“About a dollar, Arthur thought. I never paid so much for a Christmas present in my life. And I’m not sure yet that I can get one. But if I do sell two dollars worth of candy, I can buy something perfectly beautiful for both father and mother.”
“Oh, Rosie,” Maida asked breathlessly, “do you mean that your mother’s come back?”
Rosie’s face changed. “Don’t you think I’d tell you that the first thing? No, she hasn’t come back and they don’t say anything about her coming back. But if she ever does come, I guess I’m going to have her Christmas present all ready for her.”
Maida patted her hand. “She’s coming back,” she said; “I know it.”
Rosie sighed. “You come down Main Street the night before Christmas. Dicky and I are going to buy our Christmas presents then and we can show you where to get the little razor.”
“I’d love to.” Maida beamed. And indeed, it seemed the most fascinating prospect in the world to her. Every night after she went to bed, she thought it over. She was really going to buy Christmas presents without any grown-up person about to interfere. It was rapture.
The night before the fair, the children worked even harder than the night before Halloween, for there were so many things to display. It was evident that the stock would overflow windows and shelves and show cases.
“We’ll bring the long kitchen table in for your things, Arthur,” Maida decided after a perplexed consideration of the subject. “Dicky’s and Rosie’s things ought to go on the shelves and into the show cases where nobody can handle them.”
They tugged the table into the shop and covered it with a beautiful old blue counter-pane.
“That’s fine!” Arthur approved, unpacking his handicraft from the bushel-baskets in which he brought them.