The dinner was an oven dinner, already prepared for cooking and easy to watch while they did something else. The last packages were tied up in tissue paper of the newer gay sort, Mrs. Lee helping different ones as this one or that one must not see. Amy Lou was allowed to help Doris and Betty with packages for their father and mother. Dick as usual had disappeared, not to turn up till mealtime. But Mrs. Lee knew where he was, safely working on an aeroplane in the heated third floor attic of a boy friend. It would probably revolutionize aeronautics, Mr. Lee declared; but Dick good-humoredly took the teasing.
Then the little tree was brought in and it was decided to trim it then and there, instead or waiting till after dinner. Amy Lou was much excited when all the trimmings were brought out. But she sighed as she recognized some favorite decorations saved from the old days in the village. “And I used to think that Santa Claus brought them!” she said with some regret.
“Don’t you believe in Santa Claus now?” asked Doris.
“No. Do you?”
“Mother says Santa Claus is the ‘Spirit of Christmas,’” returned Doris.
“Yes. But it would have been so nice if he could have been just himself and really, you know, come down the chimneys.”
“Oh, well, we’ll keep on pretending, and hang up our stockings just the same.”
“Yes,” brightly Amy Lou answered. “It’s just as true as it ever was, I suppose.”
Mrs. Lee and Betty, who were listening, turned aside to hide their smiles at Amy Lou’s philosophy. “Poor little soul!” whispered Betty. “But she will be happy when she sees all we have for her!”
They need not have pitied Amy Lou at all, for her sturdy little soul had met her first disillusionment at school, at the hands of some other little girls, before whom she would not have shown any deep disappointment over finding Santa a myth. She thought it all over and accepted it; for she could recall a number of facts that seemed to bear out the truth!