“Well, we’ll ask Johanna and Barney to-night. Now let’s hunt them up and find out when supper is going to be ready. I’m as hungry as a bear.”
But before the plans were unfolded to Barney and Johanna that evening Mr. Peter told a story. He offered it himself as something he had picked up once upon a time, he could not remember just where. He said it was not the kind of a story he would ever make up in the wide world, but he thought it just the kind David might make up.
And here it is as the painter told it two nights before Christmas:
It was four o’clock on Christmas morning and Santa Claus was finishing his rounds just as the milkman was beginning his. Santa had been over to Holland and back again where he had filled millions of little Dutch shoes that stood outside of windows and doors; he had climbed millions of chimneys and filled millions of American stockings, not to mention the billions and trillions of Christmas trees that he had trimmed and the nurseries he had visited with toys too large for stockings. And now, just as the clock struck four, he had filled his last stocking and was crawling out of the last chimney onto the roof where the eight reindeer were pawing the snow and wagging their stumps of tails, eager to be off.
Santa Claus heaved a sigh of relief as he shook the creases out of the great magic bag that was always large enough to hold all the toys that were put into it. The bag was quite empty now, not even a gum-drop or a penny whistle was left; and Santa heaved another sigh as he tucked it under the seat of his sleigh and clambered wearily in.
“By the two horns on yonder pale-looking moon,” quoth he, “I’m a worn-out old saint and I am glad Christmas is over. Why, I passed my prime some thousand years ago and any other saint would have taken to his niche in heaven long before this.” And he heaved a third sigh.
As he took up the reins and whistled to his team he looked anything but the jolly old saint he was supposed to be; and if you had searched him from top to toe, inside and out, you couldn’t have found a chuckle or a laugh anywhere about him.
Away went the eight reindeer through the air, higher and higher, till houses looked like match-boxes and lakes like bowls of water; and it took them just ten minutes and ten seconds to carry Santa safely home to the North Pole. Most generally he sings a rollicking song on his homeward journey, a song about boys and toys and drums and plums, just to show how happy he is. But this year he spent the whole time grumbling all the grumbly thoughts he could think of.
“It’s a pretty state of affairs when a man can’t have a vacation in nearly five hundred years. Christmas every three hundred and sixty-five days and have to work three hundred and sixty-four of them to get things ready. What’s more, every year the work grows harder. Have to keep up with all the scientific inventions and all the new discoveries. Who’d have thought a hundred years ago that I should have to be building toy aeroplanes and electric motors? And the girls want dolls’ houses with lights and running water! I declare I’m fairly sick of the sight of a sled or a top, and dolls and drums make me shiver. I’d like to do nothing for a whole year, I tell you—nothing! It’s a pretty how d’ y’ do if the world can’t get along for one year without a Christmas. What’s to prevent my taking a vacation like any other man? Who’s to prevent me?”
The reindeer had stopped outside of Santa’s own home and he threw the reins down with a jerk while he tried his best to look very gruff and surly.