as eldest, said, "Lord, we ask Thy blessing on this home, and all within it, and on this food, which Thou has provided. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior, Amen." And the amens echoed around the table.

It is too bad I had not arrived in Florida until just a few days before Christmas, for I would have liked to have known Armando well enough to have been more of a member of the family circle.

My taxi cruised down narrow Ybor City side-streets and stopped before a little frame house, bright lemon-yellow, with gingerbread trim in white. Floppy, windbeaten poinsettias hung over the picket fence.

Armando was at the door to meet me, dashing and suave as ever. He introduced me to Rafael, tiny, dainty, like some quick little brown-eyed bird, in a special Cuban way. The pine walls of the parlor smelled strongly from new and glistening varnish. There were signs that many guests had already come and gone. Who they were, or what had been the ceremonies I never learned, not feeling free to ask. With quiet pride and a sense of some solemnity they led me to the créche I had come to see. It filled one whole end of the room. The elaboration of tiny figures. all Rafael's handiwork, their placement-the Wisemen on their camels, overhead a pendant silver star that turned slightly in the air, the desert sandscape, a boxy little Bethlehem, centering on a Manger, thatched with shreds from the palmetto standing out by the floppy poinsettias, softly lighted by vigil candles which flickered in banks at the side-all of this, and the needle-point tapestry on the wall behind, with its Madonna and other religious symbolism, was somehow impressive, despite its naiveté and the impish little incongruities Rafael had been unable to refrain from inserting.

He was dressed that day in long tight trousers of vivid green satin, soft ballet shoes, and a white, gold-embroidered bolero jacket. He spoke no English at all. but flashed a shy smile as with a formal bow he offered me a tiny glass of white wine and a plate of austere little sugar cakes cut into odd designs.

The ritual now completed. I saw that it was time for me to go. As they stood arm-in-arm in the doorway Rafael flashed me another quick little smile, looking up at Armando and saying, with quaintly painstaking effort, “My hawsbond .

It is too bad there is not time to tell more of the Christmas Eve party given by the widowed mother of a handsome young Midwesterner I knew.

The wind and snow whistled across the flat Illinois corn land around the tall Victorian windows, with their crimson damask draperies, all edged with little gold tassels, that swooped down to the floor. It was the town's principal mansion. built where once had stood the loghouse Hank's great-grandfather and mother had put up when they had pushed westward from York State.

Those sturdy pioneers could hardly have foreseen this florid parlor, in all its gilt flamboyance, nor a holiday celebration such as this. It is quite likely that neither did the little Illinois town realize how many of its crew-cut sons were toasting their everlasting love for each other in champagne that evening, or how many of its daughters were dancing with each other in silently dreaming abstractedness, two by two, uttering never a word.

The old Creighton house was quite a place, and Helen quite a hostess. No one had believed, after those years in New York and Paris, she would ever come back, but she did. As a matter of fact her exact role between the time Hank's father died abroad and her return home with their son, by then ten years old, was never quite explained. But by the time Hank was running around with the high school and college crowd people had forgotten all about Paris anyway.

one

8