"You say that one night of every winter you drive round the earth in your sleigh, carrying presents. Every summer don't you disguise yourself and drive over the same track in an old cart and gather them up again? Many a summer day I have watched you without your knowing it!"
This time you could have believed that if evergreens are sensitive, the fir now stood with its boughs lowered a little pensively and very still.
"I am sorry! The question violates the same mischief-making rule, and by my word I am bound not to answer it. But it is as easy to give a promise to two as to one; next year I hope you will receive a little book called Santa Claus with the Wounded and the Lost. And I wish you joy in that story. Now then!"
"Father told me not to ask any questions while I was over here: to wait and ask him."
The little theatre of make-believe almost crumbled to its foundations beneath that one touch of reality! The great personage of the drama lost control of his resources for a moment. Then the little miracle-play was successfully resumed:—
"Well, then, I won't have to answer any questions for you!"
"But I can tell you what I was going to ask! I was going to ask you if you are married. And if you are, why you travel always without your wife. I was wondering whether you didn't like your wife!"
The answer came like a blinding flash—like a flash meant to extinguish another flash:—
"A book, a book! Another book! There will have to be another book! Look out for one next Christmas, dropped down the chimney especially for you: and I hope it won't fall into the fire or into the soot—Santa Claus and his Wife. Now then—time flies!"
During the infantile years when the heir of the house had been a believer in the figure beside the Tree, there had always been one point he jealously weighed: whether children of white complexion were not entitled to a larger share of Christmas bounty than those of red or yellow or brown or black faces; and in particular whether among all white children those native to the United States ought not to receive highest consideration. The old question now rang out: