“No, don’t!” said the man impulsively.  “Don’t do it!  It wouldn’t be no good.  I’ve got to see the chickens on the hoof, as I might say.”

“On the hoofs?” said Mrs. Gratz.  “Such poultry don’t have no hoofs.”

“Runnin’ around,” explained the visitor.  “Runnin’ around in the coop.  I can tell if a chicken has got any disease that my trade wouldn’t like, if I see it runnin’ around in the coop.  There’s a lot in the way a chicken runs.  In the way it h’ists up its leg, for instance.  That’s what the trade calls ‘on the hoof.’  So I’ll just go out and have a look around the coop—­”

“For twenty cents a pound anybody could let buyers see their chickens on the hoof, I guess,” said Mrs. Gratz.

“Now, that’s the way to talk!” exclaimed the man.

“Only but I ain’t got any such chickens,” said Mrs. Gratz.  “So it ain’t of use to look how they walk.  So good-bye.”

“Now, say—­” said the man, but Mrs. Gratz closed the door in his face.

“I guess such a Santy Claus came back yet,” said Mrs. Gratz when she went into the room where Mrs. Flannery was sitting.  “But it ain’t any use.  He don’t leave many more such presents.”

“Th’ impidince of him!” exclaimed Mrs. Flannery.

“For nine hundred dollars I could be impudent, too,” said Mrs. Gratz calmly.  “But I don’t like such nowadays Santy Clauses, coming back all the time.  Once, when I believes in Santy Clauses, they don’t come back so much.”

The thin Santa Claus had not gone far.  He had crossed the street and stood gazing at Mrs. Gratz’s door, and now he crossed again and knocked.  Mrs. Gratz arose and went to the door.

“I believe he comes back once yet,” she said to Mrs. Flannery, and opened the door.  He had, indeed, come back.

“Now see here,” he said briskly, “ain’t your name Mrs. Gratz?  Well, I knowed it was, and I knowed you was a widow lady, and that’s why I said I was a chicken buyer.  I didn’t want to frighten you.  But I ain’t no chicken buyer.”

“No?” asked Mrs. Gratz.

“No, I ain’t.  I just said that so I could get a look at your chicken yard.  I’ve got to see it.  What I am is chicken-house inspector for the Ninth Ward, and the Mayor sent me up here to inspect your chicken house, and I’ve got to do it before I go away, or lose my job.  I’ll go right out now, and it’ll be all over in a minute—­”

“I guess it ain’t some use,” said Mrs. Gratz.  “I guess I don’t keep any more chickens.  They go too easy.  Yesterday I have plenty, and to-day I haven’t any.”

“That’s it!” said the thin Santa Claus.  “That’s just it!  That’s the way toober-chlosis bugs act—­quick like that.  They’re a bad epidemic—­toober-chlosis bugs is.  You see how they act—­yesterday you have chickens, and last night the toober-chlosis bugs gets at them, and this morning they’ve eat them all up.”

“Goodness!” exclaimed Mrs. Gratz without emotion.  “With the fedders and the bones, too?”