or.

"In a little while."

"And you won't forget to say your prayers?"

"I ain't said 'em for months, ever since your father was killed, and we
got so poor."

"But you'll say 'em to-night 'cause it's Christmas eve?"

"Yes, to-night," said the mother; "now you go to sleep."

"Are you waitin' for him to come, Mommy?" asked the littlest girl, who
was very sleepy.

"Yes," said the mother.

Presently, as she sat in the dark, having turned out the light, the deep
breathing of the children told her they were asleep. She rose quietly,
stepped to the window, and stood looking at the three shapeless,
tattered stockings. She was high up in the tenement and the moonlight
came softly over the house roofs of the city into the bare, cold,
cheerless room. She stared at the stockings and tears streamed down her
wasted cheeks. She had hung them low at the suggestion of the littlest
girl so the children could easily get at them in the morning.

[Illustration: She pressed them against her face.]

After a time she fell down on her knees. She pressed them against her
face. She did not say anything. She could scarcely think anything. She
just knelt there until something gently drew her head around. She
dropped the stockings. She put her right hand on the window-ledge to
steady herself and looked backward.

No sound save the breathing of the children and her own stifled sobs had
broken the silence; the door was shut, but a man was there, a man of
strange vesture seen dimly in the moon's radiance, yet there was a kind
of light about his face. She could see his features. They were those of
a man in middle years. They were lined with care. He had seen life on
its seamy side. The woman felt that he had known poverty and loneliness.
She stared up at him.

"I didn't believe," she whispered; "it cannot be. I thought we were
forgotten."

The man slowly raised his hand. The moonlight struck fair upon it. She
saw that it was calloused, the hand of a man who toiled. It was extended
over her head. The

William Babington Maxwell (18661938) was a British novelist. He was a son of novelist Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Though nearly 50 years old at the outbreak of the First World War, he was accepted as a lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers and served in France until 1917.

Cyrus Townsend Brady (December 20, 1861 January 24, 1920) was a journalist, historian and adventure writer. His most well-known work is Indian Fights and Fighters. He was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1883. He was also a deacon in the Episcopal church. His first wife was Clarissa Guthrie, who died in 1890. His second wife was Mary Barrett.

Rebecca Sophia Clarke (1833-1906), also known as Sophie May, was an American author of childrens fiction. Using her nieces and nephews as inspiration, she wrote realistic stories about children. She wrote 45 books between 1860 and 1903. The most popular being the Little Prudy books. She lived most of her life in her native town of Norridgewock, Maine, where she lived out her life with her sister, who was also a successful author.