re you staring at
with that paper? You needn't hope to divert my mind by--"

_Fountain_, giving her the paper in which the robe came: "Seems to be
for _Mrs._ Clarence Fountain."

_Mrs. Fountain_, snatching it from him: "What! It is, it is! Oh, poor
dear Lilly! How can you ever forgive me? She saw me looking at it
to-day at Shumaker's, and it must have come into her head in despair
what else to get me. But it was a perfect inspiration--for it was just
what I was longing for. Why"--laughing hysterically while she holds up
the robe, and turns it this way and that--"I might have seen at a
glance that it wasn't a man's, with this lace on and this silk hood,
and"--she hurries into it, and pulls it forward, looking down at
either side--"it's just the right length, and if it was made for me it
couldn't fit me better. What a joke I _shall_ have with Lilly, when I
tell her about it. I sha'n't spare myself a bit!"

_Fountain_: "Then I hope you'll spare me. I have some little delicacy
of feeling, and I don't like the notion of a lady's giving me a
bath-robe. It's--intimate. I don't know where you picked up your girl
friends."

_Mrs. Fountain_, capering about joyfully: "Oh, how funny you are,
darling! But go on. I don't mind it, now. And you may be glad you've
got off so easily. Only now if there are any more bath-robes--" A
timid rap is heard at the door. "Come in, Maggie!" The door is slowly
set ajar, then flung suddenly wide open, and Jim and Susy in their
night-gowns rush dancing and exulting in.

IX

JIM, SUSY, THE FOUNTAINS

_Susy_: "We've caught you, we've caught you."

_Jim_: "I just bet it was you, and now I've won, haven't I, mother?"

_Susy_: "And I've won, too, haven't I, father?" Arrested at sight of
her father in the hooded bath-gown: "He does look like Santa Claus,
doesn't he, Jimmy? But the real Santa Claus would be all over snow,
and a long, white beard. You can't fool _us_!"

_Jim_: "You can't fool _us_! We know you, we know you! And mother
dressed up, too! There isn't any Mrs. Santa Claus, and that proves
it!"

_Mrs. Fountain_, severely: "Dreadful little things! Who said you might
come here? Go straight back to bed, this minute, or-- _Will_ you send
them back, Clarence, and not stand staring so? What are you thinking of?"

_Fountain_, dreamily: "Nothing. Merely wondering what we shall do when
we've got rid of our superstitions. Shall we be t