ON Christmas Eve there came to our home to spend the next two days, which chanced to beSaturday and Sunday, Alice Kane, a friend and fellow-clerk of one of my sisters in a departmentstore. Because the store kept open until ten-thirty or eleven that Christmas Eve, and my labors at theHerald office detained me until the same hour, we three arrived at the house at nearly the same time.I should say here that the previous year, my mother having died and the home being indissolution, I had ventured into the world on my own. Several sisters, two brothers and my fatherwere still together, but it was a divided and somewhat colorless home at best. Our mother was gone.I was already wondering, in great sadness, how long it could endure, for she had made of itsomething as sweet as dreams. That temperament, that charity and understanding and sympathy! Wewho were left were like fledglings, trying our wings but fearful of the world. My practical experiencewas slight. I was a creature of slow and uncertain response to anything practical, having an eye singleto color, romance, beauty. I was but a half-baked poet, romancer, dreamer.As I was hurrying upstairs to take a bath and then see what pleasures were being arranged for themorrow, I was intercepted by my sister with a "Hurry now and come down. I have a friend here andI want you to meet her. She's awful nice."At the mere thought of meeting a girl I brightened, for my thoughts were always on the other sexand I was forever complaining to myself of my lack of opportunity, and of lack of courage when Ihad the opportunity, to do the one thing I most craved to do: shine as a lover. Although at hersuggestion of a girl I pretended to sniff and be superior, still I bustled to the task of embellishingmyself. On coming into the general livingroom, where a fire was burning brightly, I beheld a prettydark-haired girl of medium height, smooth-cheeked and graceful, who seemed and really wasguileless, good-natured and sympathetic. For a while after meeting her I felt stiff and awkward, forthe mere presence of so pretty a girl was sufficient to make me nervous and self-conscious. Mybrother, E--, had gone off early in the evening to join the family of some girl in whom he wasinterested; another brother, A--, was out on some Christmas Eve lark with a group of fellowemployees; so here I was alone with C-- and this stranger, doing my best to appear gallant andclever.