After lunch at half-past one, the Judge went to his study for a nap, but he could not sleep.

The face of the strange child was ever before him. He wondered what she was doing. Titus had taken her up to the attic to see his old toys and to choose some for herself. He would like to watch her expression as Titus exhibited his cast-off playthings. For her that attic would be a kind of treasure-house.

How like a mirror her face was, how different from his, even from Titus’s, for the boy, young as he was, had learned to conceal his emotions; and now what was he going to do with her?

With a sigh he got up, went into the hall and downstairs, put on a fur-lined coat and a fur cap, and was just about to go out when the two children came down the staircase, Titus not running as usual, but soberly walking beside his little companion.

Bethany’s eyes were shining. She had a clown doll under one arm, a trumpet under the other, and her hands were full of games—toy-dogs and horses, a Noah’s ark, and a little cart.

Titus had a bag slung on his back.

“G-g-grandfather,” he said, “I suppose it’s all right to give these things to the Tingsby children.”

“Certainly.”

“H-h-how will I get them there? Are you going to have the sleigh out to-day?”

“I was not planning to do so. I am going to walk.”

“L-l-let’s take the young one for a drive,” exclaimed Titus.

Judge Sancroft smiled. Titus ordinarily hated to drive. He did not care to sit still for any length of time.

“Very well,” he said at length.

“I-I-I was just going to take her up to the stable to see the pigeons,” said Titus. “S-s-she’s so crazy about birds.”

“Then tell Roblee to harness, and remember not to keep me waiting. Don’t take the child outdoors in that garb.”

“I-I-I don’t know what to put on her,” said Titus, in a puzzled way. “S-s-she can’t put her old dirty coat over that white rig.”

The Judge opened the hall closet. “Let us see what we have here.”

Titus came forward and, rummaging in drawers and on hooks, brought out a small cap.

“H-h-here, child, try this on.”

Bethany carefully put her toys on the floor and obediently held up her head.

The cap was several sizes too large, but she did not complain, only quietly pushed it to the back of her head.

“Here is a scarf,” said the Judge, “wrap that round your neck.”

Bethany did as she was told, and Titus next brought out a short coat of his own.

“I-i-it’s worlds too large,” he observed, “but it will keep her warm.”

“What about her feet?” inquired the Judge.

“W-w-well, here’s a big shawl,” stuttered Titus, bringing out a traveling rug. “I guess we’ll just wrap that round her after she gets in the sleigh.”

“It will cover all deficiencies,” said the Judge, “but how will you get her up to the stable in those thin slippers?”

Titus emerged from the closet and surveyed Bethany with a face flushed from exertion. “I guess I’ll have to carry her up. It isn’t far. Once there she’ll be warm enough.”

The Judge smiled and followed slowly as the two went down another staircase and opened a door leading to a back veranda. From there a plank walk led through the garden to the stable.

Titus manfully shouldered his burden on the veranda.

Bethany clasped her arms about his neck and smiled back at the Judge, who caught up to them at the stable door.

There was a furnace in the stable, and the air was warm and comfortable, so Titus allowed Bethany to slip to the floor.

“Is this where your horses live?” she asked, shyly, looking up at the Judge.

He nodded his head.

She continued to look about her. “I wish Mother Tingsby had been born a horse; it would be better for her.”

The Judge wrinkled his forehead. Poor child—she, too, was grappling with the mystery of the inequality of the human lot.

“W-w-well,” said Titus, hurrying back from the stalls where he had been to speak to Roblee. “T-t-the sleigh will be at the door in twenty minutes. N-n-now let us go up to see the pigeons,” and he led the way toward a flight of steps.

Bethany tripped behind, occasionally extricating a hand from the long sleeve of Titus’s coat to push back on her head the capacious cap, which persisted in falling over her brows.

Titus, with Charlie Brown’s help, had had a fine place made for his pigeons. His grandfather had allowed him to have a part of the hay loft inclosed, some extra windows put in, and a floor of matched pine laid.

“There isn’t a better loft in the city,” Charlie had said when it was finished.

Clean, coarse sand had been put on the floor, movable nest compartments had been placed against the wall, and the latest things in feed hoppers and drinking fountains had been bought for the boy.

