him home half an
hour early to inquire about dinner. He was most starved to death.
Wouldn't mother hurry it up? Mother couldn't--expert cookery was not to
be hurried. He'd better go out again for a while.

Instead, he carried the morning paper into the parlor and lounged in the
big easy chair. The minutes slipped past as he devoured news items, the
fiction supplement, and miraculous patent medicine announcements with
amusing impartiality. He turned to an inner page and found a huge
advertisement staring him in the face. At the top, floated a streamer
with the legend, "You furnish the girl, we furnish the house!" Further
down the page were furniture bargains innumerable, for sale on a plan of
"One dollar down, seventy-five cents per week," and in the center,
between heavy rules, was the announcement, "Four rooms, furnished
complete, only ninety-five dollars!"

"John," called his father from the dining-room. "Come to dinner!"

He threw the paper from him in sudden exultation, and danced in to the
dining-table. His eye took in each detail of the evenly browned national
bird, the long, slender stalks of celery in the dainty china dish, the
deep-red cranberry jelly, the appetizing roasted potatoes, and the
golden squash, and he smiled happily.

"Jiminy, that looks good, Mother!" He plumped into his seat. "Hurry up,
dad, I'm most ready to eat the house!"

But through his brain, as he attacked a third helping of turkey and its
accessories, there still ran the exultant echo of "Four rooms, furnished
complete, only ninety-five dollars!"

Thus did the day become a real Thanksgiving to him.

CHAPTER X

CONCERNS SANTA CLAUS MOSTLY

At early dusk of the Friday holiday, he scampered to a hiding place
underneath a house porch while Sid DuPree, his face buried in his arms,
stood against a tree trunk and counted "Five hundred by five" as rapidly
as he could. But as the cry of "Coming" echoed between the closely built
houses, John's conscience suddenly robbed him of all the pleasure in the
game of "Hide and seek." An afternoon of suitcase jobs had been
frittered away, and the paper wagon was due in another fifteen minutes.
So he withdrew reluctantly to haunt the walk in front of the
delicatessen store and wonder that the work upon which he had entered
with such gusto was becoming so irksome.

A sharp, long-delayed touch of winter had crept into the air the night
before, and set his toes to tingling as he drew his blu