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David, doubly disappointed, turned and passed out, and his old eyes must have been extremely sensitive to the wind, for they ran with something very like tears that he wiped away with his glove as he muttered,–

“So, no Christmas, after all. Poor girls! Poor girls!” Mr. Griffin was not long behind his faithful old clerk. He extinguished the lights with great care, and then, with the key in his hand, felt his way to the door, banged it after him, and locked it with the satisfaction of a miser over a casket of treasures. His journey home led him to the opposite end of the court from that which David had passed through, and he therefore did not overtake him.

And if he had, would this hard, business-encrusted heart have been less cold than the bitter winds that assailed it? Would the sight which made David Dubbs forget the fierceness of night have penetrated the chilly place where it rested and warmed it in pitying activity? Would the tender impulses, which the unsifted morals of barter extinguish, as they extinguish much of the nobility in man, have enkindled anew and brightened this misery? Not if dollars would have done it; nay, not if even a word would have done it, would Emanuel Griffin have relaxed from the demeanor which purely business habits imposed upon him. He felt it due to his position in business society to maintain rigidly its maxims, the chief of which, “Do unto others as they would do unto you, if they could,” he practised to the letter.

II.

Poor David Dubbs! Oh, the long time it seemed since boon companions had smitten him on the back and cried, “Bravo, Dave Dubbs! Bravo, old fellow!” to his little songs, or encouraged him by such exclamations as “Dave Dubbs can’t be beat at a ballad!” Oh, the long, long time ago! But to proceed. As David Dubbs met the ambushed winds that leaped upon him at the corner of the court, he also met the person to whom he had waved his hand from the store-door. If you had looked for the stature of a man you would have been doubly mistaken,–first in sex, next in size. It was neither a man nor a woman. There, in a blustery doorway, shaking with cold, but ever on the alert, crouched a little girl. She wore a knitted hood, and out of it fell overflowing curls; but her poor, attenuated little body was ill-assorted with plenty of any kind, and the wealth of curls mocked the poverty of her clothes. A patched shawl affected to protect her poor little shoulders, and a calico dress flapped coldly about her legs. As David turned the corner she arose, and, for all her stiffness and shivering, exclaimed, cheerily, “A merry Christmas, father!” and reached to kiss him.

He took her in his arms–she was very, very slight–and lifted her to his lips, and then, throwing one side of his own scanty coat about her and holding it there with an affectionate hug, he said, “Come, come, little daughter, it’s too bleak for a little body like you to be out. It’s cruel, cruel, but I dared not tell him it was so late. What does he know or care for my poor little faithful, Loving Scout?”

“Your Scout couldn’t miss Christmas Eve, father, if it was ever so cold.”

“And does she ever miss? No, no, she’s a dutiful Scout, winter and summer, rain and shine, morning and night, and what should I ever do without her!”

So, talking and fighting the wind by turns, they walked on, the bent and shuffling old man and his Little Scout, as he had named her and as they all affectionately called her, through dark streets where, ever and anon, a car or belated dray shivered by, as if the cold had touched even its insensibility, and made the tracks resound and the paving blocks rattle in the clear air; through deep cisterns of streets, between lofty stone banks–as stern almost as their governing boards, for, although boards are chiefly wooden, a supplication will quickly petrify them; through rows of illuminated stores like walls of Arabian Night visions, with traceries of frost on their windows richer in design than the gems within them; through clustering crowds that entered or left continually the swinging doors of saloons and hotels; past waiting carriages; past swearing men; past laughing ladies, and past beggars, wearier, and colder, and lonelier than themselves. So they travelled, scarcely heeding what they saw in their speed until, on the margin of all the din, by a turn through a dark street, they reached a darker alley, and, passing down it, at last stopped before their own homely door.