He was full of joy over his new possession, and, as Mrs. Blodgett prophesied, most of his leisure time was spent here, either alone or in company with other boys.

He did all the work himself, and with a worthy pride in the clean home of his birds he stood at the top of the steps and eagerly waited to hear what the little girl would say.

Bethany came up the steps, walked through the screen door that Titus held open, and looked about her.

It was the middle of the afternoon, and in view of the fast approaching darkness the pigeons were bestirring themselves in order to have their last feed before going to bed. They were all promenading over the sanded floor, going from one rack to another looking for the choicest grains.

They made a very pretty picture in the gloaming. Titus had not as many varieties as his friend Charlie had, but still he had a goodly number. There were dark Jacobins, with nodding red hoods surrounding their white faces; pure white Jacobins and buff Jacobins; clean-shaped, slender magpies; graceful archangels; shell-crested, nasal tufted priests; cobby frill-backs with reversed feathering; swallows; tumblers; runts; demure nuns in black and white costumes with white hoods passing below their side curls; and globular cropped poulters.

Bethany surveyed them in profound silence. The Judge, striving to read her face, could make nothing of it but confusion.

Finally he put out a hand to steady her. The child was swaying.

“Do you feel ill?” he asked, gazing apprehensively at her deathly white face.

She nodded. “Yes, sir, Bethany feels sick.”

He took her in his arms and carried her downstairs, and the discomforted Titus, after a farewell glance at his beautiful birds, followed disconsolately behind. He had so hoped that the little girl would like them. She had seemed to like Princess Sukey. Well, girls were queer. Boys were much more satisfactory.

“What is the matter with you?” asked the Judge when he had set Bethany on her feet.

“Sir,” she said, in a whisper and looking up at him with an awed face, “Was it heaven or were they ghosts?”

The Judge tried to do some thinking. It was hard for a man of his age to send himself back to childhood—and then he had not been an imaginative child. But he tried to think of himself as highly strung, as having a passion for dumb creatures, as being poor and unable to have pets about him, and then suddenly to be confronted with a number of beautiful specimens of the bird world.

Yes, he could just faintly picture to himself something of Bethany’s ecstasy. The child had been overcome.

“Don’t you want to go in the house and lie down?” he asked, gazing kindly at her white face.

“Yes, sir,” she whispered. The Judge carried her along the plank walk, while Titus lounged slowly behind.

“Where is Mrs. Blodgett?” asked the Judge of a maid when they entered the lower hall.

“Gone out, sir.”

“Then you take care of this little girl while I am away.”

Bethany made no protest. The girl smiled kindly and put out a hand, and the child went quietly with her.

“Let her lie down and have a sleep,” said the Judge, “she is tired.”

Then he turned. “Well, boy, what are you for—remaining at home or going with me?”

Titus looked at his grandfather. It was Christmas Day, and he ought to keep with him. “I’ll go with you, sir,” he said, brightening up.

The Judge smiled, then together they went upstairs and out the big hall door down to the waiting sleigh.

Higby carried out the toys for the Tingsby children and tucked them under the fur robes.

It did not take long for the Judge’s fast horses to reach River Street.

The street was very quiet. It was a cold day, and the people were mostly celebrating their Christmas indoors.

“P-p-pretty poor pickings, I guess, some of them have,” stuttered Titus, compassionately, and his grandfather agreed with him.

Mrs. Tingsby’s house was as gray and dingy outside by daylight as it had been by electric light the day before, and it was apparently cold and uninhabited. No children’s faces appeared at the windows, no cheerful gleam of firelight shone from between the threadbare curtains.

Titus jumped out and pounded on the door. After a long time, and a liberal application of both fists, Mrs. Tingsby herself came.

She gave them a most joyful welcome.

“Come in! Come in!” she screamed in her excitement, “come in, gentlemen, come in an’ come down to where we’re celebratin’, poor as we be. No, no—not there,” as the Judge mechanically turned toward the door of the small room in which they had sat the evening before. “Here, sir, down here in the cellar,” and she trotted before him to a dark stairway, and with alarming celerity disappeared in the depths of a basement, while the Judge and Titus felt their way down after her.

