"Well," he said, "I hate to do it. But I'll be billblowed if I want to think of paying for a third or so of this town's Christmas presents and carrying 'em right through the Winter. I done that last year, and Fourth of July I had all I could do to keep from wishing most of the crowd Merry Christmas, 'count of their still owing me. I'm a merchant and a citizen, but I ain't no patent adjustable Christmas tree." "Me neither," Simeon said. "Last year it was _me_ give a silk cloak and a Five Dollar umbrella and a fur bore and a bushel of knick-knicks to the folks in this town. My name wa'n't on the cards, but it's me that's paid for 'em--_up_ to now. I'm sick of it. The storekeepers of this town may make a good thing out of Christmas, but they'd ought to get some of the credit instead of giving it all, by Josh." "What you going to do?" inquired Ebenezer, dryly. "Well, of course last year was an exceptional year," said Abel, "owing--" He hesitated to say "owing to the failure of the Ebenezer Rule Factory Company," and so stammered with the utmost delicacy, and skipped a measure. "And we thought," Simeon finished, "that if the factory wasn't going to open up this Winter, we'd work things so's to have little or no Christmas in town this year--being so much of the present giving falls on us to carry on our books." "It ain't only the factory wages, of course," Abel interposed, "it's the folks's savings being et up in--" "--the failure," he would have added, but skipped a mere beat instead. "--and we want to try to give 'em a chance to pay us up for last Christmas before they come on to themselves with another celebration," he added reasonably. Ebenezer Rule laughed--a descending scale of laughter that seemed to have no organs wherewith to function in the open, and so never got beyond the gutturals. "How you going to fix it?" he inquired again. "Why," said Simeon, "everybody in town's talking that they ain't going to give anybody anything for Christmas. Some means it and some don't. Some'll do it and some'll back out. But the churches has decided to omit Christmas exercises altogether this year. Some thought to have speaking pieces, but everybody concluded if they had exercises without oranges and candy the children'd go home disappointed, so they've left the whole thing slide--" "It don't seem just right for 'em not to celebrate the birth of our Lord just because they can't afford the candy," Abel Ames observed mildly, but Simeon hurried on:-- "--slide, and my idea and Abel's is to get the town meeting to vote a petition to the same effect asking the town not to try to do anything with their Christmas this year. We heard the factory wasn't going to open, and we thought if we could tell 'em that for sure, it would settle it--and save him and me and all the rest of 'em. Would--would you be willing for us to tell the town meeting that? It's to-night--we're on the way there."