Laine took the sheets of paper torn from a blank-book and looked at them under an electric light.  “This Syro-Phoenician writing needs what it can’t get out here,” he said, after a half-minute’s pause.  “A cipher requires a code, and a code means sitting down.  Aren’t you cold?  You are.  Come over here and we’ll have some tea and work it out together.”  And before protest could be made they were in a hotel across the street and at a table on which a shaded light permitted a closer examination of the penciled scrawl which went for writing.  Slowly he read aloud: 

“DERE Miss Claudia,—­The chillern is near bout set me crazy sence I tole ’em I was agoin’ to ask you to do me some favors which is to buy for me some New York krismus presents.  I have sole the pig and I am a-puttin’ in this six dollars and sixteen cents, I would have sent seven dollars even but the baby had the colic so bad I had to git some more of that pain-killer which I give the hoss onct, and Johnnie lost the change comin’ home from the store.  The baby is well, but the hoss ain’t.  The followin’ is what I would like to have.  Ifen you can’t git the things, git what you can.  I have confidence in your jedgment.

“2 pare sox and a maresharm pipe for the old man.  Don’t spend more than fifty cents on him.  He drunk up the whiskey your ma give me for the mincemeat for Thanksgivin’ and I had to lock him up in the garret.  He’d like the pipe yaller.

“1 A blew skarf pin—­Johnnie.

“2 A bracelet.  Bras will do if you can’t git gold.  Minnie is the meekest and don’t look for much but she wants a bracelet awful bad.

“3 A box of paper and envellopes for Maizzie—­Maizzie’s got a bow.  He lives in the next county.  I don’t let the chillern say nothin’.  I’m ’fraid they’ll scare the ducks.

“4 A wax doll in pink tarlton for Rosy.  She won’t be here next krismus.  The doctor done tole me, and my hart it have been hurtin’ so ever since that I have to hide every now and then so as to git my breath good.  Sometimes I can’t help chokin’, I can’t.  She seen a doll in pink tarlton onct and the other night I heard her talkin’ up the chimney and she was askin’ Santa Claus to bring her one if he could spare it.  Ifen you can’t git all the things with the pig money, please’m git the doll, and in pink, please’m, and let the others go.”

Laine took up his cup of tea and drank it slowly.  “Part of this is hard to make out,” he said, after a moment.  “I can’t see it very well.”

“All of it is hard.”  Claudia put a piece of cracker in her mouth.  “But it’s a wonder she can write at all.  The boys are as trifling as their father, and she does the work of five people.  Is that all?”

Laine began again.  “Becky say she don’t want nothin’ but a pare of silk stockings.  She’s crazy, but she seen the summer girls with ’em and I don’t reckon it will do no harm if we ain’t pracktical at krismus.  It do seem like krismus ain’t for prackticals. 40 cents is her share.