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“Pshaw!” he muttered, and looked as if he would like to add something a great deal stronger. “That’s what I forgot to tell David; but Mrs. G. ‘ll never forget it, nor forgive it, either, if I don’t attend to it before I get home.” So he turned up his collar, and rubbed his ears, and hurried on to keep warm.

His destination proved to be a fancy bakery in the neighborhood of David Dubbs’s house. The pavement in front of it at that hour and season, owing to holiday orders, was sending up warm steam from the oven beneath, and a fragrant and appetizing smell of hot bread and browning cakes pervaded the street. It was a large establishment of the kind, and besides its legitimate line of bread-baking, took charge of the cooking and preparing of dinners for ladies of limited domestic conveniences in fashionable life. Heedless of the delicious scents which had attracted several men with greedy eyes to linger at the window and devour in fancy–a process which left them hungrier than ever–the heaps of loaves and cakes on the counter within; heedless of the supplicating looks the men turned on him, and of the confidential attempts of one or two at a begging whisper (but his hurry was in nowise chargeable with that inattention); heedless of everything but finishing his errand and getting home, Mr. Griffin pushed through the crowd in the store, and, reaching the counter, beckoned to a light-haired, light-eyed, and red-cheeked youth, in a blue tie and black waistcoat that, through constant friction with loaves and flour-barrels, had become of a light pepper-and-salt pattern, and hurriedly said,–

“I want a turkey, Cuffy, of about fifteen or twenty pounds, cooked and sent to my house by one o’clock to-morrow.”

“Can’t do it, Mr. Griffin,” said the young man, who knew him and had bowed as he came up.

“Can’t do what?” exclaimed Mr. Griffin, with surprise and dismay.

“Can’t send it out,” returned the young man, firmly.

“Oh!” said Mr. Griffin, relieved; “I thought you meant that you couldn’t prepare it!”

“No, sir,” commenced the young man. “You see, sir, Mr. Griffin, it’s so late in the day that all our teams is ordered fur to-morrow at that time, and so is our boys, but—-“

“Well, I’ll soon fix that, Cuffy,” said Mr. Griffin, opening his coat and taking out a card. “There, just pin that on the turkey when it is ready, and carry it over here to Dubbs’s–David Dubbs is my clerk. He will understand the card, and bring the turkey out to my house. I shouldn’t be so particular about it if Mrs. Griffin had not impressed it on me this morning. I almost forgot it, too.”

Then asking the price, and answering,–

“That is very high, Cuffy;” to which that young man replied,–

“I know it is, sir, Mr. Griffin, but then, you see, the demand is werry great, sir.”

Mr. Griffin paid the bill and hurried out, took a car at the next corner, and, after a long, cold ride, got home to allay the anxiety of Mrs. Griffin by assuring her that the turkey was ordered, and would be sent home promptly to-morrow by David Dubbs.

Christmas morning was, among the Griffin household, which consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Griffin and a superannuated servant, a very busy morning indeed, for the reason that Mrs. Griffin had, according to annual custom, invited more guests to dine than she could conveniently provide for. Their house was a cottage in the suburbs, pretty enough in summer and no thanks to its mistress or the superannuated servant either, but to the unaided impulse of nature, which climbed, in the form of bowery vines, wherever a vine could find clinging room; but now, in the midst of winter, bright though the day was, the skeletons of so much green gayety looked bare, and inhospitable, and cold. The house was approached by a long path that started at the iron gate and led up to the porch. It was far from a large house, and looked inconvenient, and famished for paint, and it was no less inconvenient than it looked, a fact, indeed, which necessitated the purchase of a cooked turkey, for the oven was small, and the stove in the crazy little kitchen needed all the surface it could afford for the vegetables, oysters, and other viands which then only, throughout the year, it blazed and glowed under.