and thrusting her nose inquiringly out of the
folds of the old brown shawl, which was wrapped around her head.

"You bet I be!" whimpered Mike, pointing forlornly with his one
unoccupied finger to his bruised ankle.

"Been playin' pitch-pennies, yer mis'ble young 'un!" grinned a tall
boy, strolling by with his hands in his pockets, and his ferret eyes
on the sharp lookout for mischief.

In a twinkling he swooped up Mike's small coin, which had rattled to
the pavement, and vanished with them in a struggling tangle of horse
cars and omnibuses before Mike finished his desperate yell of, "Gim me
'um."

By this time a crowd had gathered about the prostrate Mike, who,
faint with pain, was at last lifted into the chaise of a kind-hearted
doctor, who was passing, and carried to his house in Bone Court.

There we will leave Mike for a while, and look after the little pine
tree on its way to Meadow Home.

Such a group of round, rosy faces as were on the watch for it in the
great bay window of Meadow Home, peering out in the red sunset,
straining their eyes in the dim twilight, and peering still more
persistently as the stars came out through the gathering darkness!

The fire danced in the grate, and the shadows danced on the wall, and
the four little heads danced more and more impatiently in the window
pane, as the cold winter night settled down on the world outside of
Meadow Home.

"They're run away with and threw out. What will you bet, Mab?" shouted
Will, turning away from the window in disgust, and indulging in a
double somerset.

"_Thrown_, Will," corrected Mabel, just now more indignant with his
grammar than his slang.

Mabel began to clear with her sleeve an unblurred peep through the
pane, and then pressed her nose hard against the glass.

"It's _my_ opinion," she said, with great pompousness, "that the
Christmas trees are all sold. I told Ely not to put off buying till
to-day. Don't you remember, Alice? And so papa is just coming home
without them."

Alice poh-pohed. Alice was sitting up stiffly at a table by the fire,
stuffing a pin-cushion, assisted, or, more properly, impeded, by her
small brother Chrissy, who had offered his services, and would not
listen to Alice's nay. Chrissy was not handsome in any light, but by
the flickering firelight he looked like a little ogre. He sat
hunched up in his chair, his knees drawn up to his nose, the sharp end
of his tongue curling out of the corner of his mouth,