"W-where's Santa Claus?" he had stammered, not grasping the situation at first. A sharp, gasping breath of surprise came from his mother as his father broke into chagrined laughter.
"I guess you've found him, son," had been the reply. And that was the end of Santa Claus.
A few moments later, a long, empty freight train rattled cityward unnoticed, as John's regular breathing told off, faithfully as any timepiece, the fast lessening minutes which stood between him and Christmas Day.
He wakened with a start. The late, gray dawn of winter was peering in between the window shades and the sashes, casting hesitant shadows about the room. He rubbed his eyes sleepily for a moment, then, remembering, sprang to his feet and opened the blinds.
A dun railroad embankment lay before him, with lighter streaks which told where the shining rails lay. Over on the boulevards, the arc lights twinkled sleepily, their long night vigil nearly finished. The barren tree tops which skirted the park, made a lace work against the frosty, winter's sky, and here and there, chance rays of light threw piles of rubbish in the big lot into unlovely relief. The same kindly, grimy, disorderly neighborhood of the day before and the year before, and yet the spirit of Christmas cast a halo over the whole and beautified it in the boy's eyes.
"It's Christmas, it's Christmas," he repeated over and over again as he drew on his clothes.
Then for a tiptoed scamper down the stairs for a view of the surprises which were awaiting him in the hall below.
A scent of pine, reminiscent of the sweet-scented Michigan forests, made him sniff eagerly. There towered the tree on the spot where its predecessors had stood in front of the fireplace, so tall that the tip barely missed the ceiling. Gleaming spheres caught the light from the stair window in brilliant contrast with the dark, needled depths. Cornucopias, candy laden, weighted the boughs. Sugar chains made symmetrical festoons of beads as they looped down from the upper branches, and innumerable candles stood stiffly in their holders, waiting for the taper in his father's hand to bring them to life.
Underneath the tree lay his presents. Not so many, perhaps, oh, sons of richer parents, as you may have had, but John's eyes grew wider and wider with delight as each object greeted him.
There lay the sled, long, low and scarlet, not as ornate as the expensive "Black Beauty," for which he had longed, but quite as serviceable. At the terminal of a railway system which encircled the tree base, stood a queer, foreign mechanical engine, with an abbreviated passenger car, and on a corner of the sheet which was to protect the carpet from candle drip, was a dry battery and diminutive electric motor. Then there were books—Optics, The Rover Boys, and others of their ilk—which would furnish recreation for months to come, regardless of his rapid reading.