FullReads

The candle set in the window made a fine show from the street. They all went out to look at it. Coming in, they sat around the stove together.

Pussy drew her chair very close to Ostrander. She laid her hand on his knee. It was a little hand with short, fat fingers. In spite of lean living, Pussy had managed to keep fat. She was adorably dimpled.

Ostrander, looking down at the fat little hand, began: “Once upon a time–there was a doll–a Fluffy Ruffles doll, in a rosy gown–“

“Oh!” Pussy beat the small, fat hand upon his knee.

“And pink slippers–and it traveled miles to find some one to–love it. And at last it said to St. Nicholas, ‘Oh, dear St. Nick, I want to find a little girl who hasn’t any doll–‘”

“Like me?” said Pussy.

“Like you–“

“And St. Nicholas said, ‘Will you keep your pink slippers clean and your nice pink frock clean if I give you to a poor little girl?’ and the Fluffy Ruffles doll said ‘Yes,’ so St. Nicholas looked and looked for a poor little girl, and at last he came to a window–with a red candle–“

The fat little hand was still and Pussy was breathing hard.

“With a red candle, and there was a little girl who–didn’t have any doll–“

Pussy threw herself on him bodily. “Is it true? Is it true?” she shrieked.

Milly, a little flushed and excited by the story, tried to say sedately: “Of course it isn’t true. It couldn’t be–true–“

“Let’s wish it to be true–” Ostrander said, “all three of us, with our eyes shut–“

With this ceremony completed the little girls were advised gravely to go to bed. “If Fluffy Ruffles and old St. Nick come by and find you up they won’t stop–“

“Won’t they?”

“Of course not. You must shut the door and creep under your quilt and cover up your head, and if you hear a noise you mustn’t look.”

Milly eyed him dubiously. “I think it is a shame to tell Pussy such–“

“Corking things?” He lifted her chin with a light finger and looked into her innocent eyes. “Oh, Milly, Milly, once upon a time there was a Princess, with eyes like yours, and she lived in a garden where black swans swam on a pool, and she wore pale-green gowns and there were poppies in the garden. And a Fool loved her. But she shut him out of the garden. He wasn’t good enough even to kneel at her feet, so she shut him out and married a Prince with a white feather in his cap.”

He had a chuckling sense of Whiting as the white-feathered Prince. But Milly’s eyes were clouded. “I don’t like to think that she shut the poor Fool out of the garden.”

For a moment he cupped her troubled face in his two hands. “You dear kiddie.” Then as he turned away he found his own eyes wet.

As he started up-stairs Pussy peeped out at him.

“Wouldn’t it be–corking–to see a Fluffy Ruffles doll–a-walking up the street?”

In a beautiful box up-stairs the Fluffy Ruffles doll stared at him. She was as lovely as a dream, and as expensive as they make ’em. There was another doll in blue, also as expensive, also as lovely. Ostrander could see Milly with the blue doll matching her eyes.

There were toys, too, for the baby. And there was a bunch of violets. And boxes of candy. And books. And there were things to eat. Besides the fruits a great cake, and a basket of marmalades and jellies and gold-sealed bottles and meat pastes in china jars, and imported things in glass, and biscuits in tins.

Ostrander, after some consideration, opened the tin of biscuits and, munching, he wrote a note. Having no paper, he tore a wrapper from one of the boxes. He had the stub of a pencil, and the result was a scrawl.

“MY DEAR WHITING:

“It was I who borrowed your car–and who ran away with your junk. I am putting my address at the head of this, so that if you want it back you can come and get it. But perhaps you won’t want it back.