At the beginning of the cold snap that arrived quite early in December, it also became the sleeping place of Rutherford, Rosemary and Harold, the tiniest of the children, who piled in with the uncomplaining occupant and kept him awake three-fourths of the night trying to determine whose legs were uncovered and whose were not. With six exceedingly active little legs wriggling in as many different directions in pitch darkness, it was no easy matter, you may be sure, to decide whether any two belonged to the same individual, and when it came to pass that three of them were exposed at the same time the puzzle was indeed a difficult one. Napoleon's crib also made its way into the parlour when the cold weather came; and while Napoleon's legs stayed under cover pretty well his voice, like Chanticleer's, arose before the sun. Frederick, Wilberforce and Reginald slept in one room, Marie Louise, Henrietta and Guinevere in another. In pleasant weather, Rosemary joined her sisters, while Harold and Rutherford fell in with the other boys. There never was a time, however, when Mr. Bingle did not have a bed-fellow in the shape of one or the other of the two small boys. The fourth room was occupied by the maid-of-all-work, and as it was primarily intended to be the servant's bedroom it is not necessary to state that there was space for but one full grown person inside its four walls. The collapsible cot in the kitchen represented the foundation of an emergency guest chamber. Up to the present it had not been called into use, but it was always there in readiness for the expected and unexpected. It will be observed that no account is taken of Mrs. Bingle. The explanation is quite simple. She went to live with her mother and sister at Peekskill on the advice of Dr. Fiddler almost immediately after the Supreme Court's opinion was handed down. Later on, she came down to the city with her mother, who now received a small but sufficient income through the death and will of a fairly well-to-do bachelor brother. The old lady took a house in the Bronx and once a week Mr. Bingle journeyed northward by subway and surface lines to visit his wife. A smart little doctor from Dr. Fiddler's staff made occasional visits to the Bronx and looked the part of a wiseacre when Mr. Bingle appealed to him for encouragement. He smiled knowingly and refused to commit himself beyond a more or less reassuring squint, a pursing of the lips, and the usual statement that if nothing happened she would be as fit as ever in the course of time. The cot in the kitchen was for Mr. Bingle in case Mrs. Bingle decided to come back to him in health as well as in person. He consoled himself with the daily hope that she would come dashing in upon him, as well as ever and in perfect sympathy with his decision to protect the helpless children they had gathered about them in their years of affluence.