The Blossoming Rod | Page 2

that moment, but such haste seemed too slighting to the dignity of that occasion, which should allow the sweets of anticipation--though no one knew better than he the danger of delay where money was concerned: it melted like snow in the pocket. Extra funds always seemed to bring an extra demand.
The last time there was ten dollars to spare there had been a letter from Langshaw's mother, saying that his sister Ella, whose husband was unfortunately out of a position, had developed flat-foot; and a pair of suitable shoes, costing nine-fifty, had been prescribed by the physician. Was it possible for her dear boy to send the money? Ella was so depressed.
The ten dollars had, of course, gone to Ella. Both Langshaw and his wife had an unsympathetic feeling that if they developed flat-foot now they would have to go without appropriate shoes.
"You look quite gay!" said his wife as she greeted him on his return, her pretty oval face, with its large dark eyes and dark curly locks, held up to be kissed. "Has anything nice happened?"
"You look gay, too!" he evaded laughingly, as his arms lingered round her. Clytie was always a satisfactory person for a wife. "What's this pink stuff on your hair--popcorn?"
"Oh, goodness! Baby has been so bad, she has been throwing it round everywhere," she answered, running ahead of him upstairs to a room that presented a scene of brilliant disorder.
On the bed was a large box of tinselled Christmas-tree decorations and another of pink-and-white popcorn--the flotsam and jetsam of which strewed the counterpane and the floor to its farthest corners, mingled with scraps of glittering paper, an acreage of which surrounded a table in the centre of the room that was adorned with mucilage pot and scissors. A large feathered hat, a blue silk dress, and a flowered skirt were on the rug, near which a very plump child of three, with straggling yellow hair, was trying to get a piece of gilt paper off her shoe. She looked up with roguish blue eyes to say rapidly:
"Fardie doesn't know what baby goin' agive 'm for Kissemus!"
"Hello! This looks like the real thing," said Langshaw, stepping over the débris; "but what are all these clothes on the floor for?"
"Oh, Mary was dressing up and just dropped those things when she went to the village with Viney, though I called her twice to come back and pick them up," said the mother, sweeping the garments out of the way. "It's so tiresome of her! Oh, I know you stand up for everything Mary does, Joe Langshaw; but she is the hardest child to manage!"
Her tone insensibly conveyed a pride in the difficulty of dealing with her elder daughter, aged six.
"But did you ever see anything like Baby? She can keep a secret as well as any one! It does look Christmasy, though--doesn't it? Of course all the work of the tree at the mission comes on me as usual. The children, with the two Wickersham girls, were helping me until they got tired. Why don't you come and kiss father, Baby? She is going to sweep up the floor with her little broom so that father will give her five cents."
"I don't want to fweep 'e floor!" said the child, snapping her blue eyes.
"She shall get her little broom and Fardie will help her," said Langshaw, catching the child up in his arms and holding the round little form closely to him before putting her down carefully on her stubby feet.
Later, when the game of clearing up was over and the nickel clutched in Baby's fat palm, he turned to his wife with a half-frown:
"Don't you think you are making the children rather mercenary, Clytie? They seem to want to be paid for everything they do. I'm just about drained out of change!"
"Oh, at Christmas!" said the wife expressively.
"Well, I hope nobody is going to spend any money on me; the only presents I want are those you make for me," said Langshaw warningly. He gave the same warning each year, undeterred by the nature of the articles produced. His last year's "Christmas" from Clytie had been a pair of diaphanous blue China-silk pyjamas that were abnormally large in chest and sleeves--as for one of giant proportions--and correspondingly contracted in the legs, owing to her cutting out the tops first and having to get the other necessary adjuncts out of the scant remainder of the material. "You hear me, Clytie?"
"Yes, I hear," returned Clytie in a bored tone.
"Do you know--" Langshaw hesitated, a boyish smile overspreading his countenance. "I was looking at that trout-rod in Burchell's window to-day. I don't suppose you remember my speaking of it, but I've had my eye on it for a long time." He paused, expectant of encouraging interest.
"Oh, have you,