At that very minute, away up the north road, two miles nearer town, there was a sort of dot on the white road. If you were far enough away from it, it looked like a black dot, and did not seem to move. The nearer you came to it the funnier it looked, and the more it seemed to be trudging along with an immense amount of small energy. Very small indeed, for anybody close up to it would have seen that it was a five-year-old boy in a queer little suit of gray trimmed with red. He had on a warm gray cap, and right in the middle of the front of it were worked a pair of letters—"O. A."—but there was nobody with the gray dot to explain that those two letters stood for "Orphan Asylum." No, nor to tell how easy it was for a boy of five years old, with all the head under his gray cap full of Christmas ideas, to turn the wrong corner where the roads crossed south of the great Orphan Asylum building. That was what he had done, and he had walked on and on, wondering why the big building did not come in sight, until his small legs were getting tired, and his brave, bright little black eyes were all but ready for a crying spell.
Just as he got thoroughly discouraged he came to the edge of the woods, where there stood a wood sleigh with two horses in front of it, drawn close to the road-side, and heaped with great green boughs and branches.
"The sleigh's pretty nigh full, grandfather," sang out a clear boyish voice beyond the fence, and a very much older one seemed to go right on talking.
"Your grandmother, Liph, she always did make the best mince-pies, and she can stuff a turkey better'n any one I know."
"Grandfather, do you s'pose they'll all come?"
"Guess they will. That there spruce'll do for the Christmas tree. Your grandmother said we must fetch a big one."
"That's a whopper. But will Joe Simpson and Bob Hopkins be bigger'n they were last summer?"
"Guess they've grown a little. They'll grow this time, if they eat all their grandmother'll want 'em to. Hullo, Liph, who's that out there in the road?"
"Guess it's a boy."
"I declare if it isn't one of them little gray mites from the 'sylum! 'Way out here! I say, bub."