"I got a railway with forty-'leven pieces of track."

"My uncle sent me a peachy pair of boxing gloves," Sid continued.

"Just wait till you see what my uncle sends me. Always comes in the mail, it does, but it hasn't come yet. Besides, I got a new sled."

"And I've got a punching bag."

"But you ought to see my 'lectric motor," retorted John, still undaunted. "You just wait till you see the toys I make for it to run."

Sid had saved his last and most cherished possession until the last. "My mother, she gave me a real gun, a Winchester. It'll shoot across the lake, it shoots so far. I'm going hunting with it on the ranch, next summer."

"That's all right." John was not in the least nonplussed. "But the cops won't let you shoot it in the city, and you've got to wait until spring comes before you can use it. I can go home and have all sorts of fun with _all_ my things, _now_."

Silvey and Perry sauntered up.

"'Lo!" came the inevitable greeting.

"'Lo!" came the inevitable reply.

"What did you get for Christmas?" asked Perry.

John allied himself instantly with Sid in the effort to outboast the new arrivals.

"Sid's got a sure enough gun," he said impressively. "Bigger'n I am."

"And John's got an electric motor," chimed in Sid as John finished.

"He's going to hitch it on his his new sled with a pair of oars, and go rowing over the snow when snow comes. My, but it's strong!"

"We've got a Christmas tree," spoke up Silvey.

"So've we," said John.

"So've we," Perry added.

"But mine's bigger'n any of yours," Bill insisted. "It's so big, we most had to cut a hole in the ceiling to set it up. And wide? It's so wide I can hardly get in the room with it."

"'Tain't," exclaimed John incredulously. "Nothing can be bigger'n ours."

"Come and see," was Silvey's unanswerable retort. So the quartette trooped up the street to "come and see."

On their way, they pa.s.sed the postman, struggling under his load of Christmas packages. Not only was his leather sack packed to overflowing with mail, but a little cart which he dragged behind him on the walk also held its quota of letters and gifts.

"Merry Christmas!" the boys called to him. He was a genial soul, not in the least like the evil-tempered crank who had held the route the year before.

He smiled back at them, for he had just been given a seventh necktie which a family had decided was too hideous to be worn by the original recipient, and was in high spirits.

"Any mail for us?" came the chorus of inquiry.

He fingered the mail in his sack. "Here you are, young Fletcher! Catch!"

"From my aunt," announced John proudly as he looked at the postmark.

"She always sends me jim-dandy things for Christmas." He ripped the protecting envelope away and stared in amazement at the two white-crocheted squares in his hand.

"Washrags, washrags!" jeered the boys. For once, Aunt Clara had followed the haphazard suggestion at the end of his letter and had sent something useful.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _"Washrags, washrags."_]

He jammed the offending gifts into his pocket, and sought to change the subject.

"Come on, Silvey, let's see that big tree of yours." So they stamped up the Silvey front steps and into the house.

"There," said Bill, pointing proudly at the family fir.

John gave one disgusted glance. "That? Why that's set on a little table!

Wouldn't come near the ceiling if it was on the floor. Come down to my house and I'll show you a _real_ tree."

They left the Silvey house noisily.

"Beat you down to John's," Perry shouted as they stood on the front walk. Away they went, puffing like little steam engines, in the cold air. A moment later, they stood admiringly in the Fletcher hall.

"Now, isn't our tree bigger'n yours?"

Silvey admitted that it was, thus adding the final restoring touches to John's complacency. Then they staged an impromptu Punch and Judy show and played with the other toys until Mrs. Fletcher, beaming in spite of perspiration, came into the room.

"The turkey's most done, John, so the boys had better go home now. They can come back at five to see the tree lighted, if they wish."

Would they care to? You just bet they would!

The front door slammed behind them, and John went out to the kitchen to nibble at bits of celery, sample the cranberry sauce, and in other ways annoy his busy mother until she turned on him despairingly.

"For heaven's sake, John, go into the parlor and read one of your new books until dinner's ready if you can't be quiet."

By five in the afternoon, he was so thoroughly surfeited with the season's delights, that he had barely enough energy to stand in the window and peer into the lighted area around the street lamp as he watched for his guests; for to bountiful helpings of turkey, potatoes, cranberry sauce, dressing, and a quarter of one of his mother's delicious plum puddings had been added cornucopia after cornucopia of candy, until his stomach, for once in his life, caused misgivings as to its food capacity.

Perry Alford came punctual to the minute, and shortly thereafter Red Brown, Sid DuPree, Silvey, and Skinny Mosher. Mrs. Fletcher had made use of her telephone to make the gathering a little more of a party for John than he had antic.i.p.ated.

Another display of the presents followed, while his father and mother stood in the parlor doorway and beamed down upon the youngsters. When the excitement had died away somewhat, Silvey spoke up.

"Let's have a Punch and Judy show now, fellows."

"Come on, dad," added John. "You can do it best."

So for the second time that day, the room formed the theater for that ancient, comic tragedy. But as the devil popped up on the shaky little stage to make an end to Punch, there came a cry of protest from the audience who were squatting breathlessly on the floor.

"Oh, not yet, not yet. Please, not yet."

So Punch triumphed in his fight with the little red-faced imp, and the play went forward through a new and altogether delightful chapter of the Punch family's existence. Amid the laughter which followed its conclusion, John disappeared silently and came back into the room with a box of tapers.