The baby of the family, laughing and crowing with delight, arrived first on the shoulder of the eldest lad, who had been giving him an airing on a hand-sled. This child, Bessie drew to the fire, and with careful fingers divested him of manifold wraps, much interrupted during the process by his persistence in throwing his arms around her neck. Following the baby and the lad came two other boys, orphan twins deserted by their parents and adopted by the charitable Mrs. Negus. They stopped long enough in the hall to pull off the fur caps drawn down over their foreheads, then, with unmitigated pleasure overspreading their freckled faces, they, too, entered the room, and greeted Miss Gastonguay with deference, and Derrice with an air of comradeship. Miss Gastonguay stared with interest at them, while Derrice said, "What have you been doing to-day, boys?" "Trying a new sport,--skeeing. You tie things something like toboggans on your feet and you slide down hill like the wind. It's great fun. Will you come and try it to-morrow?" She was just assuring them that she would do so, when the mistress of the house entered the room. Derrice had much ado to preserve her gravity, though she was by this time well used to the sight of her philanthropic neighbour. Mrs. Negus was nothing but a bundle of wraps. Broad she was about her shoulders and chest, tapering gradually down to a scant black dress and a pair of small feet. After the unwinding and unfolding of several scarfs, a woollen shawl, and a long veil, she stood revealed,--beaming face, spectacles, and pepper and salt curls surrounded by a heap of newspapers that had fallen from her garments. "Heat preservers, my dear Miss Gastonguay," she said to the elder of her callers. "When I dress to go out, I run some _Expresses_ up my back and a couple of _Globes_ over my chest. Then I am a Republican-Democrat, and between the two political parties you have no idea how warm I keep. Bessie, will you please look in the dictionary and see what 'napiform' means. I met Cousin Jonah Potts to-day, and he muttered something about my being 'napiform.' I know he doesn't approve of my style of dress, but as I am rheumatic I have got to stick to it, for who would attend to my family of mixed pickles if I were taken away?" "Who, indeed?" said Miss Gastonguay. "There's no one in the town would put up with them, but you, Mary Potts Negus." "Napiform," said the child, slowly reading from a dictionary that she had taken off the bookcase, "from the Latin _napus_, a turnip, and _forma_, a shape. Having the shape of a turnip, or swelled in the upper part and becoming more slender below."