“As it were,” said Sally. “What’s the difference between fairy-tale and history, Polly Price, to a baby five years old?” “But when he gets older, Aunt Sally”— “You take my advice, Polly, don’t you never cross a bridge till you come to it. If the good Lord don’t take care of him when he gets older, it’ll be time for you to interfere. Now, ketch hold and rench out Mrs. Rolf’s coffee-pot, will you? and I’ll pour the coffee into it. And if them pork chops ain’t done to a turn, I lose my guess. Cream gravy, too, for a treat for Christmas!” “Last Christmas,” said Susan, “we had nothing to eat but the heel of a loaf, so hard we soaked it in water before we could bite into it.” Sally stood for a moment with misty eyes; her volubility was gone on this subject. Then, as a sound of feet stamping off snow was heard at the door, she said with fervor, “_Good_ Lord!” and fell to work upon the business in hand. The next moment Metzerott hurried in with Louis on his shoulder, and followed by Fritz Rolf, a bright-faced boy of eight, with much of his mother’s briskness and “faculty.” “I’ve cleared a path,” said Fritz; “and, if it lasts till I get back, I’ll get this breakfast in a-hootin’. But I tell _you_ it’s snowing! Cover everything up warm, Aunt Sally, or Jacky Frost will stick his nose into it. Coffee, taters, pork, and hot biscuit! Bully! Ta! ta! see you later.” “You’re a-goin’ to see me right now,” said Sally dryly. “S’pose you can open the front door yourself? Not with that tray in your hands, less’n you want to play the fall of Troy with it.” As she opened the front door of the shop carefully, to exclude as much, or rather admit as little, as possible of the snowy air, those in the kitchen heard her exclaim, “Dr. Richards! if ever I seen a snow image! Your very eyelashes is white! Jump off and get warm, do!” “I wasn’t at all sure of my whereabouts, Miss Sally,” answered the doctor’s voice, “until you spoke. But for my horse’s better judgment, I should have lost my way a dozen times—a hundred times—between this and Oak Grove.” He had sprung from his horse as he spoke, and was shaking the snow from a blanket strapped military fashion behind his saddle, wherewith to cover the steaming animal. “Oak Grove! the land! You ain’t been twelve miles in this storm?” “Sent for at midnight,” said the doctor, shaking off vigorously the snow adhering to his person before he entered the shop. “Old patient, and a matter of life and death; so I had to go.” “Well, I hope it turned out life, to pay you for your trouble.” “I think it will be; she is safe for the present, at all events,” he said, very quietly, but with a smile from under his fur cap, which Sally never forgot. Just at this moment a centaur-like figure loomed up through the snow, and halted at the sound of their voices. “Is that you, doctor? They told me at your house to ride out along the road to Oak Grove, and I might meet you. What luck that I took this street!”