“I hope,” she said, cheerfully, as she took a dish of lobster salad from the oven, where it had been warmed over, “that you will keep a sharp lookout for quail this week. It would be nice to have one or two for our Christmas dinner. Of course we cannot afford corned beef and cabbage like those rich people whom you call by their first names when you write about them in the Sunday papers; but I do hope we will not be obliged to put up with cakes and pastry and such wretched stuff.” “Quail!” exclaimed her husband; “they are so scarce and shy this winter that we are obliged to take setter-dogs with us to the entertainments at which they are served. But I will do my best, darling.” As soon as William had gone to bed Susan took from its hiding-place the present which she had prepared for her husband, and proceeded to sew it to the inside of his ulster as a Christmas surprise for him. She sighed to think that it was the best she could afford this year. It was a useful rather than an ornamental gift--a simple rubber pocket, made from a piece of an old mackintosh, and intended for William to carry soup in. But Susan had a bright, hopeful spirit, and a smile soon smoothed the furrows from her face as she murmured, “How nice it will be when William comes home with his new pocket filled with nice, warm, nourishing bouillon!” and then she glanced up from her work and saw that her daughter, little golden-haired Eva, had entered the room and was looking at her out of her great, truthful, deep-blue eyes. * * * * * It was Christmas eve, and as Jacob Scaffold trudged through the frosty streets the keen air brought a ruddy glow to his cheeks and tipped his nose with a brighter carmine than any that he used in the practice of his art. Entering the hall in which the ball of the Gilt-edged Coterie was taking place, the proud old house and sign painter quickly divested himself of his outer wraps and made his way to the committee-room. Then, adorned with a huge badge and streamer, he strolled out to greet his friends, who were making merry on the polished floor of the ball-room. But although the band played its most stirring measures and the lights gleamed on arms and necks of dazzling whiteness, old Jacob Scaffold sighed deeply as he seated himself in a rather obscure corner and allowed his eyes to roam about the room as if in search of some familiar face. The fact was that the haughty, purse-proud old man was thinking of another Christmas eve ten years before when his daughter Susan had danced at this same ball, the brightest, the prettiest, and the most sought-after girl on the floor. “And to think,” said the old man to himself, “that, with all the opportunities she had to make a good match, she should have taken up with that reporter in the shiny dress-suit! It’s five years since I’ve heard anything of her, but of late I’ve been thinking that maybe I was too harsh with her, and perhaps--”