CHAPTER X

CONCERNS SANTA CLAUS MOSTLY

At early dusk of the Friday holiday, he scampered to a hiding place underneath a house porch while Sid DuPree, his face buried in his arms, stood against a tree trunk and counted "Five hundred by five" as rapidly as he could. But as the cry of "Coming" echoed between the closely built houses, John's conscience suddenly robbed him of all the pleasure in the game of "Hide and seek." An afternoon of suitcase jobs had been frittered away, and the paper wagon was due in another fifteen minutes.

So he withdrew reluctantly to haunt the walk in front of the delicatessen store and wonder that the work upon which he had entered with such gusto was becoming so irksome.

A sharp, long-delayed touch of winter had crept into the air the night before, and set his toes to tingling as he drew his blue, knitted stocking cap further over his ears. He scampered along the petrified lawns on the paper route until the last news sheet was delivered, then blew l.u.s.tily on his black mittens to warm his numbed fingers as he started for home. There, under the cheerful influence of the glowing parlor grate, he waited lazily until the last trace of tingling had left his hands, and spread a copy of the evening paper out on the carpet before him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Christmas dreams._]

First he looked at the cartoon on the front page, and then at the grotesque drawings on the back sheet comic section. Those finished, he returned to the first page, where an account of a ghastly train wreck held him spellbound. Searching on an inner page for the rest of the narrative, he came across a department store's advertis.e.m.e.nt which banished all thoughts of mangled victims and splintered cars from his mind.

"Beginning tomorrow, Santa Claus will be in his little house in our greatly enlarged fifth-floor Toyland to greet each and all of his friends. See the animated bunnies and the blacksmith shop in the Brownie Village, and the wonderful display of toys of every description which Santa has gathered for the delight of the children." There followed enticing cuts of toys with even more alluring descriptions and, alas!

oftentimes prohibitive prices.

Thanks to the paper business, the holiday season had crept up almost unnoticed. Santa was an exploded myth, these years, but the stereotyped cut of the jovial, fat-cheeked saint at the top of the page brought John a thrill of antic.i.p.ation, nevertheless. Christmas was coming. What did he want?

After supper, he rummaged in the library until he found his mother's box of best stationery. He drew a few sheets and several envelopes from the neat container, and sat down at his father's big writing desk to begin his series of Christmas letters to certain responsive relatives. These favored ones heard from him regularly four times a year--before his birthday, before Christmas, and as soon after each of these feast days as his mother could force letters of acknowledgment from him. John dipped the pen too deeply into the inkwell, and wiped his finger tips dry on his trousers. Then he began,

"Dear Aunt Clara: I hope you are well. The weather is fine but getting cold. Christmas is coming so I thought I would write you. I want--"

He paused for reflection. Bill Silvey had been given a toy electric motor, last year. It was now in the juvenile sc.r.a.p heap, thanks to an attempt to harness the bit of machinery to the powerful lighting current in Sid's house, but it had been delight indescribable to swing the little switch and watch the armature gain momentum until it hummed like a bee. So the first of his desires ran, "Motor, electric. Batteries, too."

Last year, Bill and he had built a shaky bob for use on the park toboggan, only to have a collision with a park water hydrant, used for flooding the field, and the remains of the sleds had gone to their respective family woodpiles. So down went, "Sled, coaster, with round runners."

The descriptive bit was to eliminate any possibility of getting a high, useless girl's sled, which would go to pieces in less than no time.

As he thought of each article he wrote, "Hockey skates. My old ones are rusted. A knife. Mine's lost." And last, but not least, "Books, lots of them."

That exhausted his list of needs. There were a thousand other things which he knew he wanted if he could only think of them, but the innumerable boyish desires which had arisen since his birthday in June had fled, and, try as he would, he could recall none of them. As a last desperate resort, he scrawled a concluding "Anything else useful," and signed it, "Your loving nephew, John."

Sat.u.r.day, an errant breeze from the east veiled the clear starlight of the early evening as if by magic, and by morning had marshaled long, heavy rows of slate-hued clouds which drove over the city from the lake.

The temperature, too, rose above the freezing point and gave the only boy in the Fletcher household a chance to bank the ever-hungry furnace, and shut off all draughts. He employed his respite in a blissful perusal of the double-page advertis.e.m.e.nts in the Sunday paper.

Toys, hundreds of them! The department stores vied with each other in the profusion of their offerings. Ill.u.s.trations of "William Tell Banks--drop penny in bank and Tell shoots apple from son's head"--mechanical engines which sped around three-foot circles of track until any human engineer would become dizzy; sleds of every description from humble ones at fifty cents to long, elaborately enameled speed kings with spring-steel runners, and games in innumerable variety, made him read and reread the alluring pages until his eyes ached.

