“—­Hello, Langshaw!  Looking at that rod again?  Why don’t you blow yourself to a Christmas present?  Haven’t you got the nerve?”

“That’s what I don’t know!” called Langshaw with a wave of the hand as Wickersham passed by.  Yet, even as he spoke he felt he did know—­his mind was joyously, adventurously made up to have “the nerve”; he had a right, for once in the twelve years of his married life, to buy himself a Christmas present that he really wanted, in distinction to the gift that family affection prompted, and held dear as such, but which had no relation to his needs or desires.  Children and friends were provided for; his wife’s winter suit—­a present by her transforming imagination—­already in the house; the Christmas turkey for the janitor of the children’s school subscribed to—­sometimes he had wished himself the janitor!—­and all the small demands that drain the purse at the festal season carefully counted up and allowed for.  There was no lien on this unexpected sum just received.  The reel and the line, and the flies and such, would have to wait until another time, to be sure; but no one could realize what it would be to him to come home and find that blessed rod there.  He had a wild impulse to go in and buy it that moment, but such haste seemed too slighting to the dignity of that occasion, which should allow the sweets of anticipation—­though no one knew better than he the danger of delay where money was concerned:  it melted like snow in the pocket.  Extra funds always seemed to bring an extra demand.

The last time there was ten dollars to spare there had been a letter from Langshaw’s mother, saying that his sister Ella, whose husband was unfortunately out of a position, had developed flat-foot; and a pair of suitable shoes, costing nine-fifty, had been prescribed by the physician.  Was it possible for her dear boy to send the money?  Ella was so depressed.

The ten dollars had, of course, gone to Ella.  Both Langshaw and his wife had an unsympathetic feeling that if they developed flat-foot now they would have to go without appropriate shoes.

“You look quite gay!” said his wife as she greeted him on his return, her pretty oval face, with its large dark eyes and dark curly locks, held up to be kissed.  “Has anything nice happened?”

“You look gay, too!” he evaded laughingly, as his arms lingered round her.  Clytie was always a satisfactory person for a wife.  “What’s this pink stuff on your hair—­popcorn?”

“Oh, goodness!  Baby has been so bad, she has been throwing it round everywhere,” she answered, running ahead of him upstairs to a room that presented a scene of brilliant disorder.

On the bed was a large box of tinselled Christmas-tree decorations and another of pink-and-white popcorn—­the flotsam and jetsam of which strewed the counterpane and the floor to its farthest corners, mingled with scraps of glittering paper, an acreage of which surrounded a table in the centre of the room that was adorned with mucilage pot and scissors.  A large feathered hat, a blue silk dress, and a flowered skirt were on the rug, near which a very plump child of three, with straggling yellow hair, was trying to get a piece of gilt paper off her shoe.  She looked up with roguish blue eyes to say rapidly: