“Sam is an excellent fellow,” says the Whizzer, “but I don’t deserve to have a Chinaman called my son.”
“Oh!” I says. “Is he a Chinaman? Well, I’ve read about them, but I never saw one before.”
Then I concluded to ask the Whizzer what his own name was. But just then he got up from his chair and brought the other basket to the fire.
“Do you know who Santa Claus is?” he says, talking low.
“I found that out two years ago,” says I.
“Well, get her little stockings, then,” he says.
“I thought you’d like to do this yourself,” says the Whizzer. He acted just like mother.
We took the things out of the basket. There were toy sheep and dogs, and dolls and tubs and dishes, and underneath them all kinds of candies, enough to treat a school. I felt like the Whizzer was Santa Claus. We stuffed her little stockings till they stood alone, like kegs, and tied bundles to them, and fastened them together and hung them on the mantel-piece. Bounce’d wake up and watch us, and then he’d doze off, for Bounce was fuller of turkey-bones than he ever expected to be again; and Mrar slept away, looking like a doll in the fireshine.
But all at once Bounce gave a jump and a bark. Back went the door like the wind had tore it open, and there stood uncle Moze, and aunt Ibby, and cousin Andy Sanders, and the Widow Briggs’s grown son, and two or three men behind them. They all looked scared or mad, and aunt Ibby’s face was so white that her moles all bristled.