She smiled, and said something about a
doll. Fuzzy didn't understand that; he remembered nothing about a doll.
A footman brought in two small glasses of sparkling wine on a stamped
sterling-silver waiter. The Lady took one. The other was handed to
Fuzzy.
As his fingers closed on the slender glass stem his disabilities dropped
from him for one brief moment. He straightened himself; and Time, so
disobliging to most of us, turned backward to accommodate Fuzzy.
Forgotten Christmas ghosts whiter than the false beards of the most
opulent Kris Kringle were rising in the fumes of Grogan's whisky. What
had the Millionaire's mansion to do with a long, wainscoted Virginia
hall, where the riders were grouped around a silver punch-bowl, drinking
the ancient toast of the House? And why should the patter of the cab
horses' hoofs on the frozen street be in any wise related to the sound
of the saddled hunters stamping under the shelter of the west veranda?
And what had Fuzzy to do with any of it?
The Lady, looking at him over her glass, let her condescending smile
fade away like a false dawn. Her eyes turned serious. She saw something
beneath the rags and Scotch terrier whiskers that she did not
understand.
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