r stops beating his
hands together to keep warm, and makes a mock attempt to catch them,
whereat their shrieks rise shriller than ever. "Them stockin's o'
yourn 'll be the death o' Santa Claus!" he shouts after them, as they
dodge. And they, looking back, snap saucily, "Mind yer business,
freshy!" But their laughter belies their words. "They giv' it to ye
straight that time," grins the grocer's clerk, come out to snatch a
look at the crowds; and the two swap holiday greetings.

At the corner, where two opposing tides of travel form an eddy, the
line of push-carts debouches down the darker side street. In its gloom
their torches burn with a fitful glare that wakes black shadows among
the trusses of the railroad structure overhead. A woman, with worn
shawl drawn tightly about head and shoulders, bargains with a pedler
for a monkey on a stick and two cents' worth of flitter-gold. Five
ill-clad youngsters flatten their noses against the frozen pane of the
toy-shop, in ecstasy at something there, which proves to be a milk
wagon, with driver, horses, and cans that can be unloaded. It is
something their minds can grasp. One comes forth with a penny goldfish
of pasteboard clutched tightly in his hand, and, casting cautious
glances right and left, speeds across the way to the door of a
tenement, where a little girl stands waiting. "It's yer Chris'mas,
Kate," he says, and thrusts it into her eager fist. The black doorway
swallows them up.

Across the narrow yard, in the basement of the rear house, the lights
of a Christmas tree show against the grimy window pane. The hare
would never have gone around it, it is so very small. The two children
are busily engaged fixing the goldfish upon one of its branches. Three
little candles that burn there shed light upon a scene of utmost
desolation. The room is black with smoke and dirt. In the middle of
the floor oozes an oil-stove that serves at once to take the raw edge
off the cold and to cook the meals by. Half the window panes are
broken, and the holes stuffed with rags. The sleeve of an old coat
hangs out of one, and beats drearily upon the sash when the wind
sweeps over the fence and rattles the rotten shutters. The family
wash, clammy and gray, hangs on a clothes-line stretched across the
room. Under it, at a table set with cracked and empty plates, a
discouraged woman sits eying the children's show gloomily. It is
evident that she has been drinking. The peaked faces of the little