“Oh,” gasped Mary Louise. “Then, I suppose you’ve given me more than my share?”
“I’m afraid so,” answered Santa.
“Don’t the poor children have anything?”
“Sometimes I’ve given to the wrong people,” came the evasive answer. “You see, I have a great deal to do. I ought to have a lot of people to help me. How can one person do it all! Sometimes I don’t find the right children and I use up the things that grow in the Santa Claus Land and then I have nothing left after the long, long lists are made up for the very particular little rich children.”
“Oh, dear!”
“Yes, that’s why. Do you want to give up some of your things this year so that they can go to the poor children?”
Mary Louise reflected. “Which?” she asked. “Do you mean the doll or the pony or the automobile or the new doll house?”
“You have about a hundred dolls, haven’t you?”
“No,” corrected Mary Louise, “only just seventy-six, counting the little bits of china ones in the doll house. Without these there are about forty—but only twenty are big ones.”
“Well,” chuckled Santa Claus, “that seems to me a good deal too many. You could give up the doll, I think. Suppose that you were a little girl who had never had any doll ever!”