htest effort to discover more. It didn't interest him, and he didn't
wish it to interest her. She was his child, and that was enough--at
least, it was enough for several years. The precise moment at which it
ceased to be enough is not fixed in Billy's mind, but last Christmas,
when Lotchen found a gold watch in her stocking, and when she came and
put her arms around his neck and kissed him, which she hadn't done very
often of late, and when she whispered that she wished she had something
to give him, Billy turned his eyes to the floor and stuck his big fists
in his trowsers pockets, and did a power of thinking. He knew then, if
he had not fully known it before, that for her to be his child was not
enough. So he said very solemnly, "Are you sure you mean that, Lotchen?
Now, don't answer without you know, for you might have something you
wouldn't want to give me, and if I was to ask for it and you was to look
hesitatin', I--well I don't know what I should do."

"I don't have to think, Billy," Lotchen answered promptly, "for I've
been thinking a great deal and wondering whether you--"

She stopped there short, and her face--her pretty face, her dear, round,
dimpled face, her truthful, honest, womanly face--got very red, and she
jumped up and ran out of the room.

After that last Christmas, Billy and Lotchen talked and walked with each
other on a different footing from that on which their intercourse had
previously been conducted. He said nothing to her, nor she to him, that
referred to their interrupted conversation until October came, and then
one day he said: "Lotchen, is my Christmas gift ready?" and he held out
his hand to her--both hands--and smiled.

"Yes, Billy," she answered.

And on next Tuesday morning, Christmas morning, when the bells are
ringing merrily and all the world is glad, Billy Warlock, as I said at
the very beginning of my story, dressed in his big frock coat and the
whitest of snowy neckties, will--but you know the rest, so what's the
use of my telling it?

MR. CINCH.

In the construction of Mr. Cinch nature had been generous, not to say
prodigal, of materials, but certainly a wiser discretion might have been
exercised in using them. The centre of Mr. Cinch's gravity was much too
far above his waist. All the rest of him appeared to have been fitted
out at the expense of his legs, which, unable to endure so oppressive a
burden, had spread.

To say that the shape of his legs was a sour