Her rosy happiness precluded sentiment--and kindness. She glanced at the glowing fire and then at his face. She looked down at her pink toes, peeping from below John’s drawers--The drawers wrinkled grotesquely on the fat legs and she tried to hold them up a little as she approached him, humbly.... Simeon was angry--She could see it from the tail of her eye, as she drew nearer with downcast head. “I wanted to see Santa Claus,” she said. She had come very close now and she put out a fat hand, resting it on his knee. He bent a little toward her. “You should have waited till tomorrow, child. Don’t you know I shall have to take you back--” She lifted a stricken face. “--in the cold and snow,” went on Simeon unheeding. Her lip quivered. With a bound she had buried her face in his breast.--“Don’t take me, Cinnamon!” she wailed--“Please don’t take me--back!” “But your grandfather and grandmother will worry--” She lifted a reassuring, streaming face, “They don’t _know_ about me,” she sobbed, “I am sound asleep.” She snuffed a little and fumbled in the capacious folds of John’s undershirt for a handkerchief. Simeon produced his and she accepted it meekly. She wiped her cheeks with it and stowed it away. “I peeked--” she said, “in the door and they was asleep--both of ’em--and Gran’ther was a-snorin’--” “Suppose they wake up,” said Simeon. She looked at him piteously. “Santa Claus can’t come to our house,” she said. Her lip trembled. “Why not?” “He can’t get in.” “Oh.” “They ’ve shut up the chimbley.” She moved a fat hand toward the fireplace--“I cried about it,” she explained, “and then I went to sleep--I prayed too, but that did n’t do any good,” she threw in. “And then I waked up in the dark and ’membered you, and that’s how I come.” She nestled to him. His arms were close around her. “You shall stay till the clock strikes twelve--that’s when he comes--” She nodded sagely. “And then I ’ll carry you home.” She sank back with a little sigh of content. The pink toes cuddled themselves in the warm folds and the moist eyes rested dreamily on the coals. Simeon, holding her in his arms, had a sense of life--its goodness and fullness. The loneliness had fled from the little room. It was filled with love, and the world outside was full of friendliness--It held them close. The child stirred a little. “We did n’t hung up my stocking,” she said drowsily. Simeon looked down at the stocking steaming with faint warmth from the fire. “It ’s too wet,” he said. She roused herself and sat up--“Don’t I have no stockings?” she demanded. He hesitated. Then he got up and brought one of his own and suspended it from the corner of the shelf. She surveyed it with dubious content. A little question flitted, and she raised an anxious, startled face. “He might fink it was yours,” she said. “We ’ll tell him,” said Simeon, “the minute he comes.”