_Jim_, derisively: "Oh, yes, Santa Claus!" _Susy_: "I guess if you wait for Santa Claus to take them back!" XIV MRS. FOUNTAIN, FOUNTAIN _Mrs. Fountain_: "Tiresome little wretches. Of course we can't expect them to keep up the self-deception." _Fountain_: "They'll grow to another. When they're men and women they'll pretend that Christmas is delightful, and go round giving people the presents that they've worn their lives out in buying and getting together. And they'll work themselves up into the notion that they are really enjoying it, when they know at the bottom of their souls that they loathe the whole job." _Mrs. Fountain_: "There you are with your pessimism again! And I had just begun to feel cheerful about it!" _Fountain_: "Since when? Since I proposed sending this rubbish back to the givers with our curse?" _Mrs. Fountain_: "No, I was thinking what fun it would be if we could get up a sort of Christmas game, and do it just among relations and intimate friends." _Fountain_: "Ah, I wish you luck of it. Then the thing would begin to have some reality, and just as in proportion as people had the worst feelings in giving the presents, their best feeling would be hurt in getting them back." _Mrs. Fountain_: "Then why did you ever think of it?" _Fountain_: "To keep from going mad. Come, let's go on with this job of sorting the presents, and putting them in the stockings and hanging them up on the tree and laying them round the trunk of it. One thing: it's for the last time. As soon as Christmas week is over, I shall inaugurate an educational campaign against the whole Christmas superstition. It must be extirpated root and branch, and the extirpation must begin in the minds of the children; we old fools are hopeless; we must die in it; but the children can be saved. We must organize and make a house-to-house fight; and I'll begin in our own house. To-morrow, as soon as the children have made themselves thoroughly sick with candy and cake and midday dinner, I will appeal to their reason, and get them to agree to drop it; to sign the Anti-Christmas pledge; to--" _Mrs. Fountain_: "Clarence! I have an idea." _Fountain_: "Not a _bright_ one?" _Mrs. Fountain_: "Yes, a bright one, even if you didn't originate it. Have Christmas confined entirely to children--to the very youngest--to children that believe firmly in Santa Claus." _Fountain_: "Oh, hello! Wouldn't that leave Jim and Susy out? I couldn't have _them_ left out."