“Here, here,” she called, opening a door and suddenly allowing a streak of light to dart into the almost pitch-dark hall, “here we be—merry as coppersmiths after our good dinner.”

“S-s-seems to me I’d rather be some other kind of a smith,” grumbled Titus to himself, wrinkling his nose in the goose-laden atmosphere as he followed her, for he was preceding his grandfather, with the charitable intention of breaking his fall if he had one.

“Merry, merry—O! so merry,” repeated the little woman. “Here we be—all the family.”

Titus stood aside and blinked his eyes, while the Judge walked by him.

“For warmth, sir, an’ comfort, an’ good times, we’re all in the kitchen,” said Mrs. Tingsby. “Gen’l’men,” and she turned to her boarders with a ridiculous little bow, “this is the jedge that tooked Bethany. Jedge, here be my children,” and she indicated half a dozen poorly dressed but bright looking children who got up from the floor and from cracker boxes to make their best bow to the company.

“Yes, we be all here,” exclaimed Mrs. Tingsby, a-huggin’ the fire, “which is a good one if I does say so myself. There’s Harry Ray, the express boy, Harry an’ his cough, which I’m glad to say is a mite better owin’ to peppermint tea or his half holiday, I don’t know which; Matthew Jones an’ his poor eyes, but he aint grumblin’, because it’s Christmas; an’ old man Fanley, glad to rest his weary legs from parcel-carryin’—aint you, Fanley. An’ Barry Mafferty, which is a temp’rary boarder.”

The Judge looked round him. From the bottom of his heart he pitied them. At first sight it seemed to him the height of misery to be crouching round a medium-sized fire, breathing an atmosphere so redolent of goose, with no comfortable seats; and yet in a few minutes he modified his opinion.

Two of the few chairs in the kitchen had been given to him and to Titus. As they sat in the shabby but clean kitchen he reflected that it was warm, that these people all looked contented, that with their dingy clothes they would certainly not be happy in rooms like his own.

“It is very comfortable here,” he said, drawing off his gloves and rubbing his hands, “very comfortable after the cold outside.”

“If only the landlords would give the poor better houses,” he continued, reflecting, “they would not be so uncomfortable. Really, they are spared some of the worries of life that we better off ones have to endure.”

But he must listen to Mrs. Tingsby. “We’ve had such a good Christmas,” she was exclaiming, “such a good one. Look-a-here, an’ here,” and she took from one child a tiny doll, from another a bag of candy, from another a whistle, and proudly exhibited them.

Needless to say, the presents were from the boarders, who somewhat sheepishly averted their faces while she was praising their generosity to the Judge.

He was greatly touched. They were so pitiful, so insignificant, these little presents, and yet how they had pleased the recipients.

“An’ now,” called Mrs. Tingsby, “may I be forgiven for not havin’ put her first—how is that blessed child?”

The Judge’s lips formed the words, “Very well.”

“Aint she a darlin’! O, you’ll get to love her like your own flesh an’ blood.”

“I am sorry that she is not a boy,” vociferated the Judge; “a boy would have been more of a companion for my grandson.”

“Yes, sir—yes, sir,” said Mrs. Tingsby, beaming on him, “a boy an’ a girl—just a nice family. I always did despise two boys or two girls for a set piece.”

“You tell her,” said the Judge, with a wave of his hand toward his grandson.

Titus approached his lips somewhat nearer to the little woman’s ear than they were. “M-m-my grandfather says he is sorry the girl is not a boy.”

“Boy!” repeated Mrs. Tingsby, “O, yes, she should have been a boy. They do get on easier than girls, but we can’t change her now, you know.”

The semicircle of boarders, children, and the Judge could not but agree with this statement, and she looked approvingly round at them.

“Tell her that even though we do not keep the child, we shall still be interested in her,” said the Judge.

Titus, in slight embarrassment, again cried in her ear, “Maybe we can get her a good home somewhere else.”

“Good home!” replied Mrs. Tingsby, “yes, yes, I know—the Lord will bless you for that.”

