He ran up the path to the house. The scuffled ragged garden lay naked and hard. At the windows, he saw with surprise, were holly wreaths tied with broad red ribbon. On the porch, some battered toys. He opened the door.
A fluttering rosy light filled the room. By the fireplace the puppies--how big they were!--were sitting with Mrs. Spaniel. Joyous uproar greeted him: they flung themselves upon him. Shouts of “Daddy! Daddy!” filled the house, while the young Spaniels stood by more bashfully.
Good Mrs. Spaniel was gratefully moved. Her moist eyes shone brightly in the firelight.
“I knew you'd be home for Christmas, Mr. Gissing,” she said. “I've been telling them so all afternoon. Now, children, be still a moment and let me speak. I've been telling you your Daddy would be home in time for a Christmas Eve story. I've got to go and fix that plum pudding.”
In her excitement a clear bubble dripped from the tip of her tongue. She caught it in her apron, and hurried to the kitchen.
The children insisted on leading him all through the house to show how nicely they had taken care of things. And in every room Gissing saw the marks of riot and wreckage. There were tooth-scars on all furniture-legs; the fringes of rugs were chewed off; there were prints of mud, ink, paints, and whatnot, on curtains and wallpapers and coverlets. Poor Mrs. Spaniel kept running anxiously from the kitchen to renew apologies.
“I DID try to keep 'em in order,” she said, “but they seem to bash things when you're not looking.”
But Gissing was too happy to stew about such trifles. When the inspection was over, they all sat down by the chimney and he piled on more logs.
“Well, chilluns,” he said, “what do you want Santa Claus to bring you for Christmas?”
“A little train with hammers!” exclaimed Yelpers
“A little train with hammers?” asked Gissing. “What does he mean?”
“Oh,” said Groups and Bunks, with condescending pity, “he means a typewriter. He calls it a little train because it moves on a track when you hit it.”
A painful apprehension seized him, and he went hastily to his study. He had not noticed the typewriter, which Mrs. Spaniel had--too late--put out of reach. Half the keys were sticking upright, jammed together and tangled in a whirl of ribbon; the carriage was strangely dislocated. And yet even this mischance, which would once have horrified him, left him unperturbed. It's my own fault, he thought: I shouldn't have left it where they could play with it. Perhaps God thinks the same when His creatures make a mess of the dangerous laws of life.