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 attaining these ends. It was not until the approach of Christmas that the vaguest idea of a possible procedure occurred to him. Then, arranging with Margaret a Christmas Eve dinner to which they were to invite the Pittseys, he said suddenly: "And Conroy! Why couldn't we get Conroy?"

"Do you think we could?" She had heard the whole story from Don, and it had not left her hopeful. "Do you think he'd come?"

"Yes. If we go the right way about it. I must get Bert to help. If we could once get him here"

"I hope he won't spoil the dinner."

He did not sympathize with this consideration of the young hostess. "Nonsense!" he cried. "What does it matter about the dinner?" He hastened to explain, apologetically, when he saw her expression: "No, of course not! He'll not spoil it. He'll be the jolliest of the lot of us. You should have seen some of the dinners we had in our old rooms—one on the day he first found work here. He'll be all right, if we can only get him. I must ask Bert."

His mother, a few days before, had sent him a bundle of the Christmas numbers of the illustrated English papers, full of just such pictures as Frankie and he used to tack up on the walls of their playroom; and they had come to him with such an almost tearful memory of the life he had left, that he saw in them, now, a powerful agent to help him in his appeal to Conroy. "I'll go with Bert," he said, "and try to have a talk with him. I'll take those papers mother sent, as an excuse. And if he won't see me, I'll mail them to him, and write him a letter."