you might want them for somethin' else,"
he said, and turned to Matthew: "And here's your quarter. I didn't get
the toy you mentioned. I thought you wouldn't want it, without the
little kid."

Matthew looked swiftly at Ellen. He had not told her that he had sent by
Helders for a toy. And at that Ellen crossed abruptly to her husband,
and she was standing there as they let Helders out, with the little boy.

Ellen's father pounded his knee.

"But how long'll we have to wait? How long'll we have to wait?" he
demanded shrilly. "King and country, why didn't somebody ask him that?"

Matthew tore open the door.

"Helders!" he shouted, "how long did they say we'd have to wait?"

"Mebbe only a week or two--mebbe longer," Helders' voice came out of the
dark. "They couldn't t