"Aren't you glad Christmas is coming?" John asked. "Gee, I wish it was day after tomorrow."
"What do you want for Christmas?" he pursued.
"A doll!" he interrupted in disgust. What did she want with dolls? They would be of no use when she had grown up.
"Yes, a doll," said Louise decidedly. John feigned placating approval. "And doll clothes," she went on, "and new hair ribbons and things for my dresses, and lots and lots of other presents. What do you want?"
He told her briefly. "But that isn't half," he concluded, as they loitered on the apartment steps. "I'm trying to think of the others all the time. Jiminy!" with a glance at his watch, "I'd better be going. I've got work to do."
But there were no interviews with prospective newspaper customers that afternoon. After John had started the parlor grate for his mother, he fell under the spell of one of the wonder-books and scanned page after page of the illustrations until Mrs. Fletcher interrupted him.
"Aren't you going to deliver your papers, son? It's a quarter of five now."
What a pest the paper route was getting to be, always demanding his attention just as he wanted to do something else. He rose to his feet and stretched both arms to take the cramps out of them, pitched the booklet into a corner of the hall, and dashed to the closet for his coat and mittens.
After the evening meal, John brought out another of his store of gaudy toy books and went into the parlor. His father, following a few moments later, looked down at the little figure on the carpet before the fire, and smiled.
The boy raised his head, brown eyes a-dream with visions of automobiles, steam engines, and hook and ladder outfits.
Mr. Fletcher drew up the big, easy armchair which he liked so well, and lifted him into his lap. A moment later, the two heads, the old and the young, bent over the picture-laden pages.
"Look, daddy." John pointed to a locomotive with pedals and a seated cab for a youthful engineer. "I saw one, once. All red and shiny, with a black smokestack. And the bell really rings."
"But don't you think that's too much money for a toy?"
The boy nodded reluctantly. "Still, it's such lots of fun to just _wish_ for things, even though you know you can't have them."