ks, and "Minnie and
Her Pets," and the "Elm Island" series, and the "Arabian Nights," with
colored pictures, and There were skates all curled up at the toes, and
balls of red and black leather in alternate quarters, and China mugs,
with "Love the Giver," and "For a Good Boy" in gilt letters on them.
Kind of Dutch letters they were. And there were dolls with black, shiny
hair, and red cheeks, and blue eyes, with perfectly arched eyebrows.
They had on black shoes and white stockings, with pink garters, and they
almost always toed in a little. They looked so cold in the window with
nothing but a "shimmy" on, and fairly ached to be dressed, and nursed,
and sung to. The little girls outside the window felt an emptiness in
the hollow of their left arms as they gazed. There was one big doll in
the middle all dressed up. It had real hair that you could comb, and it
was wax. Pure wax! Yes, sir. And it could open and shut its eyes, and if
you squeezed its stomach it would cry, of course, not like a real baby,
but more like one of those ducks that stand on a sort of bellows thing.
Though they all "chose" that doll and hoped for miracles, none of them
really expected to find it in her stocking sixteen days later. (They
kept count of the days.) Maybe Bell Brown might get it; her pa bought
her lots of things. She had parlor skates and a parrot, only her ma
wouldn't let her skate in the parlor, it tore up the carpet so, and the
parrot bit her finger like anything.

The little boys kicked their copper-toed boots to keep warm and
quarreled about which one chose the train of cars first, and then began
to quarrel over an army of soldiers.

"I choose them!"

"A-aw! You choosed the ingine and the cars."

"Dung care. I choose everything in this whole window."

"A-aw! That ain't fair!"

In the midst of the wrangle somebody finds out that Johnny Pym has
a piece of red glass, and then they begin fighting for turns looking
through it at the snow and the court-house. But not for long. They
fall to bragging about what they are going to get for Christmas. Eddie
Cameron was pretty sure he 'd get a spy-glass. He asked his pa, and his
pa said "Mebby. He'd see about it." Then, just in time, they looked up
and saw old man Nicholson coming along with his shawl pinned around him.
They ran to the other side of the street because he stops little boys,
and pats them on the head, and asks them if they have found the Savior.
It makes some boys cry when