"Then I'll play the pig to-night! I've played it the wrong way often enough. Why can't we be sensible? I've got a spending jag on, and I've never been Christmas shopping before. Something is happening to my backbone, something that used to happen in the days when I hung up my stocking. Please be good and let me have a little Christmas!"
Claudia's forehead wrinkled and for a moment she hesitated, then again her eyes sought his doubtfully. "I don't know whether I ought to. You are very kind, but—"
"But nothing. I'm merely very selfish. Those things are all right. Come on and let's go in the toy department. The doll is the most important of all, and don't dolls have carriages or something? Here, this way to the elevator."
To the joy of it, the surrender to inherent instinct, to the child that is dormant in all, Claudia and Laine yielded, went in and out among the sea of toys, and critically doll after doll was examined, compared, laid down and taken up, and finally decided upon; and as Laine gave the address he looked at Claudia for final confirmation and approval.
"You're sure it's pink? Her mother said pink, you know."
"Pink! It's the pinkest pink I ever saw. It is much too grand. But, oh, those patient little eyes! I didn't think she'd be here this Christmas. You will make her so happy, Mr. Laine."
"Not I." He shook his head. "It is you. What does a man know about things like this? But what else does she want? I never had any opinion of a one-piece Santa Claus. These things would make a monk want children of his own. How about those youngsters that anything will please? and don't you have to have things for stockings?"
With hurried decisions, as if afraid he might not be allowed to do what he chose, Laine went up and down and in and out among the many sections into which the department was divided, and made his selections with entire disregard of appropriateness; and Claudia, keeping near, countermanded with equal firmness all that was unwise. So warm at times did their dissensions wax that the sales-girl following would smile and point out something before unseen, hoping a mutual surrender would accept the compromise, and presently she brought up a cash register and held it toward Laine.
"Most children like these," she said, "and as your wife doesn't care for the mechanical toys—"
Laine turned away. With pitiless reality the play of it all came over him, and he walked off lest the sudden surging of his blood be heard.