"Don't you, Miss Dear?"

"I feel almost too good," Nancy said, "as if in another minute the top of the world might come off."

"The top of the world is screwed on very tight, I think," said Sheila.

"I used to think when I was a little girl that it was made out of blue plush, but now I know better than that."

"It might be," Nancy argued, "blue plush and bridal veils. There's a great deal of filmy white about it, to-day."

"It's a long way off from Fifth Avenue," Sheila sighed, "too far. I am not going to think about it any more. I am going to think hard about what to give my father. Michael said to get a smoking set, but I don't know what a smoking set is. Hitty said some hand knit woolen stockings, but I am afraid he would be scratched by them. Gaspard said a big bottle of _Cointreau_, but I do not know what that is either."

"Couldn't we give him a beautiful brocaded dressing-gown and a Swiss watch, thin as a wafer, and some handkerchiefs cobwebby fine, and a dozen bottles of _Cointreau_, and--then get the other things as we think of them?"

"Are we rich enough to do _that_?" Sheila asked, her eyes sparkling with excitement.

"Rich enough to buy anything we want, Sheila," Nancy cried. "I had no idea it was going to be such a heavenly feeling. When you say your prayers to-night, Sheila, I hope you will ask G.o.d to bless somebody you've never heard of before. _Elijah Peebles Martin_, do you think you could remember that long name, Sheila?"

"Yes, Miss Dear,--do you remember him in your prayers every night?"

"Well, I haven't," Nancy said, "but I intend to from now on. Do you think Collier--father--would like to have a new pipe?"

"I don't know," Shelia said; "wouldn't Uncle d.i.c.k like to have one?"

"I don't know whether Uncle d.i.c.k is going to want a Christmas present from me or not, Sheila." Nancy answered seriously. "There may be--reasons why he won't come to see us for a while when he knows them."

"Oh, dear," Sheila said, "but I can buy him a Christmas present myself, can't I? I don't want it to be Christmas if I can't."

"Of course, dear. What shall we buy Aunt Caroline and Uncle Billy?"

"Some pink and blue housekeeping dishes, I think."

"I'm going to have trouble buying Caroline _anything_," Nancy said.

"She's so sure I can't afford it. If I give a silver chest I'll have to make Billy say it came from his maiden aunt."

"What shall we give Aunt Betty?"

"I don't know exactly why," Nancy said, "but someway I feel more like giving her a good shaking than anything else."

"For a little surprise," Sheila said presently, "do you think we could go down to see my father in his studio, after we have shopped? I feel like seeing my father to-day. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I think of Hitty and my breakfast, and the canary bird, and of you, Miss Dear, fast asleep where I can hear you breathing in your room--if I listen to it--and then other mornings I wake up thinking only of my father, and how he looks in his shirt-sleeves and necktie. I was thinking of him this morning like that. So now I should like to see him."

"You shall, dear. I want him to see you in your new clothes. He'll think you look like a little gray bird with a scarlet breast."

"Then I must open the front of my coat when I go in so he shall see my vest at once, mustn't I?"

"Do you know how much I love you, Sheila?" Nancy cried suddenly.

"Is it a great deal, Miss Dear?"

"It's more than I've ever loved anybody in this world but one person, and if I should ever be separated from you I think it would break my heart--so that you could hear it crack with a loud report, Sheila."

The little girl slipped her gray gloved hand into Nancy's and held it there silently for a moment.

"Then we won't ever be separated, Miss Dear," she said.

The shops were crowded with the usual conglomerate Christmas throng, and their progress was somewhat r.e.t.a.r.ded by Sheila's desire to make the acquaintance of every department-store and Salvation Army Santa Claus that they met in their peregrinations. In the toy department of one of the Thirty-fourth Street shops there was a live Kris Kringle with animated reindeers on rollers, who made a short trip across an open s.p.a.ce in one end of the department for a consideration, and presented each child who rode with him a lovely present, tied up in tissue and marked "Not to be opened until Christmas." Sheila refused a second trip with him on the ground that it would not be polite to take more than one turn.

