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The building had once been a warehouse,–David liked it the better for that, he said. “Why, all my life has been spent in trade, and, you see, I’ve sort a become attached to anything that smacks of it, though I’ve little reason to feel so, the Lord knows!” he would exclaim to his friends. Up above, over a long door in the top story–you can scarcely make it out in the uncertain light–jutted a weather-beaten crane, with a long disused pulley dangling at its point, cracked, and rusted, and abandoned, and no less cracked and abandoned, shot out from the second floor a moss-covered platform that had been intended for the reception of bales of stuffs that had never arrived. The mortar had, here and there, been wrenched from between the bricks by savage weather and age, and the doors, too, had shrunk before their united malignity. How such a house had drifted to such a locality is unaccountable, unless–as is often the case–some navigator of real estate had thought he descried a port, where was only a shoal that left his venture high and dry among newer and costlier craft.

However, the nearest approach it had made in the last twenty years or so–so David said–to fulfilling its commercial place in the world was in opening its doors to a gentleman in the carpentering line. This gentleman, Mr. Jacob Tripple by name, occupied the ground floor, and all around it were scattered evidences, in the shape of window-frames, and wooden-horses, and props, and old lumber, of a thriving business. He, with all his men, had departed long ago and left the place dark, and still, and cold.

It had lain in this stupor of silence for more than an hour, waiting against hope to be resuscitated by any stray echoes that should drop in from the neighboring hubbub and waken it up, when it caught among its bleak angles the cheery voice of David’s Little Scout, and revived–as some old men do under the charm of gentle words–to a more respectable opinion of itself. So immediately it seemed refreshed, that if it were possible for such a decrepit–not to say inanimate–old structure as that even metaphorically to prick up its ears, it metaphorically did as the sound of Dolly’s–her proper name–cheery welcome home echoed round it.

“Here we are once more, father,” she cried, breaking away from him to have the door open when he plodded up to it. “Once more, and a welcome home, and a merry Christmas to you!”

“Always on duty, Little Scout! Always on duty!” he called after her. (The wind was keen and drew water to his eyes again, and again he brushed it away.) “Always on duty,” he went on repeating, with a doleful effort at cheerfulness.

She was up-stairs by that time, and, opening the door above, had called in, “Here’s father!” then ran back to meet him, which she did at the door below.

What these unusual proceedings meant, David Dubbs might have guessed or might have known traditionally, they being of an annual nature, but whether he did or not, or whether his ignorance was also traditional, he gave no sign, and walked feebly up-stairs, guided by the Little Scout, just as if it were not Christmas Eve at all.

What the proceedings did mean was that a steaming pot of coffee at the given signal was lifted from its warm corner and tilted into a cup that held a conspicuous place at the head of a little white spread table. On its right hand sat, in the position of an honored and seldom present guest, a juicy-complexioned, but not corpulent beefsteak; opposite to it, inviting death by explosion, rested a bowl full of steaming potatoes in their native jackets, and the centre was fully occupied by a huge loaf with a large family of slices.

Around this collation–aroused by the signal, for they had been idly waiting before–moved two pairs of hands with loving attention. The cloth was resmoothed, the knives and forks straightened, a brace of mealy potatoes was emptied on the two plates that awaited them, and at last a ruddy slice of beefsteak was deposited beside and oozed through them its savoriness. This last climax was reached just as the door opened, and the two pairs of hands speedily transferred themselves to the duty–no very arduous one–of helping David and Dolly out of their wraps.