The Thin Santa Claus | Page 3

At first Mrs. Gratz had no idea that Santa Claus was standing before her, for he did not have a sleigh-bell about him, and he had left his red cotton coat with the white batting trimming at home. He stood in the door playing with his hat, unable to speak. He seemed to have some delicacy about beginning.
[Illustration: _"He looked like a man who had lost nine hundred dollars, but he did not look like Santa Claus"_]
"Well, what it is?" said Mrs. Gratz.
Her visitor pulled himself together with an effort.
"Well, ma'am, I'll tell you," he said frankly. "I'm a chicken buyer. I buy chickens. That's my business--dealin' in poultry--so I came out to-day to buy some chickens--"
"On Christmas Day?" asked Mrs. Gratz.
"Well," said the man, moving uneasily from one foot to the other, "I did come on Christmas Day, didn't I? I don't deny that, ma'am. I did come on Christmas Day. I'd like to go out and have a look at your chickens--"
"It ain't so usual for buyers to come buying chickens on Christmas Day, is it?" interposed Mrs. Gratz, good-naturedly.
"Well, no, it ain't, and that's a fact," said the man uneasily. "But I always do. The people I buy chickens for is just as apt to want to eat chicken one day as another day--and more so. Turkey on Christmas Day, and chicken the next, for a change--that's what they always tell me. So I have to buy chickens every day. I hate to, but I have to, and if I could just go out and look around your chicken yard--"
It was right there that Mrs. Gratz had a suspicion that Santa Claus stood before her.
"But I don't sell such a chicken yard, yet," she said. The man wiped his forehead.
"Sure not," he said nervously. "I was goin' to say look around your chicken yard and see the chickens. I can't buy chickens without I see them, can I? Some folks might, but I can't with the kind of customers I've got. I've got mighty particular customers, and I pay extra prices so as to get the best for them, and when I go out and look around the chicken yard--"
"How much you pay for such nice, big, fat chickens, mebby?" asked Mrs. Gratz.
"Well, I'll tell you," said the man. "Seven cents a pound is regular, ain't it? Well, I pay twelve. I'll give you twelve cents, and pay you right now, and take all the chickens you've got. That's my rule. But, if you want to let me go out and see the chickens first, and pick out the kind my regular customers like, I pay twenty cents a pound. But I won't pay twenty cents without I can see the chickens first."
"Sure," said Mrs. Gratz. "I wouldn't do it, too. Mebby I go out and bring in a couple such chickens for you to look at? Yes?"
"No, don't!" said the man impulsively. "Don't do it! It wouldn't be no good. I've got to see the chickens on the hoof, as I might say."
"On the hoofs?" said Mrs. Gratz. "Such poultry don't have no hoofs."
"Runnin' around," explained the visitor. "Runnin' around in the coop. I can tell if a chicken has got any disease that my trade wouldn't like, if I see it runnin' around in the coop. There's a lot in the way a chicken runs. In the way it h'ists up its leg, for instance. That's what the trade calls 'on the hoof.' So I'll just go out and have a look around the coop--"
"For twenty cents a pound anybody could let buyers see their chickens on the hoof, I guess," said Mrs. Gratz.
"Now, that's the way to talk!" exclaimed the man.
"Only but I ain't got any such chickens," said Mrs. Gratz. "So it ain't of use to look how they walk. So good-bye."
"Now, say--" said the man, but Mrs. Gratz closed the door in his face.
"I guess such a Santy Claus came back yet," said Mrs. Gratz when she went into the room where Mrs. Flannery was sitting. "But it ain't any use. He don't leave many more such presents."
"Th' impidince of him!" exclaimed Mrs. Flannery.
"For nine hundred dollars I could be impudent, too," said Mrs. Gratz calmly. "But I don't like such nowadays Santy Clauses, coming back all the time. Once, when I believes in Santy Clauses, they don't come back so much."
The thin Santa Claus had not gone far. He had crossed the street and stood gazing at Mrs. Gratz's door, and now he crossed again and knocked. Mrs. Gratz arose and went to the door.
"I believe he comes back once yet," she said to Mrs. Flannery, and opened the door. He had, indeed, come back.
"Now see here," he said briskly, "ain't your name Mrs. Gratz? Well, I knowed it was, and