"It's after six now. I'll be ready when you get back, Billy!" A moment later Billy had set forth in the black coldness. It was eight o'clock that evening when the revellers at the Black Cat heard a crunching of the snow as a sled rapidly passed the tavern. Leon Tate was mixing drinks, with a practised and obliging hand, when the unaccustomed sound struck his ear; he paused, but when the unappreciative driver passed, he lost interest. "Thought some one was coming?" Tom Smith suggested. "No; going," Murphy, the engineer, slowly answered. "Where to, do you suppose?" asked Smith. Any new topic of conversation early in the evening was welcome. "Like as not," Tate came forward with his brew, "like as not it's them folks up to the bungerler. I heard Mr. Drew had a cutter an' horse over from Hillcrest; and going out nights skylarking seems part of his religion." "Religion!" sniffed Smith; "they're a rum lot, all right!" "I wish they was!" Tate put in gloomily, but grinned as the others laughed. "It's a durned shame to take an animile out nights for fun," Murphy interrupted; "I'd hate to run even the injine 'less 'twas important. Gosh! Tate, you must have let your hand slip when you mixed this." "Christmas comes but once a year." Tate beamed radiantly. It was good to see that his Black Cat still had charms to compete successfully with the bungalow. "That piece up to the minister's," Smith glowed inwardly and outwardly, "is the nervy one, all right," he remarked. "Which one?" asked Tate; "the fixture or the transient?" "The steady. I was setting here musing late this afternoon, when in she come over there," Tom indicated the woman's side of the screen; "and first thing I knowed if she wasn't standing on a cracker-box on her side, and a-looking _over_ the screen." "Well, I'll be--" Tate stood straighter. "'Smith,' says the young woman, 'what does Mr. Tate have screens for?' Then, with her blamed, sassy little nose all crinkled up; 'my! how it does smell. I should think if Mr. Tate had _anything_, he'd have an air-tight and smell-proof partition.'" A roar greeted this. "Like as not." Tate was crimson, "the sentiments you're rehashing ain't got constitootion enough, Smith, to stand much more airing. Something's got to be done in this here place to set matters on a proper footing. You let a woman come nosing around where she don't belong, specially one with a loose-jointed tongue, and there's hell to pay. Our women is getting heady. You men will learn too late, maybe, that you'd better put the screw on while there's something to hold to." "It's sapping the juice, some." Murphy was beginning to relax. "But, Lord! have you seen the duds for the kids, and the costumes for the women? Mis' Falster had me in to show off hers. Every woman's to have a new frock for the jamboree Christmas night; not to mention the trappings for the kids. The old lady up to the bungerler give 'em." Tate scowled.