It happened that the Dean himself one day said something to Mr. Cole about “supporting a very praiseworthy effort. They are presenting, I understand, the proceeds of the first performance to the Cathedral Orphanage.” Helen was surprised at the readiness with which her request was granted. “We'll all go,” said Mr. Cole, in his genial, pastoral fashion. “Good for us... good for us... to see the little ones laugh. .. good for us all.” Only Uncle Samuel said “that nothing would induce him--” II I pass swiftly over Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the day after, although I should like to linger upon these sumptuous dates. Jeremy had a sumptuous time; Hamlet had a sumptuous time (a whole sugar rat, plates and plates of bones, and a shoe of Aunt Amy's); Mary and Helen had sumptuous times in their own feminine fashion. Upon the evening of Christmas Eve, when the earth was snow-lit, and the street-lamps sparkled with crystals, and the rime on the doorsteps crackled beneath one's feet, Jeremy accompanied his mother on a present-leaving expedition. The excitement of that! The wonderful shapes and sizes of the parcels, the mysterious streets, the door-handles and the door-bells, the glittering stars, the maidservants, the sense of the lighted house, as though you opened a box full of excitements and then hurriedly shut the lid down again. Jeremy trembled and shook, not with cold, but with exalting, completely satisfying happiness. There followed the Stocking, the Waits, the Carols, the Turkey, the Christmas Cake, the Tree, the Presents, Snapdragon, Bed... There followed Headache, Ill-temper, Smacking of Mary, Afternoon Walk, Good Temper again, Complete Weariness, Hamlet sick on the Golden Cockatoos, Hamlet Beaten, Five minutes with Mother downstairs, Bed. .. Christmas was over. From that moment of the passing of Boxing Day it was simply the counting of the minutes to “Dick Whittington.” Six days from Boxing Day. Say you slept from eight to seven--eleven hours; that left thirteen hours; six thirteen hours was, so Helen said, seventy-eight. Seventy-eight hours, and Sunday twice as long as the other days, and that made thirteen more; ninety-one, said Helen, her nose in the air. The week dragged along, very difficult work for everybody, and even Hamlet felt the excitement and watched his corner with the Jampot's sewing machine in it with more quivering intensity than ever. The Day Before The Day arrived, the evening before The Day, the last supper before The Day, the last bed before The Day... Suddenly, like a Jack-in-the-Box, The Day itself. Then the awful thing happened. Jeremy awoke to the consciousness that something terrific was about to occur. He lay for a minute thinking--then he was up, running about the nursery floor as though he were a young man in Mr. Rossetti's poetry shouting: “Helen! Mary! Mary! Helen!... It's Dick Whittington! Dick Whittington!”