“Ah, pshaw!” They backed away, bristling with distrust.
“That’s the oath, fellows. Yu’ may as well make your minds up—for I have it to do!”
“Dare you to! Ah!”
“And after dinner it’s the Opera-house, to see ‘The Children of Captain Grant’!”
They screamed shrilly at him, keeping off beyond the curb.
“I can’t waste my time on such, smart boys,” said Mr. McLean, rising to his full height from the window-sill. “I am going somewhere to find boys that ain’t so turruble quick stampeded by a roast turkey.”
He began to lounge slowly away, serious as he had been throughout, and they, stopping their noise short, swiftly picked up their boxes and followed him. Some change in the current of electricity that fed the window disturbed its sparkling light, so that Santa Claus, with his arms stretched out behind the departing cow-puncher, seemed to be smiling more broadly from the midst of his flickering brilliance.
IV
Turkey and Responsibility
