CHAPTER XXV. 
SNOWED UP. 
HEN the applause which followed the lieutenant's 
story had died away, Mrs. Button announced 
that it was ten o'clock, and time for the young 
folks to be abed. 
There was a general outcry at this, and Mr. Dutton 
good-naturedly consented to tell one more story, to wind 
up the evening. 
"I can't pretend to make it up," said he. "It's one I 
read in the Christmas Traveller in Boston a year or two 
ago. However, here goes ! I'll give it to you as nearly 
as I can, the way it came out in print." 
The story which Mr. Dutton told, he announced as 
CHRISTMAS ON WHEELS. 
A railroad station in a large city is hardly an inviting 
spot, at its best. But at the close of a cheerless, blustering 
December day, when biting draughts of wind come scurry- 
ing in at every open door, filling the air with a gray com- 
pound of dust and fine snow ; when passengers tramp up 
and down the long platform, waiting impatiently for their 
trains ; when newsboys wander about with disconsolate, 
298 
