REGISTERED 
I N 
PATENT 
OFFICE 
Vol. XXVI—No. 6 
December, 1914 
c %, 
Leona Dalrymple 
Illustrated jbt/ CHarles GvsiscHard. 
H IS name was Jimsy, and he took it for granted that you 
liked him. That made things difficult from the very 
start—that and the fact that he had arrived in the village two 
'days before Christmas strung to such a holiday pitch of expecta¬ 
tion that if you were a respectable, bewhiskered first citizen like 
Jimsy’s host, you felt the cut-and-dried dignity of a season which 
unflinching thrift had taught you to pare of all its glittering non- 
essentials, threatened by his bubbling air of faith in something 
wonderful to happen. 
He had arrived at twilight just as the first citizen was about to 
read his evening paper, and he had made a great deal of noise, 
yelling back at old Austin White, whose sleigh had conveyed him 
from the station to the house, a “S’long, uncle!” pregnant with 
the friendliness of a conversational ride. Now, as he stood in 
the center of the prim, old-fashioned room, a thin, eager young¬ 
ster not too warmly clad for the bite of New England wind, 
Abner Sawyer felt, with a sense of shock, that Judith’s Christmas 
protege, in some ridiculous manner, detracted from the respect¬ 
ability of the room. He was an inharmonious note in its staid 
preciseness. Moreover, it was evident from the frank friendliness 
of his dark, gray eyes that he was perniciously of that type who 
frolic through a frosty, first-citizen aura of formality and give 
and accept friendship as a matter of course. 
“What — what is your name?” asked the first citizen, peering 
over his spectacles. 
“Jimsy,” said the boy.” “An’ Specks—lie’s me chum; he goes to 
Mister Middleton's, next door." 
The first citizen cleared his throat and summoned Judith. 
She came in a spotless apron no whiter than her hair. She was 
spare — Aunt Judith Sawyer — spare and patient as the wife of a 
provident man may well be who sees no need for servants. 
Jimsy glanced up into her sweet, tired face, and his eager eyes 
claimed her with a smile. Then, because Jimsy’s experience with 
clean aprons and trimly parted hair was negligible almost to the 
point of non-existence, it became instantly imperative that he 
should polish the toe of one worn shoe with the sole of the other 
and study the result and Aunt Judith with a furtive interest. 
“Judith,” said the first citizen, “Mr. — er — ah — Mr. Jimsy has 
arrived.” 
he 
Hain’t got no folks. 
said. “Jimsy's the 
Mom Dorgan 
bunch-name. I’m the 
Jimsy snickered. “Naw, naw, nix 
handle. I’m a stray, I am. 
says ye have to have folks to have a 
Christmas kid.” 
“And where are your things?” asked Aunt Judith, gently. 
Jimsy’s thin, little face reddened. 
“Hain’t only got one rig,” he mumbled; “an' that warn't fitten 
to wear. Mom Dorgan borried these duds fur me. She—she’s 
awful good that way when she's sober.” 
Quite unconscious of the scandalized flutter in this quiet room, 
whose oval portraits of ancestral Sawyers might well have tum¬ 
bled down at the notion of anyone being anything but sober, the 
boy moved closer to the fire, as if the ride had chilled him. 
“Gee!” he said, with a long, quivering breath,” ain’t that a fire, 
now!” and, because his keen, young eyes could not somehow be 
evaded, Abner Sawyer accepted the responsibility of the reply, 
and said hastily that it was. Then, feeling his dignity imperilled 
in the presence of Judith — though why he could not for the life 
of him explain — he moved forward a chair for the Christmas 
guest, and returned to his paper. 
Aunt Judith went back to a region of tinkling china and hum¬ 
ming kettle. The room became quiet enough for anyone to read 
— but tbe first citizen somehow could not read. He was ridicu¬ 
lously conscious of that tense, little figure by the fire, with the dis¬ 
turbingly friendly eyes. How on earth could a boy be noisy who 
was absolutely quiet? Yet his very presence seemed to clamor — 
the clamor of an inherent sociability repressed with difficulty. 
Jimsy glanced at the checkerboard window, beyond which 
snowy hills lay beneath a sunset after-glow. 
“Gee whiz!” he burst forth,” Ain’t the snow white!" 
The first citizen jumped — much as one may jump when he has 
waited in nerve-racking suspense for a pistol shot. The boy had 
done exactly what he had expected him to do — broken that sacred, 
ante-prandial hour with the Lindon Neivs which Judith had not 
broken this twenty years. 
“Snow,” he said, discouraginglv — for all he had determined to 
ignore the remark 
—“snow is always 
white.” ^ ~~ 
347 
