oughtfully: "Plenty of girls are that way, now. But
if you are ashamed of my being tall--" Flashingly, and with starting
tears.

_Ashley_: "Ashamed! I can always look up to you, you can always stoop
to me!" He stretches his arms toward her.

_Miss Ramsey_, recoiling bewildered: "Wait! We haven't got to that
yet."

_Ashley_: "Oh, Isobel--dearest--darling! We've got past it! We're on
the home stretch, now."

XIX

THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

A MORALITY

I

MR. AND MRS. CLARENCE FOUNTAIN

_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 me