Huge, wet, feathery flakes were dropping lazily from the sky.  Little by little they increased in numbers and fell more quickly.  At last they formed a moving veil through which the building at the other end of the courtyard could barely be seen.

Later in the day Keith was permitted to look out through one of the front windows.  The whole world had changed and looked much brighter in spite of the failing light.  The Quay was covered by a carpet of white that made the waters beyond look doubly dark and cold.  The trees on the opposite shore looked as if they had been painted from the topmost twig to the root.  Down in the lane, two of the workers in the distillery were pelting each other with snowballs while a third one was shouting at the top of his voice: 

“We’ll have a white Christmas this year, thank heaven.”

That same evening Keith’s long cherished dream of visiting the open-air Christmas Fair at Great Square was to come true at last.  Like other affairs of its kind, it had been reduced by the modern shop to a mere shadow of its former glorious self, and it was kept up only out of regard for ancient tradition.  Keith had been told that it was nothing but a lot of open booths displaying cheap toys and cheaper candy.  To Keith toys were toys and candy candy, no matter what the price and quality, and so he kept on begging leave to go, until the night in question his parents, who were going out with friends, deemed it better to let him see for himself.  And so Lena was ordered to take charge of the expedition.

Lena and Keith were dressed and ready to start when the mother came into the kitchen to give the boy a farewell kiss as usual.  He was in high spirits, but fidgety with some unexpressed wish.

“What is it, Keith,” asked the mother, recognizing the symptoms.

“I want some money,” he whispered into her ear.

“Go and ask papa.”

“No, you ask him.”

That was what always happened, and in the end the mother voiced the boy’s plea to the father, who just then appeared in the door to the living-room.  He was in a good humour and promptly reached into his pocket.  Unfortunately Keith discovered at that crucial moment that one of his shoe laces had become untied.

“Please, mamma, help me,” he said, putting his foot on a chair to enable her to reach it more easily.

“That settles it,” exclaimed the father with a darkening face as he handed Keith a few small copper coins.  “That is all you will get now.  A boy of five who makes his mother tie his shoe strings ought not to have anything at all.”

Keith took the coins silently and went with Lena to the fair, but he saw nothing worth seeing, and he never wanted to go again.  Uneasily he prowled among the booths trying as a matter of duty to find something so cheap that his scant hoard would buy it.  At last he succeeded in getting a little box of tin soldiers of poorest quality for one-third less than the price put on it It was one of the few times in his life when he found himself able to haggle over the cost of a thing.