104 TROTTYS WEDDING TOUR.

till every separate hair of his huge beard seemed to stand
on end.

“What! don’t you have any fire up there, sir?” asked
Ruby.

* Sat on a snow chair all last evening, and slept under one
blanket of ice and a frost bedquilt; caught the worst rheu-
matism I’ve had this season,” said the Man in the Moon,
sighing.

“QO, how dreadful! and you don’t mean to say you saw my
fire clear down here, — really ?”’

The old gentleman nodded again.

Ruby looked at the fire, then up through the window at the
moon. “TI don’t see how you could see so far, to save your
life! Would n’t you like to come up and get warm, sir?”

The old gentleman had been seized with such a shivering
fit just then, that Ruby thought he would shiver himself to
pieces; which would not have been at all convenient, as she
should not know what to do with the broken bits. She felt
relieved, however, when he smiled the roundest of smiles out
of his round mouth, and seated himself in the rocking-chair
in front of the hearth, apparently with the greatest satis-
faction.

“You— you are—really, you are very kind,’ began her
visitor, rubbing his hands. ‘I am zof a thin man,” he pro-
ceeded, apparently giving himself no trouble about the want
of connection between his sentences; ‘ never was but once,
and that was when I lived on putty and dew-drops for two