Higby carried out the toys for the Tingsby children and tucked them under the fur robes.
It did not take long for the Judge’s fast horses to reach River Street.
The street was very quiet. It was a cold day, and the people were mostly celebrating their Christmas indoors.
“P-p-pretty poor pickings, I guess, some of them have,” stuttered Titus, compassionately, and his grandfather agreed with him.
Mrs. Tingsby’s house was as gray and dingy outside by daylight as it had been by electric light the day before, and it was apparently cold and uninhabited. No children’s faces appeared at the windows, no cheerful gleam of firelight shone from between the threadbare curtains.
Titus jumped out and pounded on the door. After a long time, and a liberal application of both fists, Mrs. Tingsby herself came.
She gave them a most joyful welcome.
“Come in! Come in!” she screamed in her excitement, “come in, gentlemen, come in an’ come down to where we’re celebratin’, poor as we be. No, no—not there,” as the Judge mechanically turned toward the door of the small room in which they had sat the evening before. “Here, sir, down here in the cellar,” and she trotted before him to a dark stairway, and with alarming celerity disappeared in the depths of a basement, while the Judge and Titus felt their way down after her.
“Here, here,” she called, opening a door and suddenly allowing a streak of light to dart into the almost pitch-dark hall, “here we be—merry as coppersmiths after our good dinner.”
“S-s-seems to me I’d rather be some other kind of a smith,” grumbled Titus to himself, wrinkling his nose in the goose-laden atmosphere as he followed her, for he was preceding his grandfather, with the charitable intention of breaking his fall if he had one.