A little figure was coming up the path, nodding and blowing—Her curls were afloat and her little face glowed in the light from the door.
“I ’m coming,” she panted heavily, “I ’ve got here.”
“I should think you had.” His voice was stern. But he had gathered her in his arms, holding her close. She struggled a little and he set her down. “I ’m wet,” she announced—“I’m most wet fru, I guess.”
He found some old underclothing of John’s and took off the wet things, holding them up, one by one, to the light and looking at her reproachfully. She had come apparently in her nightdress, with the addition of an extra shirt, one stocking, one legging, a pair of overshoes and her little fur coat and cap.
“I could n’t find my Fings,” she explained, “not all of my fings—in the dark.”
“What did you come for?” asked Simeon severely.
Her rosy happiness precluded sentiment—and kindness.
She glanced at the glowing fire and then at his face. She looked down at her pink toes, peeping from below John’s drawers—The drawers wrinkled grotesquely on the fat legs and she tried to hold them up a little as she approached him, humbly.... Simeon was angry—She could see it from the tail of her eye, as she drew nearer with downcast head. “I wanted to see Santa Claus,” she said. She had come very close now and she put out a fat hand, resting it on his knee.
He bent a little toward her. “You should have waited till tomorrow, child. Don’t you know I shall have to take you back—”
She lifted a stricken face.