an half." He takes up a mechanical locomotive and
stuffs it into the stocking he holds.

_Mrs. Fountain_, staying his hand: "What are you doing? Putting
Jimmy's engine into Susy's stocking! She'll be perfectly insulted when
she finds it, for she'll know you weren't paying the least attention,
and you can't blame Santa Claus for it with _her_. If that's what
you've been doing with the other stockings-- But there _aren't_ any
others. Don't tell me you've just begun! Well, I could simply cry."

_Fountain_, dropping into the chair on the other side of the table,
under the shelter of a tall Christmas tree standing on it: "Do you
call unwrapping a whole car-load of truck and getting it sorted, just
beginning? I've been slaving here from the dawn of time, and I had to
have _some_ leisure for the ghosts of my own Christmases when I was
little. I didn't have to wade round in the wrappings of my presents in
those days. But it isn't the sad memories that take it out of you;
it's the happy ones. I've never had a ghastlier half-hour than I've
just spent in the humiliating multiplicity of these gifts. All the old
birthdays and wedding-days and Fourth of Julys and home-comings and
children's christenings I've ever had came trooping back. There
oughtn't to be any gay anniversaries; they should be forbidden by law.
If I could only have recalled a few dangerous fevers and funerals!"

_Mrs. Fountain_: "Clarence! Don't say such a thing; you'll be punished
for it. I know how you suffer from those gloomy feelings, and I pity
you. You ought to bear up against them. If _I_ gave way! You must
think about something cheerful in the future when the happiness of the
past afflicts you, and set one against the other; life isn't _all_ a
vale of tears. You must keep your mind fixed on the work before you. I
don't believe it's the number of the packages here that's broken you
down. It's the shopping that's worn you out; I'm sure I'm a mere
thread. And I had been at it from immediately after breakfast; and I
lunched in one of the stores with ten thousand suburbans who had come
pouring in with the first of their unnatural trains: I did hope I
should have some of the places to myself; but they were every one
jammed. And you came up from your office about four, perfectly fresh."

_Fountain_: "Fresh! Yes, quite dewy from a day's fight with the beasts
at Ephesus on the eve of Christmas week."

_Mrs. Fountain_: "Well, don't be cynical, Clarence, on this, o