Nancy was able to discover the little girl's preferences by a tactful question here and there when they were making the rounds of the different counters. She wanted, it developed, a golden-haired doll with a white fur coat, a pair of roller skates, an Indian costume, a beaded pocketbook, with a blue cat embroidered on it, a parchesi board to play parchesi with her Uncle d.i.c.k, some doll's dinner dishes, a boy's bicycle, some parlor golf sticks, a red leather writing set, a doll's manicure set, a sailor-boy paper doll, a dozen small suede animals in a box, a drawing book and crayon pencils and several other trifles of a like nature. The things she did not want she rejected unerringly. It pleased Nancy to realize that she knew exactly what she did want, even though her range of taste was so extensive. Nancy had a sheaf of her own cards with her address on them in her pocketbook, and each time Sheila saw the thing her heart coveted Nancy nodded to the saleswoman and whispered to her to send it to the address given and charge to her account.

They took their lunch in a famous confectionary shop, full of candy animals and alluring striped candy sticks and baskets. Here Sheila's eye was taken by a basket of spun sugar flowers, which she insisted on buying for Gaspard. By the time they were ready to resume their shopping tour, Sheila began to show signs of f.a.g, so they bought only brooches for the waitresses, and the watch as thin and exquisite of workmanship as a man's pocket watch could be, for Collier Pratt.

"I think we had better give it to him now, Miss Dear," Sheila decided.

"I don't see how he can wait till Christmas for it--it is so beautiful. He has not had a gold watch since that time in Paris when we had all that trouble."

"What trouble, Sheila dear?" Nancy said. She had tucked the child in a hansom, and they were driving slowly through the lower end of Central Park to restore Sheila's roses before she was exhibited to her parent.

"When we lost all our money, and my father and some one I must not speak of, had those dreadful quarrelings, and we ran away. I do not like to think of it. My father does not like to think of it."

"Well, then, you mustn't, dear," Nancy said, "but just be glad it is all over now. I don't like to realize that so many hard things happened to you and him before I knew you, but I do like to think that I can perhaps prevent them ever happening to you again."

She closed resolutely that department of her mind that had begun to occupy itself with conjectures concerning the past of the man to whom she had given her heart. The child's words conjured up nightmare scenes of unknown panic and dread. It was terrible to her to know that Collier Pratt had the memory of so much bitterness and distress of mind and body locked away in the secret chambers of his soul. "Some one of whom I must not speak," Sheila had said, "and some one of whom I must not think," Nancy added to herself. It was probably some one with whom he had quarreled and struggled pa.s.sionately maybe, with disastrous results. He could not have injured or killed anybody, else how could he be free and honorably considered in a free and honorable country? She laughed at her own melodramatic misgivings. It was only, she realized, that she so detested the connotation of the words "ran away." Nancy had never run away from anything or anybody in her life, and she could not understand that any one who was close to her should ever have the instinct of flight.

The most conscientious objector to New York's traffic regulations can not claim that they fail to regulate. The progress of their cab down the avenue was so scrupulously regulated by the benignant guardians of the semaph.o.r.es that twilight was deepening into early December evening before they reached their objective point,--the ramshackle studio building on the south side of Washington Square where the man she loved lived, moved and had his being, with the gallant ease and grace which made him so romantic a figure to Nancy's imagination.

She had never been to his studio before without an appointment, and her heart beat a little harder as, Sheila's hand in hers, they tiptoed up the worn and creaking stairs, through the ill-kept, airless corridors of the dingy structure, till they reached the top, and stood breathless from their impetuous ascent, within a few feet of Collier Pratt's battered door.

"I feel a little scared, Miss Dear," Sheila whispered. "I thought it was going to be so much fun and now I don't think so at all. Do you think he will be very angry at my coming?"

"I don't think he will be angry at all," Nancy said. "I think he will be very much surprised and pleased to see both of us. Turn around, dear, and let me be sure that you're neat."

Sheila turned obediently. Nancy fumbled with her pocket mirror, and then thought better of it, but pa.s.sed a precautionary hand over the back of her hair to rea.s.sure herself as to its arrangement, and straightened her hat.

"Now we're ready," she said.

But Sheila put out her hand, and clutched at Nancy's sleeve.

"There's some one in there," she said, "somebody crying. Oh! don't let's go in, Miss Dear."

From behind the closed door there issued suddenly the confused murmur of voices, one--a woman's--rising and falling in the cadence of distress, the other low pitched in exasperated expostulation.

"It's Collier," Nancy said mechanically, "and some woman with him."

Sheila shrank closer into the protecting shelter of her arms.

"Don't let's go in, Miss Dear," she repeated.

"It may be just some model," Nancy said. "We'll wait a minute here and see if she doesn't come out."

"I--I don't want to see who comes out," the child said, her face suddenly distorted.

There was a sharp sound of something falling within, then Collier Pratt's voice raised loud in anger.