“I am sorry,” she said, “but I have no money. I don’t know why I was so stupid as to come away without any.”
“Money!” cried the antiquarian. “Did I ask you money for this book? Forgive me! It is a habit I have fallen into for which I am very sorry. Money is the least important thing in the world. Only the worthless things are to be had for money. Those things which are beyond price—thank God!—are to be had for the asking. Take it, child! Tomorrow is Christmas day. I should be grieved indeed if there were no Alice for you on Christmas day—as grieved as if there were no Santa Claus.”
There was something so unearthly about this strange old man that Alice wondered if she were not yet in Wonderland. With a sobriety quite out of keeping with her usually merry disposition, she thanked him and went forth into the snow-clad streets.
The plethora of Santa Clauses spending the holiday week-end in the city bewildered Alice, and now, after a long afternoon in the hurly-burly of metropolitan life, she was becoming tired. The number of Santa Clauses resident upon earth appalled her, and the extravagance of their promises, while pleasant enough, almost frightened her. Without any questions asked—even her address, which, had it been requested, would have taxed her wits rather severely—they accepted her commissions and guaranteed immediate delivery. The final excursion through the great department stores had been adventurous and diverting, but now—toward nightfall—was becoming monotonous, what with its profusion of Kris Kringles and street hawkers, and its babble of eleventh hour shoppers. It was like witnessing a really thrilling movie drama for the second time, thought Alice, who had initiated herself into the delights of moving-picture entertainment for the first time that day, and wondered at its remarkable duplication. By five o’clock the little girl knew just what each and every Santa Claus was going to say to her, and what was coming next, and that one—at least—of the three remaining Santas would want to kiss her. She had been kissed almost to death, as it was, and that was beginning to bore her, too.
It occurred to Alice, who was a shrewd little girl and not one of your bleating lambs, that Santa Claus, despite his profusion—or because of it—might be something of an old fraud, after all. She was entirely certain that not one of him resembled the jolly old saint of her mental picture. The cottony fellow at Wanacooper’s was not a bit red and chubby, nor very jovial either; and she hoped that the others—at the Emporium, and the Bargain Store, and the Bon Marché—would agree more sympathetically, as to corpulence, with the merry and very dear old gentleman of her favorite poem.
She repeated the first lines, softly, under her breath:
’Twas the night before Christmas,
And all through the house
Not a creature was stirring,