“Not I.”  He shook his head.  “It is you.  What does a man know about things like this?  But what else does she want?  I never had any opinion of a one-piece Santa Claus.  These things would make a monk want children of his own.  How about those youngsters that anything will please? and don’t you have to have things for stockings?”

With hurried decisions, as if afraid he might not be allowed to do what he chose, Laine went up and down and in and out among the many sections into which the department was divided, and made his selections with entire disregard of appropriateness; and Claudia, keeping near, countermanded with equal firmness all that was unwise.  So warm at times did their dissensions wax that the sales-girl following would smile and point out something before unseen, hoping a mutual surrender would accept the compromise, and presently she brought up a cash register and held it toward Laine.

“Most children like these,” she said, “and as your wife doesn’t care for the mechanical toys—­”

Laine turned away.  With pitiless reality the play of it all came over him, and he walked off lest the sudden surging of his blood be heard.

“But I’m not his wife.”  Claudia’s voice was cool and even.  “He doesn’t know the children he is getting these things for, and I do.  But Channing would like this register, Mr. Laine.  And Dorothea told me she wanted a drawing-table like that one over there.  Have you bought Dorothea’s present yet?”

Laine came back.  “Only books.  Her mother gets the other things for me.  If she’d like that, get it.”

Out of his voice had gone all spirit, and Claudia, noticing, looked up.  “You’re tired, aren’t you?  I think we’d better stop.”

Laine laughed.  “Tired?  No, I’m not tired.  I’m having a great time.  Playing make-believe is a good game.  I haven’t played it lately, and I was doing it rather hard.  I wonder what that bunch of people are over there for?  A number of children seem to be among them.”

The girl waiting on them looked around.  It was Santa Claus, she explained, who was taking the names and addresses, with a list of the presents most wanted by the children, who were there to tell where they lived.  “Some of them have been here all day.  That little lame fellow was among the first to come, and Santa Claus hasn’t seen him yet.  The crowd pushes him out so, and there’s no one to lift him up high enough to be seen.  He’s held that piece of paper in his hand for hours.”

Laine looked closer.  On the outskirts of the crowd, his thin little face still eagerly trying to peer between the shifting circles, his crutches held tightly by hands too thin to grasp them properly, he saw the boy pointed out by the girl, and, without a word, he walked toward him.  As he drew nearer, the head of Santa Claus could be seen over those of the crowd, but to the child he was still invisible; and as Laine saw the pinched face he swore softly under his breath.