Who can tell just how it happened? Was it mere blind chance, or the outcome of a taint in the blood, due to some unknown ancestral sin? Whatever the cause, Alice Richards had been, as the phrase goes, “unlucky with her children.” The eldest had died in babyhood: and the boy, with his great, pathetic brown eyes and laughing, rosy mouth, would never walk; his little spine was all bent and distorted, and his lower limbs quite useless. He had suffered much already in his short four years of life, would suffer far more as he grew older. Dr. Richards knew this,—knew it so keenly that that other knowledge, that by scarce a possibility could Freddy live to be a man, was almost a relief by contrast. And the child was his father’s idol. Well might Alice ask how he could bear his life. Yet there was plenty of merriment at that little dinner-table. Freddy was carried down between his father and John, the doctor’s “man.” There were rings on the sides of Freddy’s chair through which poles could be passed, and there were screws to tighten them, so that the transit need cause no jar to the little frame. John went first, not backward, for fear of a misstep, but with the poles over his shoulders; and the doctor came behind, keeping his end of the poles level with John’s. Freddy wore a little scarlet wrapper, embroidered with gay flowers, and concealing the poor shrunken limbs, from which any eye but his mother’s would have instinctively turned away. He had a small pale face, with a broad forehead set in rings of brown hair, large brown eyes, and vividly red lips. Sometimes, too, there was a bright spot of color on either cheek, and then one would almost have called him a beautiful child; but that sort of beauty was not a welcome sight to Dr. Richards. The child enjoyed going down to dinner as he enjoyed everything; and beat upon the arms of the chair with his little thin hands, as he called gleefully, “Look out, mamma, here comes the ‘Ark of the Covenant!’” which was a name he had taken from his picture Bible. Freddy’s greatest pleasure was to hear his mother’s stories, and she had the gift of finding true ones as interesting as any fairy tale. One of his favorites soon became the story of the little boy who had no mamma, and had never heard of Christmas, such deprivations, in Freddy’s eyes, that the little boy’s health and activity could not be accepted as in the remotest degree a compensation. “We must tell him about Christmas right away, mamma,” said Freddy, who was old and wise beyond his years. “If he only had a picture of the Christ-child, now.” “That’s a good suggestion, Freddy. I’ll make a copy of yours. I think I can do it before Christmas.” “And he can come to my tree, mamma?” “Just as you like, my darling.”