It was no disappointment to Mrs. Gratz that Santa Claus had not come to her house.  She had not expected him.  She did not even believe in him.

“Yes,” she had told Mrs. Flannery, next door, as she handed a little parcel of toys over the fence for the little Flannerys, “once I believes in such a Santy Claus myself, yet.  I make me purty good times then.  But now I’m too old.  I don’t believe in such things.  But I make purty good times, still.  I have a good little house, and money in the bank—­”

Suddenly Mrs. Gratz closed her mouth and opened her eyes.  She smelled imaginary bacon frying.  She felt real hunger.  She slid out of bed and began to dress herself, and she had just buttoned her red flannel petticoat around her wide waist when she heard a silence, and paused.  For a full minute she stood, trying to realize what the silence meant.  The English sparrows were chirping as usual and making enough noise, but through their bickerings the silence still annoyed Mrs. Gratz, and then, quite suddenly again, she knew.  Her chickens were not making their usual morning racket.

“I bet you I know what it is, sure,” she said, and continued to dress as placidly as before.  When she went down she found that she had won the bet.

A week before two chickens had been stolen from her coop, and she had had a strong padlock put on the chicken house.  Now the padlock was pried open, and the chicken house was empty, and nine hens and a rooster were gone.  Mrs. Gratz stooped and entered the low gate and surveyed the vacant chicken yard placidly.  If they were gone, they were gone.

“Such a Santy Claus!” she said good-naturedly.  “I don’t like such a Santy Claus—­taking away and not bringing!  Purty soon he don’t have such a good name any more if he keeps up doing like this.  People likes the bringing Santy Claus.  I guess they don’t think much of the taking-away business.  He gets a bad name quick enough if he does this much.”

She turned to bend her head to look into the vacant chicken house and stood still.  She put out her foot and touched something her eyes had lighted upon, and the thing moved.  It was a purse of worn, black leather, soaked by the drizzle, but still holding the bend that comes to men’s purses when worn long in a back trouser pocket.  One end of the purse was muddy and pressed deep into the soft soil where a heel had tramped on it.  Mrs. Gratz bent and picked it up.

There was nine hundred dollars in bills in the purse.  Mrs. Gratz stood still while she counted the bills, and as she counted her hands began to tremble, and her knees shook, and she sank on the door-sill of the chicken house and laughed until the tears rolled down her face.  Occasionally she stopped to wipe her eyes, and the flood of laughter gradually died away into ripples of intermittent giggles that were like sobs after sorrow.  Mrs. Gratz had no great sense of humour, but she could see the fun of finding nine hundred dollars.  It was enough to make her laugh, so she laughed.