Christmas Eve
observed that the shape of one of several parcels they carried suggested that it contained the engine that had been taken from the window a little while before.
When Nora returned with her purchase they went in search of a cheaper place and after a time they found what they wanted. For sixpence they bought a cardboard box that had come all the way from Japan and contained a whole family of dolls—father, mother and four children of different sizes; and they bought a box of paints for threepence, a sixpenny tea service, a threepenny drawing slate, and a sixpenny rag doll.
On their way home they called at a greengrocer's where, a few weeks before, Owen had ordered and paid for a small Christmas tree. As they were turning the corner ot the street where they lived they met Crass, half drunk, with a fine fat goose slung over his shoulder by its neck. He greeted Owen jovially and held up the bird for their inspection.
'Not a bad tannersworth, eh?' he hiccoughed. 'This makes two we've got. I won this and a box of cigars—fifty—for a tanner; and the other one I got out of the club at our Church Mission 'All: threepence a week for twenty-eight weeks; that makes seven bob. But,' he added confidentially, 'you couldn't buy 'em for that price in a shop, you know. They costs the committee a good bit more nor that wholesale; but we've got some rich gents on our committee and they makes up the difference.' And with a nod and a cunning leer he lurched off.
Frankie was sleeping soundly when they reached home, and after they had had some supper, although it was after eleven o'clock, Owen fixed the tree in a large flower pot that had served a similar purpose before, and Nora brought out from the place where it had been stored away since last Christmas a cardboard box containing a lot of glittering tinsel ornaments—globes of silvered or gilded or painted glass, birds, butterflies and stars. Some of these things had done duty three Christmases ago, but although they were in a few instances slightly tarnished most of them were as good as new. In addition to these and the toys they had bought that evening they had a box of bon-bons and a box of small coloured wax candles, both of which had formed part of the things they got from the grocer's with the Christmas Club money; and there were also a lot of little coloured paper bags of sweets, and a number of sugar and chocolate toys and
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