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14 his wife, and he had two children. The thought of his being torn away from his business and from them, with the shop going to rack and ruin while he served his time in the ranks, was too much for him, and he burst into tears.

“Cheer up, Mr. Foggerty,” said a pipy little voice.

He looked up, but could see no one. At last his eye rested on a small twelfth-cake in the window, and he was surprised to see the little plaster-of-Paris fairy which had crowned the top of it hop off her box of sugar-plums, and pick her way carefully through the tracery that decorated the surface of the cake. She travelled on slowly, tumbling over a harlequin, and getting her skirt entangled in the fringe of a gelatine “cracker,” until she reached the edge of the cake. She looked over the edge of the little parapet that ran round it, and said:

“I'm afraid, Mr. Foggerty, it's too high to jump, and I shall tear my clothes if I try to scramble down. Will you kindly let me step on to your hand?”

Freddy, who had never seen anything of the kind before, was much interested in her movements, and helped her down at once with the utmost propriety, like a man of gallantry as he was.

“What is troubling you, Mr. Foggerty?”

“Why, miss, thirteen years ago I enlisted, and three days afterwards I deserted, and I have just been discovered, and now I shall be taken up, tried, and imprisoned, and then, perhaps, have to serve out my time as a soldier.”

“Indeed,” said the young lady, “that will be a pity, for from what I have seen of Mrs. Foggerty I don't