oothingly.

"But papa--I'm so disappointed--I've saved all my money just to have you
go with me. And mamma--I'll go and ask him to let you come."

Her father evidently did not approve of this, and the next moment he led
the child to the door, still talking to her soothingly, and Livingstone
heard him kiss her and tell her to wait for him below.

Livingstone let himself out of his side-door. He did not want to meet
Clark just then. He was not in a comfortable frame of mind. He had a
little headache.

As he turned into the street, he passed the little girl he had seen
up-stairs. She was wiping her little, smeared face with her
handkerchief, and had evidently been crying. Livingstone, as he passed,
caught her eye, and she gave him such a look of hate that it stung him
to the quick.

"The little serpent!" thought he. "Here he was supporting her family,
and she looking as if she could tear him to pieces! It showed how
ungrateful this sort of people were."

CHAPTER IV

Livingstone walked up town. It would, he felt, do his head good. He
needed exercise. He had been working rather too hard of late. However,
he was worth--yes, all that!--Out in the snow the sum was before him in
cold facsimile.

He had not gone far before he wished he had ridden. The street was
thronged with people: some streaming along; others stopping in front of
the big shop-windows, blocking the way and forcing such as were in a
hurry to get off the sidewalk. The shop-windows were all brilliantly
dressed and lighted. Every conception of fertile brains was there to
arrest the attention and delight the imagination. And the interest of
the throngs outside and in testified the shopkeepers' success.

Here Santa Claus, the last survivor of the old benefactors, who has
outlasted whole hierarchies of outworn myths and, yet firm in the
devotion of the heart of childhood, snaps his fingers alike at arid
science and blighting stupidity, was driving his reindeer, his teeming
sleigh filled with wonders from every region: dolls that walked and
talked and sang, fit for princesses; sleds fine enough for princes;
drums and trumpets and swords for young heroes; horses that looked as
though they were alive and would spring next moment from their rockers;
bats and balls that almost started of themselves from their places;
little uniforms, and frocks; skates; tennis-racquets; baby caps and
rattles; tiny engines and coaches; railway trains; animals that ran
ab