Boys -- Juvenile fiction; Children's stories, American; Fantasy literature; Short stories, American
Jimmieboy sat up and peered over toward the spot whence the voice came,
but could see nothing.
"No. The hind wheels won't go through the chimney-pot, and even if they
would, it wouldn't do any good. The front wheel is twice as big as the
hind ones," said another voice, this one apparently belonging to some
one on the roof. "Can't you get it in through the front door?"
"What do you take me for--an expressman?" cried the voice at the
fire-place. "I can't leave things that way. It wouldn't be the proper
thing. Can't you get a smaller size through?"
"Yes; but will it fit the boy?" said the voice on the roof.
"Lower your lantern down here and we'll see. He's asleep over here in a
brass bedstead," replied the other.
And then Jimmieboy saw a great red lantern appear in the fire-place, and
by its light he noticed a short, ruddy-faced, merry-eyed old gentleman,
with a snowy beard and a smile, tip-toeing across the room toward him.
To his delight he recognized him at once as Santa Claus; but he didn't
know whether Santa Claus would like to have him see him or not, so he
closed his eyes as tightly as he could, and pretended to be asleep.
"Humph!" ejaculated Santa Claus, as he leaned over Jimmieboy's bed, and
tried to get his measure by a glance. "He's almost a man--must be five
years old by this time. Pretty big for a small velocipede; still, I
don't know." Here he scratched his beard and sang:
"If he's too large for it, I think,
'Twill be too small for him,
Unless he can be got to shrink
Two inches on each limb."
Then he walked back to the fire-place and called out, "I've measured."
"Well, what's the result?" queried the voice on the roof.
"'Nothing,' as the boy said when he was asked what two plus one minus
three amounted to. I can't decide. It will or it won't, and that's all
there is about it."
"Can't we try it on him?" asked the voice up the chimney.
"No," returned Santa Claus. "That wouldn't prove anything; but we might
try him on it. Shall I send him up?"
"Yes," came the voice from above, much to Jimmieboy's delight, for he
was quite curious to see what was going on up on the roof, and who it
was that owned the other voice.
In a moment Jimmieboy found himself in Santa Claus's arms, cuddled up to
the warm fur coat the dear old gentleman wore, in which position he was
carried up through the chimney flue to the roof. Then Jimmieboy peeped
out between his half-opened eyelids, and saw, much to his surprise, that
instead of there being only one Santa Claus, there were two of them.
"Oh dear!" he said in astonishment; "I didn't know there were two of
you."
Both the Santas jumped as if some one had let off a cannon cracker under
their very noses.
"Well, I declare!" said the one that had carried Jimmieboy up through
the chimney. "We're discovered. Here I've been in this business whole
centuries, and I've never been discovered before."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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