he better for it, or
even the wiser?"

_Mrs. Fountain_: "What put that question into your head? Christmas, I
suppose; and that's another reason for wishing there was no such
thing. If I had my way, there wouldn't be."

_Jim_: "Oh, mother!"

_Susy_: "No Christmas?"

_Mrs. Fountain_: "Well, not for disobedient children who get out of
bed and come in, spoiling everything. If you don't go straight back,
it will be the last time, Santa Claus or no Santa Claus."

_Jim_: "And if we go right back?"

_Susy_: "And promise not to come in any more?"

_Mrs. Fountain_: "Well, we'll see how you keep your promise. If you
don't, that's the end of Christmas in _this_ house."

_Jim_: "It's a bargain, then! Come on, Susy!"

_Susy_: "And we do it for you, mother. And for you, father. We just
came in for fun, anyway."

_Jim_: "We just came for a surprise."

_Mrs. Fountain_, kissing them both: "Well, then, if it was only for
fun, we'll excuse you this time. Run along, now, that's good children.
_Clarence!_"

X

MRS. FOUNTAIN, FOUNTAIN

_Fountain_: "Well?" He looks up at her from where he has dropped into
a chair beside the table strewn with opened and unopened gifts at the
foot of the Christmas tree.

_Mrs. Fountain_: "What _are_ you mooning about?"

_Fountain_: "What if it was all a fake? Those thousands and hundreds
of thousands of churches that pierce the clouds with their spires;
those millions of ministers and missionaries; those billions of
worshipers, sitting and standing and kneeling, and singing and
praying; those nuns and monks, and brotherhoods and sisterhoods, with
their ideals of self-denial, and their duties to the sick and poor;
those martyrs that died for the one true faith, and those other
martyrs of the other true faiths whom the one true faith tortured and
killed; those masses and sermons and ceremonies, what if they were all
a delusion, a mistake, a misunderstanding? What if it were all as
unlike the real thing, if there is any real thing, as this pagan
Christmas of ours is as unlike a Christian Christmas?"

_Mrs. Fountain_, springing up: "I knew it! I knew that it was this
Christmas giving that was making you morbid again. Can't you shake it
off and be cheerful--like me? I'm sure I have to bear twice as much of
it as you have. I've been shopping the whole week, and you've been
just this one afternoon." She begins to catch her breath, and fai