"Right you are. It's getting to be a habit. I can't help contrasting this Christmas Eve with the one a year ago. I didn't have ten dollars to my name when I went out to hear you read 'The Christmas Carol,' Mr. Bingle." "And now I haven't ten dollars to my name," said Mr. Bingle cheerily. "Luck is like the sun, Dick. It doesn't stay up all the time. Sometimes I look back upon the past ten years and wonder if they don't belong to the fellow who wrote the 'Arabian Nights' and not to me. They were not real, not a bit of it. And yet I can't remember ever having found a queer old jar at the seashore, nor having released a good geni from its smoky insides. So I suppose I really must have lived them." "Don't let yourself get lonely, Mr. Bingle," said Flanders, gripping the other's hand. "Don't allow yourself to mope over the loss of these--ahem! They will all have nice, happy homes and grow up to be splendid--" "Come on, Dick," called his wife from the little hall, where she was surrounded by a suddenly repressed group of children. She had been whispering something to them, and they were ashamed. The door-bell gave forth its stuttering tinkle once more, and again the impassive Watson stalked to the entry. The next instant a white-furred figure bounded through the door, rushed across the room and precipitated itself forcibly into the arms of Mr. Bingle, who barely had time to prepare himself for the onslaught. It was Kathleen. Behind her stalked the elegant Mr. and Mrs. Sydney Force. There had been a time when Mrs. Force scarcely deigned to notice Miss Amy Fairweather. But there is a great difference between a poor governess and a popular goddess. The bright and shining star of Broadway, with a suite of rooms at the Plaza, a fascinating and much-courted husband, and a firm grasp on the shifting attention of the idle rich, was a person to be recognised even by the charitably inclined. And so Mrs. Force neglected to employ her lorgnon in scrutinising Miss Colgate, and made the most of an opportunity to release a long-suppressed effusiveness. Later on, in a moment of quiet obtained by a somewhat imperative command to the noisy children, she announced to Mr. Bingle that she must be running along to a dinner and the opera, and that she hoped he would have everything ready when the agents for the Society called at half-past eight, so that there would be no delay in getting the youngsters off in a specially chartered Fifth Avenue stage. Then she turned sweetly to Miss Amy Colgate and said: "May I take you up town in my car, Mrs. Flanders?" Mrs. Flanders replied just as sweetly. "No, thank you, Mrs. Force. Our own limousine is waiting." "We've come to hear the 'Christmas Carol,' Bingle," said Mr. Force after his wife and Mr. and Mrs. Flanders had gone. "Kathleen and I expect to come to see you on every Christmas Eve, if you'll have us. You've got us on your hands, old man, and you can't shake us off."