Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/147

 risked much, but Fate was with him and he met no one.

Fate was with him, too, when he left the car at a corner near the club, and slipped out of it like a shadow, and thence like a shadow back to the shop whence his steps had tended before his adventures.

When he returned to the tall tenement the small family on the first floor had finished supper, and the mother had gone back to work. The baby was asleep. Milly and Pussy, wrapped up to their ears, were hugging the waning warmth of the little stove.

"Mr. Tony, did you get the candle?" Pussy asked as he came in.

"Yes. But I've been thinking"—his manner was mysterious—"I don't want to put it on the shelf. I want it in the window—to shine out"

"To shine out—why?"

"Well, you know, there's St. Nicholas."

"Oh"

"He ought to come here, Pussy. Why shouldn't he come here? Why should he go up-town and up-town, and take all the things to children who have more than they want?"

Milly was philosophic. "St. Nicholas is fathers and mothers"

But Pussy was not so sure. "Do you think he'd come—if we did? Do you really and truly think he would?" 141