The bundle grew larger each day, and Miss Sophie grew smaller.
The damp, cold rain and mist closed the white-curtained window,
but always there behind the sewing-machine drooped and bobbed the
little black-robed figure. Whirr, whirr went the wheels, and the
coarse jeans pants piled in great heaps at her side. The
Claiborne Street car saw her oftener than before, and the sweet
white Virgin in the flowered niche above the gold-domed altar
smiled at the little supplicant almost every day.

"Ma foi," said the slatternly landlady to Madame Laurent and
Michel one day, "I no see how she live! Eat? Nothin', nothin',
almos', and las' night when it was so cold and foggy, eh? I hav'
to mek him build fire. She mos' freeze."

Whereupon the rumour spread that Miss Sophie was starving herself
to death to get some luckless relative out of jail for Christmas;
a rumour which enveloped her scraggy little figure with a kind of
halo to the neighbours when she appeared on the streets.

November had merged into December, and the little pile of coins
was yet far from the sum needed. Dear God! how the money did
have to go! The rent and the groceries and the coal, though, to
be sure, she used a precious bit of that. Would all the work and
saving and skimping do good? Maybe, yes, maybe by Christmas.

Christmas Eve on Royal Street is no place for a weakling, for the
shouts and carousels of the roisterers will strike fear into the
bravest ones. Yet amid the cries and yells, the deafening blow
of horns and tin whistles, and the really dangerous fusillade of
fireworks, a little figure hurried along, one hand clutching