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black-red carnations that he loved. One of these she pinned on her lapel, smiling at her own reflection as she did so. Perhaps it was a little naughty of her to have copied his shirt without asking his permission. But after all she had the suit; why not the shirt, too? Charles liked women to look absolutely perfect. How amused and pleased he would be when he saw her. Perhaps even a little flattered. She touched the narrow bow tie lightly, then took the second carnation and walked back to the lobby. There he was, waiting by the window. She called a bellboy and handed him the carnation and a dollar bill, and pointed to Charles, and whispered for a minute.
    Crossing the busy lobby, the bellboy, who was very serious about his work, repeated to himself what he had been instructed to do and say. “First I say, ‘Is this the gentleman in the pink-and-white striped shirt?’ Then I give him the flower. Then I say, ‘The lady in the pink-and-white striped shirt awaits your pleasure, sir.’” He held the carnation very carefully, fearful that the stem would snap.
    Watching the boy approach Charles, Leona laughed excitedly. Dear Charles, she thought. I just can’t wait to see his face when he turns around.

The Joker

    W aifs, Isobel Bailey called her Christmas Day guests. This year she had three coming, three waifs—a woman, an elderly man, and a young man—respectable people, well brought up, gentle-looking, neatly dressed, to all appearances the same as everybody else, but lost just the same. She had a private list of such people, not written down, and she drew on it every year as the holiday season descended. Her list of waifs did not grow shorter. Indeed, it seemed to lengthen as the years went by, and she was still young, only thirty-one. What makes a waif, she thought (most often as winter came on, always at Christmas); what begins it? When do people get that fatal separate look? Are waifs born?
    Once she had thought that it was their lack of poise that marked them—because who ever saw a poised waif? You see them defiant, stiff, rude, silent, but aren’t they always bewildered? Still, bewilderment was not a state reserved for waifs only. Neither was it, she decided, a matter of having no money, though money seemed to have a great deal to do with it. Sometimes you could actually see people change into waifs, right before your eyes. Girls suddenly became old maids, or at least they developed an incurably single look. Cheerful, bustling women became dazed widows. Men lost their grip and became unsure-looking. It wasn’t any one thing that made a waif. Isobel was sure of that. It wasn’t being crippled, or being in disgrace, or even not being married. It was a shameful thing to be a waif, but it was also mysterious. There was no accounting for it or defining it, and over and over again she was drawn back to her original idea—that waifs were simply people who had been squeezed off the train because there was no room for them. They had lost their tickets. Some of them never had owned a ticket. Perhaps their parents had failed to equip them with a ticket. Poor things, they were stranded. During ordinary days of the year, they could hide their plight. But at Christmas, when the train drew up for that hour of recollection and revelation, how the waifs stood out, burning in their solitude. Every Christmas Day (said Isobel to herself, smiling whimsically) was a station on the journey of life. There on the windy platform the waifs gathered in shame, to look in at the fortunate ones in the warm, lighted train. Not all of them stared in, she knew; some looked away. She, Isobel, looked them all over and decided which ones to invite into her own lighted carriage. She liked to think that she occupied a first-class carriage—their red brick house in Herbert’s Retreat, solid, charming, waxed and polished, well heated, filled with flowers, stocked with glass and silver and clean