The new day was a marvel of sunshine. During the night, the snow had changed to rain; this in turn had given way to colder weather, and now myriads of jewels hung from enchanted apple trees. A white fairyland! The child clapped his hands with delight as his mother wrapped him warm in his various rabbit-skin garments, and gathered his curls up under a raccoon cap, and led him down the garden path to frolic with old Ajax in the clean snow. When she brought him in, he was glowing and sparkling with unearthly glee. She thought she had never dreamed of anything so beautiful. She wondered whether Joseph and Mary in the carpenter’s shop had ever punished Jesus for playing too long among the shavings, and what the Child had said. Probably something much more moving than “None done, papa.” But if so, she wondered how Mary could bear it. Samuel’s elfin merriment quieted down in the warm room. No longer insubordinate, he allowed his mother to take him up on her lap, and to brush the tangled curls over a round stick, until they became orderly spirals once more. He had not yet learned that curls were effeminate; that battle was to be much later. He made no move to take up his carving, or to defend his past, reserving such discussions as these for a meeting with the masculine mind. All the afternoon he seemed a creature both isolate and expectant, darting to the window whenever a vagrom sleigh-bell tinkled in fairyland. Isolate and expectant! His mother wondered whether all artists were doomed to be so. Once she caught him up in her arms, and cried out to him in her childhood’s tongue, “_O caro, caro, perché?_” And Samuel passed his fingers over her forehead, and then over the Ganymede brooch, saying three words that his father had taught him in jest, but which he had learned in earnest, “_Beau, bello, beau-ti-ful!_” He loved those three words, and very often, apropos of nothing, he spoke them in his incredibly distinct way. But to-day his mother felt his aloofness; she knew that he was waiting for something, something not in her power to give. The young carver was a privileged person in the shop where he worked. That day he could not fix his mind on those wooden models of wheel and shaft. He was unsatisfied about his child, and in the middle of the afternoon abruptly put away his tools and went home. Early as it was, Samuel was already waiting. The child had been listening for that step in the passage. There was something to be explained; the indignity of yesterday’s happening had not yet passed into forgetfulness. He took his unfinished cat in hand, and hitched his trousers higher. If last night’s encounter was to be repeated, he would not easily be separated from his defensive armor!