Nancy leant over the counter and wrote, with a blush for her folly: _This is the key of my heart. Keep it always, my darling._ The key and the card were put inside the box; and she hurried off to the theatre, laughing to herself in an absurdly delicious excitement at the thought of hiding it under Bram’s pillow to-night. The dress rehearsal was not over till three o’clock on Christmas morning. The ladies and gentlemen of the company were all so tired when at last they were dismissed that when they came out of the theatre and found Greenwich white and silent under a heavy fall of snow, not even the comedians had any energy to be funny with snowballs. “What time’s the call to-morrow, dear?” one of the chorus called back to a friend in a weary voice. “There’s no call to-morrow, duck. It’s Christmas Day.” “Gard, so it is!” “Don’t forget the curtain goes up for the matinée on Boxing Day at half-past one, dear.” “Right-o!” “Queenie’s got her boy staying at the ‘Ship,’” the chorus girl explained to Nancy. “And she’s the limit for forgetting everything when he’s about. She’s potty on him. Merry Christmas, Miss O’Finn.” “Merry Christmas to you.” All the way back up the court, at the end of which was the stage-door, the Christmas greetings of one to another floated thinly along the snowy air. “A merry Christmas! A merry Christmas.” Bram took Nancy’s arm, and they hurried away back as fast as they could to Starboard Alley, where they found Letizia safe in her cot, one of Mrs. Pottage’s stockings hanging like a coal-sack over the foot of it. “You never told me which stocking to put out,” said the landlady. “So I hung up one of my own. Of course, I hung up one of hers as well, pore mite, but hers wouldn’t hold more than a couple of acid-drops. Mine is a _little_ more convenient.” “How kind of you to sit up for us, Mrs. Pottage,” the two vagabonds exclaimed. “Oh, I’ve been thinking over old times. You know. On and off the doze, as you might say. My friend Mrs. Bugbird didn’t hop it till past midnight. She generally comes in for a chat of a Monday evening, and being Christmas Eve she stayed on a bit extra. She’s a real comic, is Mrs. Bugbird; but she had to be a bit careful how she laughed to-night, because last week she ricked the plate of her teeth laughing over a story I told her. Yes, the soup’s lovely and hot. But I did let the fire out in your sitting-room. So if you wouldn’t mind coming into my kitchen....” “Was Letizia good?” the mother asked. “She hasn’t moved an inch since I put her to bye-bye. I’ve popped up to look at her several times. In fact, Mrs. Bugbird and me both popped up, and Mrs. B. said a more sweetly pretty infant she never did wish to see. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘Mrs. Bugbird,’ I said, ‘that’s something for you to say with the fourteen you’ve had.’ Fancy, fourteen! Tut-tut-tut! Still if I’d accepted half my proposals, I’d have had more like forty by now.” A canary stirred upon his perch and chirped.