He sighed and looked up dreamily. The moisture-laden clouds from the east had borne out the newspaper forecast of "probably snow flurries,"

and he jumped to the window.

Heavy, feathery flakes were swirling earthward with the vagaries of the air currents. Here they eddied out from between the houses to disappear on the shining black macadam of the street and sidewalks, there they gave a momentary touch of white to the brown, frost-bitten lawns as a prophecy of that which was yet to come. In front of the Alfords', Silvey, Perry, and Sid, danced back and forth with shouts of laughter as they tried to catch the elusive bits of white. He would have joined them, but an ache in his stomach told that dinner was near, so he returned from his vantage point with a cry of "Mother! Mother! Mother!

It's getting Christmasier every minute!"

Nor did the Spirit of the Holidays allow his interest to lessen during the days when the advertis.e.m.e.nts lost their fascination through monotonous repet.i.tion. As he and Bill ran home at noon one day, a quartette of men with bulging, gray denim bags on their shoulders, left big yellow envelopes on each and every house porch of the street. They were rigidly impartial in their work, and John dashed up the steps of that same vacant house which the boys had held that day with the pea shooters.

"Look!" he cried, drawing the gaudy pamphlet from the manila casing.

"It's the _Toy Book_, Silvey!"

The _Toy Book_ had been issued since time immemorial by one of the down town stores, and its yearly visit made it something of an inst.i.tution among the juveniles of the street. On the cover, a red-coated, rosy-cheeked Saint Nick, with a toy-filled pack, was descending a snow-capped chimney while his reindeer cavorted in the background. On the back were rows of dainty pink, blue, and green clad dolls with flaxen ringlets and staring, china eyes--trash which interested John not at all. Why didn't they put engines and sleds and worth-while things there?

"Come on, Bill," he said suddenly. "Let's collect 'em."

They waited until the distributors were too far down the street to interfere, and sneaked up and down the house steps with careful thoroughness. As the bundles under the two boyish arms were becoming heavy, Mrs. Fletcher darted out by the lamppost in front of the house and beckoned to John vigorously. He left Bill with a show of regret, for the dozen odd copies under his arm were far less than he would have liked.

Louise sauntered home with him after school that day. As they pa.s.sed Southern Avenue, the lady's gaze rested on a muddy object in the street gutter, and John stooped to pick it up. Torn, disfigured with innumerable heel marks and wagon wheels, the battered bundle of paper was all that remained of a Christmas booklet.

"Oh!" said Louise in surprise.

"Didn't you get one?"

She shook her head. Evidently other boys at her end of the street had emulated John and Bill.

"Tells all about toys," he volunteered. "I'll bring you one with the paper, if you want."

She thanked him and dropped the ruin regretfully. Those dolls on the back cover were so enticing.

"Aren't you glad Christmas is coming?" John asked. "Gee, I wish it was day after tomorrow."

Louise nodded.

"What do you want for Christmas?" he pursued.

She didn't know. "A doll--"

"A doll!" he interrupted in disgust. What did she want with dolls? They would be of no use when she had grown up.

"Yes, a doll," said Louise decidedly. John feigned placating approval.

"And doll clothes," she went on, "and new hair ribbons and things for my dresses, and lots and lots of other presents. What do you want?"

He told her briefly. "But that isn't half," he concluded, as they loitered on the apartment steps. "I'm trying to think of the others all the time. Jiminy!" with a glance at his watch, "I'd better be going.

I've got work to do."

But there were no interviews with prospective newspaper customers that afternoon. After John had started the parlor grate for his mother, he fell under the spell of one of the wonder-books and scanned page after page of the ill.u.s.trations until Mrs. Fletcher interrupted him.

"Aren't you going to deliver your papers, son? It's a quarter of five now."

What a pest the paper route was getting to be, always demanding his attention just as he wanted to do something else. He rose to his feet and stretched both arms to take the cramps out of them, pitched the booklet into a corner of the hall, and dashed to the closet for his coat and mittens.

After the evening meal, John brought out another of his store of gaudy toy books and went into the parlor. His father, following a few moments later, looked down at the little figure on the carpet before the fire, and smiled.

"What is it, son?"

The boy raised his head, brown eyes a-dream with visions of automobiles, steam engines, and hook and ladder outfits.

"Looking at this," he explained.

Mr. Fletcher drew up the big, easy armchair which he liked so well, and lifted him into his lap. A moment later, the two heads, the old and the young, bent over the picture-laden pages.