“I guess your mamma is pretty deaf to-day, isn’t she?” asked Titus, patiently, of one of the older children.

The children were all staring rather disdainfully at him and his grandfather. They did not lack smartness, and they had jumped to the conclusion that the Judge’s visit meant that he was tired of Bethany and wanted to return her.

“I’ll make her hear,” said the eldest girl, grimly, and she applied her lips to her parent’s ear, and, without making a steam whistle of herself, as poor Titus did, she said, in a low, blood-curdling tone, “The gemman is tired of Bethany—wants to return her like a parcel sent on approbation.”

Mrs. Tingsby, who had more of the milk of human kindness than this particular one of her offspring, turned to the Judge with an amazed, reproachful air. “Be that true, sir?”

“No,” said the Judge, stoutly, “it isn’t.”

Immediately there ensued an altercation between him and the smart girl. To his own great confusion and astonishment, he, Judge Sancroft, leading citizen of Riverport, actually found himself bandying words with a saucy little shopgirl, for such she appeared to be—and she got the better of him.

At last he appealed to the boarders. “Can’t some of you explain how matters are? The child is a charming little creature. I have no wish to bring her back. I will see that she is comfortably placed.”

The new temporary boarder, or visitor, Barry Mafferty, suddenly began to laugh. The old boarders, at the entrance of the Judge, had been suddenly stricken with bashfulness. This poorly dressed, brown-faced man of middle age had alone preserved his composure. After a slight bow he had taken an unlighted cigarette from his mouth, had calmly looked the Judge over, from his white head to his black overshoes, had bestowed a slight glance of admiration on the half-open, fur-lined coat, and had then again directed his attention to the red-hot bars of the grate in front of the old-fashioned cooking-stove.

Now, as if irresistibly amused by the passage-at-arms between the gentleman and the flippant child of poverty, he did not try to conceal his amusement.

The Judge turned to him.

“Don’t worry yourself, sir,” said Mafferty, easily, “things will all come out right. Our hostess is a good sort.”

The Judge stared. Who was this man?

“Broken down gentleman,” said Mafferty, still more easily; “lots of time to study human nature. I have seen the child you took. I advise you to hold on to her if you value a nice child. She belongs to a different rank in society from these—” and he raised his hand comprehensively at the Tingsby children.

The smart girl immediately turned her attention upon him.

“Easy now, easy,” he said, coolly, nodding his really fine-featured head at her. “Easy, or you will upset your basket of china.”

“China,” she cried, in a fine, thin voice, curiously like her mother’s, “what do you know of china, you low-down, gutter-raggy, broken-weazled, shilly-shally—”

Mafferty began to laugh again, and such is the power of a long drawn-out, hearty, sustained peal of laughter in which there is nothing nervous, nothing satirical, nothing to wound, that one by one his listeners began to join him.

The Judge laughed, Titus laughed, the boarders giggled, the children shrieked, and even Mrs. Tingsby, though she had not heard a word of what was said, laughed with the best of them, and was soon wiping the tears from her eyes.

“I don’t know what’s amusin’ you,” she gasped, convulsively, “but it must be somethin’ powerful funny.”

At this Mafferty redoubled his own merriment, and presently the uproar became so loud that the Judge rose. He really could not take part in this any longer, though he was still laughing himself.

Mafferty paid no attention to him. His eye was on the smart girl. She alone of all the children had not once allowed a crease of amusement to form itself on her face. She was stubborn, disagreeable, even ugly.

“Laugh, you goose, laugh,” he suddenly cried, stopping short and snapping his fingers within an inch of her nose. “If you don’t learn to laugh the devil will catch you. You can’t go through life kicking at Providence and have any sort of a good time.”

The girl drew herself back and began an hysterical giggle.

“Not bad to start with,” said the man, complacently. “I’ll teach you to laugh better than that, though, you insolent wisp of humanity.”

The Judge again stared at him. He was curiously attracted by this man.

“Have you been on the stage?” he asked, suddenly.

“Yes, sir,” said Mafferty, good-humoredly, “the stage of the world. First as a physician, then down, down through various stages of trampdom. Great at deceivin’ farmers’ wives. Now imposing on society as proprietor of a cat farm.”

