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A
reversible
Santa Claus
By
Meredith Nicholson
With illustrations by
Florence H. Minard
Boston and new York
Houghton Mifflin company
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1917
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY MEREDITH NICHOLSON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published October 1917
By Meredeth Nicholson
A reversible Santa
Claus. Illustrated.
The proof of the pudding.
Illustrated.
The Poet. Illustrated.
Otherwise Phyllis. With
frontispiece in color.
The provincial American and
other papers.
A Hoosier chronicle.
With illustrations.
The siege of the seven suitors.
With illustrations.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
A Reversible Santa Claus
[Illustration: “Do you mind telling me just why you read that note?” (Page 78)]
Illustrations
“Do you mind telling me just why you read that note?” Frontispiece
The hopper grinned, proud of
his success,
which Mary and humpy
viewed with grudging admiration
44
THE FAINT CLICK OF A LATCH MARKED THE PROWLER’S PROXIMITY TO A HEDGE 116
THE THREE MEN GATHERED ROUND THEM, STARING DULLY 150
From Drawings by F. Minard
* * * * *
[Illustration]
A Reversible Santa Claus
I
Mr. William B. Aikins, alias “Softy” Hubbard, alias Billy The Hopper, paused for breath behind a hedge that bordered a quiet lane and peered out into the highway at a roadster whose tail light advertised its presence to his felonious gaze. It was Christmas Eve, and after a day of unseasonable warmth a slow, drizzling rain was whimsically changing to snow.
The Hopper was blowing from two hours’ hard travel over rough country. He had stumbled through woodlands, flattened himself in fence corners to avoid the eyes of curious motorists speeding homeward or flying about distributing Christmas gifts, and he was now bent upon committing himself to an inter-urban trolley line that would afford comfortable transportation for the remainder of his journey. Twenty miles, he estimated, still lay between him and his domicile.
