hill to a
little stream bordered with willows and maples and with a tract of
woodland beyond. This lot was known as the "cow-pasture," and the
woodland was known as the "wood-lot," while yet beyond was a field
which Peake, the farmer, always spoke of as the "big field." On the
other side of the cow-lot, where the stables stood, was a road which
ran down the hill and across the stream and beyond the woods, and on
the other side of this road near the bottom of the hill was the little
house in which lived Johnny Stout and his mother. They had no fields
or lots, but only a backyard in which there were chickens and pigeons
and, in the Fall, just before Tommy's visit to Santa Claus, two white
goats, named "Billy" and "Carry," which Johnny had broken and used to
drive to a little rough wagon which he had made himself out of a box
set on four wheels.

Tommy had no brothers or sisters, and the only cousins he had in town
were little girls younger than himself, to whom he had to "give up"
when any one was around, so he was not as fond of them as he should
have been; and Sate, his dog, a terrier of temper and humours, was
about his only real playmate. He used to play by himself and he was
often very lonely, though he had more toys than any other boy he knew.
In fact, he had so many toys that he was unable to enjoy any one of
them very long, and after having them a little while he usually broke
them up. He used to enjoy the stories which his father read to him out
of Mother Goose and the fairy-books and the tales he told him of
travellers and hunters who had shot lions and bears and Bengal tigers;
but when he grew tired of this, he often wished he could go out in the
street and play all the time like Johnny Stout and some of the other
boys. Several times he slipped out into the road beyond the cow-lot to
try to get a chance to play with Johnny who was only about a year
older than he, but could do so many things which Tommy could not do
that he quite envied him. It was one of the proudest days of his life
when Johnny let him come over and drive his goats, and when he went
home that evening, although he was quite cold, he was so full of
having driven them that he could not think or talk of anything else,
and when Christmas drew near, one of the first things he wrote to ask
Santa Claus for, when he put the letter in the library fire, was a
wagon and a pair of goats. Even his father's statement that he feared
he was too small yet for