in thunder didn't you open the door or sing out just now?"
he said, with an affected brusquerie to cover his uneasiness. "Where's
your daughters?"

"Gone to Rough-and-Ready to a party."

"And your son?"

"He never comes here when he can amuse himself elsewhere."

"Your children might have stayed home on Christmas Eve."

"So might yours."

He didn't say this impatiently, but with a certain abstracted
conviction far beyond any suggestion of its being a retort. Mulrady did
not appear to notice it.

"Well, I don't see why us old folks can't enjoy ourselves without
them," said Mulrady, with affected cheerfulness. "Let's have a good
time, you and me. Let's see--you haven't any one you can send to my
house, hev you?"

"They took the servant with them," said Slinn, briefly. "There is no
one here."

"All right," said the millionaire, briskly. "I'll go myself. Do you
think you can manage to light up a little more, and build a fire in the
kitchen while I'm gone? It used to be mighty comfortable in the old
times."

He helped the old man to rise from his chair, and seemed to have
infused into him some of his own energy. He then added, "Now, don't
you get yourself down again into that chair until I come back," and
darted out into the night once more.

In a quarter of an hour he returned with a bag on his broad shoulders,
which one of his porters would have shrunk from lifting, and laid it
before the blazing hearth of the now lighted kitchen. "It's something
the old woman got for her party, that didn't come off," he said,
apologetically. "I reckon we can pick out enough for a spread. That
darned Chinaman wouldn't come with me," he added, with a laugh,
"because, he said, he'd knocked off work 'allee same, Mellican man!'
Look here, Slinn," he said, with a sudden decisiveness, "my pay-roll of
the men around here don't run short of a hundred and fifty dollars a
day, and yet I couldn't get a hand to help me bring this truck over for
my Christmas dinner."

"Of course," said Slinn, gloomily.

"Of course; so it oughter be," returned Mulrady, shortly. "Why, it's
only their one day out of 364; and I can have 363 days off, as I am
their boss. I don't mind a man's being independent," he continued,
taking off his coat and beginning to unpack his sack--a common "gunny
bag"--used for potatoes. "We're independent ourselves, ain't we,
Slinn?"

His good spirits, which had been at first labored and affected, had
become n