“O, you are out at Bobbety’s Island?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How can you leave your cats?”

“My wife is there, sir. I’ve come up to the city to spend Christmas.”

“What about your wife?”

“O, sir, women can enjoy the pleasures of solitude better than men, and, then, she is fond of the cats.”

The Judge looked disapprovingly at him, then saying, “We must go,” he made a sign of farewell to Mrs. Tingsby.

“Beat him,” said Mafferty, nodding at Titus, “if he doesn’t work. Don’t let him idle if you half kill him. The devil’s real name is ‘Loafer.’”

The Judge nodded significantly, and all the boarders and children stood up as he left the kitchen.

“By the way,” he said, turning suddenly, “the little girl sent some toys to you children.”

“Hooray!” cried the boys and girls, who were still hilarious—that is, all but the eldest, smart girl. Then they pressed out of the kitchen after Titus, who volunteered to show them where the toys were.

The Judge stood looking at Mrs. Tingsby. He was sorry for her. She did not quite take in the situation of affairs, and was troubled and anxious.

He turned to Mafferty as the one who would best understand him.

“Explain to her, will you?” he said. “I have no intention of again placing the child on her hands. I cannot keep her myself, as she is not a boy, but I shall find a suitable home for her.”

“Yes, I will,” said the man, then he put out a hand and touched the Judge’s coat almost lovingly. “I once had a fur-lined coat. I suppose you haven’t another?”

“Yes, I have,” said the Judge, promptly, “too small for me—just your fit.”

Mafferty smiled. He knew he would get it. The Judge gave a great sigh of relief as he passed up the dark staircase. He had grown strangely sensitive this Christmas season. It had seemed to him that he could not go away comfortably and leave this man Mafferty without doing something for him. True, he had not half the respect for him that he had for the honest expressman, the furrier, and the parcel-carrier standing modestly in the background. Those men would have died rather than beg from him. They were workers, and Mafferty had been, and evidently still was, a kind of drone. Yet the cat man was of the Judge’s class. They understood each other’s Shibboleth, and the rich man’s heart was full of pity as he went out to the frosty street.

Roblee had sprung out of his sleigh and had gone to the horses’ heads.

There was such a screaming and pulling from the young Tingsbys, who were dragging at the toys and bearing them to the house, that he was afraid of a runaway. Titus, scarcely less excited than the poor children, was in the thickest of the fun.

“Come! Come!” said the Judge, “stop this tumult,” and he waved his hand.

Titus hurried the shrieking crew into the house and sprang in beside his grandfather.

“Home, Roblee,” said the Judge, and in a few minutes they were before the big stone house on Grand Avenue.

They were met by a disturbed household. Higby, after throwing open the door, stammered and walked backward, and stamped, and tried to ejaculate something, which was drowned by the exclamations of the maidservants, who had assembled in the hall. Foremost among them was Betty, the girl into whose care the Judge had put little Bethany.

Her face was as white as death, and she was wringing her hands. Presently the Judge made out her exclamation, “Child lost!”

“The little girl, do you mean?” he asked, sternly.

“Yes, sir; O! yes, sir.”

“When?”

“Just after you left, sir.”

“Where were you?”

“In my own room. I had laid her on the bed to go to sleep—she went off like that, sir,” and she helplessly extended her arms.

“Were you in your room when she disappeared?”

“No, sir; O! no, sir. I was next door to Jennie’s room. I just went in to borrow a fine needle.”

“And when you came back the child was gone?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you searched the house?”

“Every corner, sir.”

“Did you run out in the street?”

“Yes, sir; we’ve been searching the neighborhood for an hour. We were just waiting now till you came.”

The Judge stood stock still in the midst of his apprehensive domestics. Had the little stranger run home?

Probably, and yet—he reflected for a minute, his face heavy with what the young lawyers of Riverport were pleased to call his “judicial frown.”

Suddenly he lifted up his head. “Have you searched the stable?”

“The stable—no, sir,” ejaculated poor Betty.

“Come with me, Titus,” said the Judge, “that child is a peculiar one. I do not think that she has run away.”