Beginning with Christmas Eve, there was a party every night for Betty, and as wind and weather count for nothing where merry young people are concerned, Betty prepared to go, in spite of the biting cold, and a knife-like wind that came howling down from Labrador. Uncle Cesar was to take her to the parties, in the little, old-fashioned rockaway, drawn by the one horse which was all the stable of Holly Lodge could boast. The homeliness of her equipage did not in the least disconcert Betty.

“Because,” as Betty said to herself, “everybody knows I am Betty Beverley of Rosehill, and the Rosehill Beverleys can do as they please about carriages and clothes, and a blessed good thing it is, as the family is down on its luck at present.”

Betty had a variety of euphemisms to disguise the unpleasant facts of life. Poverty was being down on one’s luck; simple clothes were a joke; and shabbiness, a mere romantic incident, for such was the glorious philosophy of pretty Betty.

There were, however, no sighs or regrets for Betty that Christmas Eve, as she looked with shining eyes into her mirror. Her white gown, made by her own clever fingers, fitted to perfection, and revealed all the delicate loveliness of her white neck and her slender arms. Around her throat was her great-grandmother’s amethyst necklace, and her simple bodice was draped with her great-grandmother’s lace bertha. Her rich hair, with its soft tendrils curling upon her neck, was adorned with a wreath of ivy leaves, and tiny moss rosebuds from the rosebush in the window of the sitting-room. This little wreath gave Betty the look of a woodland nymph. Aunt Tulip, who acted as lady’s maid, during the intervals of her duty as cook, housemaid, and what not, was lost in admiration, and suggested that Betty would “cert’n’y ketch a beau.” This simple flattery delighted Betty, especially as all the time she was dressing her mind was fixed upon the charms of Lieutenant John Hope Fortescue of the United States Army.

When Betty was quite dressed, and had given herself a final survey in the glass, Aunt Tulip went down to see if the rockaway was hitched up with old Whitey. Betty, left alone, blew out the candles, and, drawing the curtains, looked out of her window once more at Rosehill, a mile across the open fields. Yes, the house was lighted up cheerfully—it was Betty’s pet grievance that the place was unoccupied for such long intervals. In some way, after that visit from Jack Fortescue, Betty was more reconciled to Mr. Fortescue’s owning Rosehill. She could imagine how jolly it must be there with half a dozen young officers, and if they were all as charming as Lieutenant John Hope Fortescue—— Betty blushed at the remembrance of her descent from the top of the table into Fortescue’s arms.

While Betty was chasing these fancies, like white butterflies in the sun, she noticed a small black figure far down the lane. It was coming toward Holly Lodge, tramping with short steps through the crust of snow. As the object drew nearer, Betty’s keen eyes discovered that it was a small boy—a very small boy. Betty wondered why so small a child should be sent out in the winter night. When he came within the circle of red light from the front door, Betty saw that the boy was black and very ragged.

By this, it was time for Betty to go downstairs and show herself to the adoring eyes of her grandfather. Colonel Beverley, sitting in his great chair by the fire, surveyed Betty with profound satisfaction as she marched solemnly up and down, and pirouetted before him to show her new white satin slippers, with glittering buckles. From the wreath of roses down to these little slippers, the Colonel found Betty altogether adorable, and told her so.

While Betty was giving stern orders to the Colonel to go to bed promptly at ten o’clock, and not to smoke more than two pipes, Aunt Tulip came into the sitting-room from the nearby kitchen.

“Miss Betty,” proclaimed Aunt Tulip, with the air of announcing a catastrophe, “what you think done happen now? Them good-for-nothin’ niggers that come here from I dunno where, and brought a little boy wid ’em, done gone away—they tooken the boat to-day at the landin’. And this heah boy as ain’t got no father nor no mother, and say he doan’s believe he never had none, got skeered at the steamboat, and turn ’roun’ and run away heah! What we gwine ter do ’bout him?”

“Bring him in,” cried Betty, suddenly remembering the little boy she had seen creeping through the snow.

Aunt Tulip disappeared and returned with a small colored boy, very black, very ragged, almost shoeless, but with beady eyes cheerful as Betty’s own, and a row of shining teeth which he showed freely. The solemn book of life evidently had no terrors for him.

As he saw Betty in her party gown, with the wreath on her delicate head, a rapturous look came into the eyes of the waif, his grin broadened, he seemed to have a vision of Paradise.

“Why,” cried Betty, “he’s as black as the kettle! What’s your name, little boy?”

“Solomon ’Zekiel Timons,” replied the waif, now fairly laughing with joy amid his rags.

“Where did you come from?” asked the Colonel.

Then Solomon ’Zekiel Timons, prompted by Aunt Tulip, told his story. He lived with some colored people who were always on the move. Lately, they had been living not far from Holly Lodge, and the waif knew Miss Betty by sight, and thought she was “the beautifulest lady ever I see.” He did not know whether the colored people were related to him or not, nor where he was born, nor anything except his name. He had not been ill-treated, but he did not always have enough to eat, and he knew his “clo’es was mighty raggety.” The colored people were going somewhere by the steamboat, and he had gone that day to the wharf with them, their belongings packed on an ox-cart. But on reaching the wharf, and seeing the steamboat, Solomon Ezekiel’s heart had fainted within him. The grin left his little black face, and his round beady eyes grew terrified when he described in jerky sentences the horrors of the steamboat.

“There wuz two gre’t wheels,” he gasped, opening his arms wide, “as big as dis heah house—an’ they keeps on a-churnin’ and a-churnin’! An’ a awful thing on top de boat goin’ up an’ down like dis”—here Solomon ’Zekiel gave a very realistic imitation of the propeller of a side-wheel steamer in motion.

“An’ den”—his frightened voice sank to a whisper—“’fo’ it reach de wharf, de steamboat hollered—it jes’ keep on hollerin’ an’ screechin’ an’ de smoke jes’ po’ outen a chimley, an’ de steamboat everlastin’ hollerin’. An’ I wuz so skeered, I jes’ run offen de wharf an’ come heah.”

Solomon ’Zekiel coolly ignored the fact that the steamboat landing was five miles away, and that he had trudged through the biting cold and the snow, in his poor rags and broken shoes, all that distance—and he was a very little fellow indeed.

“Have you had anything to eat since breakfast?” asked Betty, with melting eyes.

“Naw, ’m,” promptly answered Solomon ’Zekiel.

“And this is Christmas Eve!” cried Betty. “Now Aunt Tulip will take you into the kitchen and give you a good supper, Solomon ’Zekiel—oh, I can’t stand all that name—you are as black as the kettle, so we’ll just call you Kettle for the present.”

His new name and the prospect of supper seemed to delight the little negro beyond words.

By that time Uncle Cesar had driven the rockaway up to the door, and the Colonel was handing Betty in and muffling her up, as one muffles up his chief and only treasure. Aunt Tulip brought out Uncle Cesar’s fiddle-case with his fiddle, for Uncle Cesar was an essential person in that neighborhood, on account of his expert fiddling. Old Whitey, a big, handsome horse, was dancing about in a manner so sprightly, in spite of his thirteen years, that Betty felt certain he would make a good appearance at the Christmas hunt.