_Mrs. Clarence Fountain_, backing into the room, and closing the door
noiselessly before looking round: "Oh, you poor thing! I can see that
you are dead, at the first glance. I'm dead myself, for that matter."
She is speaking to her husband, who clings with one hand to the
chimney-piece, and supports his back with the other; from this hand a
little girl's long stocking lumpily dangles; Mrs. Fountain, turning
round, observes it. "Not finished yet? But I don't wonder! I wonder
you've even begun. Well, now, _I_ will take hold with you." In token
of the aid she is going to give, Mrs. Fountain sinks into a chair and
rolls a distracted eye over the littered and tumbled room. "It's worse
than I thought it would be. You ought to have smoothed the papers out
and laid them in a pile as fast as you unwrapped the things; that is
the way I always do; and wound the strings up and put them one side.
Then you wouldn't have had to wade round in them. I suppose I oughtn't
to have left it to you, but if I had let _you_ put the children to bed
you know you'd have told them stories and kept them all night over
their prayers. And as it was each of them wanted to put in a special
Christmas clause; I know what kind of Christmas clause _I_ should have
put in if I'd been frank! I'm not sure it's right to keep up the
deception. One comfort, the oldest ones don't believe in it any more
than we do. Dear! I did think at one time this afternoon I should have
to be brought home in an ambulance; it would have been a convenience,
with all the packages. I simply marvel at their delivery wagons
getting them here."
_Fountain_, coming to the table, where she sits, and taking up one of
the toys with which it is strewn: "They haven't all of them."
_Mrs. Fountain_: "What do you mean by all of them?"
_Fountain_: "I mean 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, of all
nights of the year. You know how sorry I always am for what you have
to go through down there, and I suppose it's worse, as you say, at
this season than any other time of year. It's the terrible
concentration of everything just before Christmas that makes it so
killing. I really don't know which of the places was the worst; the
big department stores or the separate places for jewelry and toys and
books and stationery and antiques; they were all alike, and all
maddening. And the rain outside, and everybody coming in reeking;
though I don't believe that sunshine would have been any better;
there'd have been more of them. I declare, it made my heart ache for
those poor creatures behind the counters, and I don't know whether I
suffered most for them when they kept up a ghastly cheerfulness in
their attention or were simply insulting in their indifference. I know
they must be all dead by this time. 'Going up?' 'Going down?'
'Ca-ish!' 'Here, boy!' I believe it will ring in my ears as long as I
live. And the whiz of those overhead wire things, and having to wait
ages for your change, and then drag your tatters out of the stores
into the streets! If I hadn't had you with me at the last I should
certainly have dropped."
_Fountain_: "Yes, and what had become of your good resolutions about
doing all your Christmas shopping in July?"
_Mrs. Fountain_: "_My_ good resolutions? Really, Clarence, sometimes
if it were not cruelty to animals I should like to hit you. _My_ good--
You _know_ that you suggested that plan, and it wasn't even original
with you. The papers have been talking about it for years; but when
you brought it up as such a new idea, I fell in with it to please you--"
_Fountain_: "Now, look out, Lucy!"
_Mrs. Fountain_: "Yes, to please you, and to help you forget the
Christmas worry, just as I've been doing to-night. You never spare
_me_."
_Fountain_: "Stick to the record. Why didn't you do your Christmas
shopping in July?"
_Mrs. Fountain_: "Why didn't I? Did you expect me to do my Christmas
shopping down at Sculpin Beach, where I spent the whole time from the
middle of June till the middle of September? Why didn't _you_ do the
Christmas shopping in July? You had the stores under your nose here
from the beginning till the end of summer, with nothing in the world
to hinder you, and not a chick or a child to look after."
_Fountain_: "Oh, I like that. You think I was leading a life of
complete leisure here, with the thermometer among the nineties
nine-tenths of the time?"
_Mrs. Fountain_: "I only know you were bragging in all your letters
about your bath and your club, and the folly of any one going away
from the cool, comfortable town in the summer. I suppose you'll say
that was to keep me from feeling badly at leaving you. When it was
only for the children's sake! I will let you take them the next time."
_Fountain_: "While you look after my office? And you think the stores
are full of Christmas things in July, I suppose."
_Mrs. Fountain_: "I never thought so; and now I hope you see the folly
of that idea. No, Clarence. We must be logical in everything. You
can't get rid of Christmas shopping at Christmas-time."
_Fountain_, shouting wrathfully: "Then I say get rid of Christmas!"