At full speed comes a policeman, warned of his duty by the howls of anguish. He surveys the two on the ground; one still and quiet, the other groaning and cursing with his twisted arm. The officer sends in an ambulance call. Then he surveys with pleased intentness the regular face of Mike, cool and unperturbed. “An Irish Sheeny!” softly comments the officer to himself. He is expert of faces, is the officer, and deduces Mike’s two-ply origin from his yellow hair, dark eye and curved nose. “You’re part Irish and part Jew,” observes the policeman. “My mother was from Ireland,” answers Mike; “my father was a Spanish Jew from Salamanca. I think that’s what they call it, although I was not old enough when he died to remember much about him.” “Irish crossed on Jew!” comments the officer, still in a mood of thoughtful admiration. “It’s the best prize-ring strain in the world!” The officer is in his dim way a patron of sport. Mike thanks the other; for, while by no means clearly understanding, he feels that a compliment is meant. Then Mike goes homeward to Mollie and little Davy. It is the twenty-third of December--two days before Christmas--when we are first made friends of Mike Menares. About a month before, the little family of three fell upon bad days. Mike was dismissed by the great grocers, and the six dollars weekly from that quarter came to an end. Mike’s delivery wagon was run down and crushed by a car; and, while Mike was not to blame, the grocers have no time to discover a justice, and Mike was told to go. For mere food and light and fire, Mike’s other six Saturday dollars from Professor O’Punch would with economy provide. But there is the rent on New Year’s day! Also, and more near, is Christmas, with not a penny to spare. It must perforce be a bare festival, this Christmas. It will be a blow to little Davy of the crutch, who has talked only of Christmas for two months past and gone. Mike, as has been intimated, is dull and slow of brain. He has just enough of education to be able to read and write. He owns no bad habits--no habits at all, in fact; and the one great passion of his simple heart is love without a limit for Mollie and little Davy. He lives for them; the least of their desires is the great concern of Mike’s life. Therefore, when his income shrinks from twelve dollars to six, it creeps up on him and chills him as a loss to Mollie and Davy. And peculiarly does this sorrowful business of a ruined Christmas for Davy prey on poor Mike. “You and I won’t mind,” says housewife Mollie, looking up in Mike’s face with the sage dignity of her eleven years, “because we’re old enough to understand; but I feel bad about little Davy. It’s the first real awful Christmas we’ve ever had.”