was heavy with foreboding. He knew that it required but a spark to precipitate a crisis with all the suddenness of an explosion. He waited now, joyful, expectant, watching the others with an impish satisfaction.
There was in the dampish atmosphere of the room an odor of unwonted richness . . . the smell of a roast goose, strange and exotic in this household. But Christmas was a season which caused even Harvey Seton to unbend a little. It was the only occasion when the Christianity of the man was tempered even for an instant by anything faintly suggestive of warmth. His manner as he carved was touched, despite the thinness of the slices which fell from the breast of the bird, by a majestic air, which suggested more than ever his likeness to a grotesque Gothic saint; (he might have been one of those early fathers who battled and gave up their lives for some minute point of dogma.)
As he stood whetting the knife coldly against the steel, a sense of awe penetrated slowly one by one the hearts of those about the table . . . all save Jimmy. With his small pointed head barely visible above the table's edge, he waited. And presently, as if he could restrain his impatience no longer, he banged his knife sharply against the edge of his plate.
The effect was instantaneous. It brought from the harassed mother a sharp scream and a violent slap on the wrist.
"Don't do that again or you'll be sent to bed without any goose!"
But Jimmy, knowing his safety, only grinned and varied the method of torture by scratching the fork against the cold surface of the plate so that it produced a dreadful whining sound.
There were, to be sure, reasons for this strange condition of nerves. Since the night when Clarence arrived out of the blizzard, things had not progressed. Indeed, it appeared that, on the contrary, they were moving backwards. By now, everything should have been settled, and yet nothing was done; there had been no declaration, no hint. The wooer remained wary, suspi-
