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“I was FINISHED,” retorted the doll “I did not begin life as a baby!” very scornfully.

“Pooh!” said Baby. “We improve as we get older.”

“I hope so, indeed,” answered the doll. “There is plenty of room for improvement.” And she walked away in great state.

S.C. looked at Baby and then shook his head. “I shall not have to take very much care of you,” he said, absent-mindedly. “You are able to take pretty good care of yourself.”

“I hope I am,” said Baby, tossing her head.

S.C. gave his head another shake.

“Don’t take too good care of yourself,” he said. “That’s a bad thing, too.”

He showed them the rest of his wonders, and then went with them to the door to bid them good-bye.

“I am sure we are very much obliged to you, Mr. Claus,” said Jem, gratefully. “I shall never again think you are not true, sir”.

S.C. patted her shoulder quite affectionately.

“That’s right,” he said. “Believe in things just as long as you can, my dear. Good-bye until Christmas Eve. I shall see you then, if you don’t see me.”

He must have taken quite a fancy to Jem, for he stood looking at her, and seemed very reluctant to close the door, and even after he had closed it, and they had turned away, he opened it a little again to call to her.

“Believe in things as long as you can, my dear.”

“How kind he is!” exclaimed Jem full of pleasure.

Baby shrugged her shoulders.

“Well enough in his way,” she said, “but rather inclined to prose and be old-fashioned.”

Jem looked at her, feeling rather frightened, but she said nothing.

Baby showed very little interest in the next room she took them to.

“I don’t care about this place,” she said, as she threw open the door. “It has nothing but old things in it. It is the Nobody-knows-where room.”

She had scarcely finished speaking before Jem made a little spring and picked something up.

“Here’s my old strawberry pincushion!” she cried out. And then, with another jump and another dash at two or three other things, “And here’s my old fairy-book! And here’s my little locket I lost last summer! How did they come here?”

“They went Nobody-knows-where,” said Baby.

“And this is it.”

“But cannot I have them again?” asked Jem.

“No,” answered Baby. “Things that go to Nobody-knows-where stay there.”

“Oh!” sighed Jem, “I am so sorry.”

“They are only old things,” said Baby.

“But I like my old things,” said Jem. “I love them. And there is mother’s needle case. I wish I might take that. Her dead little sister gave it to her, and she was so sorry when she lost it.”

“People ought to take better care of their things,” remarked Baby.

Jem would have liked to stay in this room and wander about among her old favorites for a long time, but Baby was in a hurry.

“You’d better come away,” she said. “Suppose I was to have to fall awake and leave you?”

The next place they went into was the most wonderful of all.

“This is the Wish room,” said Baby. “Your wishes come here–yours and mother’s, and Aunt Hetty’s and father’s and mine. When did you wish that?”

Each article was placed under a glass shade, and labelled with the words and name of the wishers. Some of them were beautiful, indeed; but the tall shade Baby nodded at when she asked her question was truly alarming, and caused Jem a dreadful pang of remorse. Underneath it sat Aunt Hetty, with her mouth stitched up so that she could not speak a word, and beneath the stand was a label bearing these words, in large black letters–

“I wish Aunt Hetty’s mouth was sewed up, Jem.”

“Oh, dear!” cried Jem, in great distress. “How it must have hurt her! How unkind of me to say it! I wish I hadn’t wished it. I wish it would come undone.”

She had no sooner said it than her wish was gratified. The old label disappeared and a new one showed itself, and there sat Aunt Hetty, looking herself again, and even smiling.