to the wind outside—almost a Christmas wind, is it not? Merry and boisterous enough, for all the evil times it stirs among.”
Old Christmas seated himself beside the fire, his hands outstretched towards the flames. Something of his old-time cheeriness seemed to flicker across his features as he warmed himself at the blaze.
“That’s better,” he murmured. “I was cold, sir, cold, chilled to the bone. Of old I never felt it so; no matter what the wind, the world seemed warm about me. Why is it not so now?”
“You see,” said Time, speaking low in a whisper for my ear alone, “how sunk and broken he is? Will you not help?”
“Gladly,” I answered, “if I can.”
“All can,” said Father Time, “every one of us.”
Meantime Christmas had turned towards me a questioning eye, in which, however, there seemed to revive some little gleam of merriment.
“Have you, perhaps,” he asked half timidly, “schnapps?”
“Schnapps?” I repeated.
“Ay, schnapps. A glass of it to drink your health might warm my heart again, I think.”
“Ah,” I said, “something to drink?”
234
