It was Christmas eve, and as Jacob Scaffold trudged through the frosty streets the keen air brought a ruddy glow to his cheeks and tipped his nose with a brighter carmine than any that he used in the practice of his art. Entering the hall in which the ball of the Gilt-edged Coterie was taking place, the proud old house and sign painter quickly divested himself of his outer wraps and made his way to the committee-room.
Then, adorned with a huge badge and streamer, he strolled out to greet his friends, who were making merry on the polished floor of the ball-room. But although the band played its most stirring measures and the lights gleamed on arms and necks of dazzling whiteness, old Jacob Scaffold sighed deeply as he seated himself in a rather obscure corner and allowed his eyes to roam about the room as if in search of some familiar face.
The fact was that the haughty, purse-proud old man was thinking of another Christmas eve ten years before when his daughter Susan had danced at this same ball, the brightest, the prettiest, and the most sought-after girl on the floor.
“And to think,” said the old man to himself, “that, with all the opportunities she had to make a good match, she should have taken up with that reporter in the shiny dress-suit! It’s five years since I’ve heard anything of her, but of late I’ve been thinking that maybe I was too harsh with her, and perhaps—”
His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a servant, who told him that some one desired to see him in the committee-room. On reaching that apartment he found a little girl of perhaps eight years of age, plainly clad, and carrying a basket in her hand. Fixing her eyes on Jacob Scaffold, she said:
“Please, sir, are you the chairman of the press committee?”
“I am,” replied the puzzled artist; “but who are you?”
“I am the reporter of the Sunday Guff. My papa has charge of the ‘What the Four Hundred are Doing’ column, but to-night he is obliged to attend a chromo-literary reception, where there will be nothing to eat but tea and cake. Papa has reported your balls and chowder excursions for the past five years, and we have always had ham for dessert for a week afterward. We had all been looking forward to your Christmas-eve ball, and when papa told us that he would have to go to the tea and cake place to-night mama felt so badly that I took papa’s ticket out of his pocket when he was asleep and came here myself. Papa has a thick ulster, full of nice big pockets, that he puts on when he goes out to report, but I have brought a basket.”
The child finished her simple and affecting narrative, and the members of the press committee looked at one another dumfounded. Jacob Scaffold was the first to break the silence.
“And what is your name, little child?” he inquired.