“Where’s Sate?” asked Santa Claus.
“Sate can’t pull a sled,” said Tommy. “He’s too little. Besides, he ain’t an Eskimo dog—I mean he isn’t,” he corrected quickly, seeing Santa Claus look at him. “But he’s awful bad after cats.” Just then, to his horror, he saw Sate in the show-case with his eye on a big, white cat. He could hardly keep from crying out; but he called to him very quietly, “Come here, come here, Sate. Don’t you hear me, sir? Come here.”
He was just about to go up and seize him when Santa Claus said: “He’s all right. He’s just getting acquainted.”
“My! how much he talks like Peake,” thought Tommy. “I wonder if he is his uncle.”
Just then Sate began to nose among some little brownish-gray dogs, and so, Tommy called, “Here—come here—come along,” and out walked not only Sate, but six other dogs, and stood in a line just as though they were hitched to a sled, the six finest Eskimo dogs Tommy had ever seen.
“Aren’t they beauties!” said Santa Claus. “I never saw a finer lot; big-boned, broad-backed, husky fellows. They’ll scale an ice-mountain like my reindeer. And if they ever get in sight of a bear!” He made a gesture as much as to say, “Let him look out.”
“What are their names?” said Tommy, who always wanted to know every one’s name.
“Buster and Muster and Fluster, and Joe and Rob and Mac.”
“Ain’t one of them named Towser?” asked Tommy. “I thought one was always named Towser.”
“No, that’s a book-name,” said Santa Claus so scornfully that Tommy was sorry he had asked him, especially as he added, “Isn’t, not ain’t.”