Past liquor saloons ablaze with light and hung, alas! with holly and mistletoe; past the little Mission Church at the corner, where he lingered an instant to catch the notes of a glad Christmas carol; away from the wretched and squalid quarter of the city he marched, halting only when he reached a toy-shop, where there were multitudes of talking dolls and barking dogs and mewing cats and bleating sheep; where people tumbled over each other in their eagerness to buy, and blew into all the toy horns and jingled all the toy pianos and laughed from the pure joy of Christmastide, like God’s own little children.
It was a good half hour again before Old Claus dismissed at his own door the boy who had helped him bring home his bundles from that blessed toy-shop. The boy went off whistling, too, with a bright new silver dollar in his pocket.
It took the old man three trips to get his purchases down that secret stairway. I don’t know how he ever got the sled through anyway; nor the big doll with eyes that winked upside down, nor the sheep, nearly life-size, which baa-ed loudly in the passage; and the tricycle was the worst of all; but he did it and landed them safely in the old fireplace, which surely never contained such precious fuel before. Why, the very smell of the toys, a delicious painty, gluey, varnishy, woolly, sawdusty smell, was enough to set you wild with delight. It brought to Old Claus some dim remembrance of his childhood, and made him pause to wipe away a tear with his shaggy sleeve. For all this time he was in fur coat and cap, with snow lying thick upon them.
Now came the trying moment. Could he open that long-disused door without waking the child, who now was evidently sleeping soundly?
Dear old door—I believe it knew, as well as you do, what was wanted of it. Never a squeak it gave, as Claus, with infinite pains, drew back the rusty bolt and softly opened it.
He stepped inside the room, shading the lamp with his hand. It was a very small room indeed, with great holes in the bare plastering, and a broken pane of glass through which the keen wind was blowing. The room was even colder than the fireplace.
In one corner was a small bed, and in it lay a little girl of perhaps six years, her tangled hair scattered over the bundle of ragged clothes—evidently her own poor little gown—that served for a pillow; the dingy counterpane drawn tightly up around her neck to keep out the bitter cold. There was a broken chair and wooden table in the room besides; nothing else.
From the back of the chair, which was propped against the wall close by the bed, hung one small stocking; so small that it seemed better fitted for a doll than a living human child; only no self-respecting doll would have worn a stocking so ragged.
