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Show Mother for Christmas, Santa's Big Present ,;J,l'IIS Is the best Christmas ever!" exclaimed little John, f.-ed five. "The best Christmas ever?" cried Jar.e, Ills twin. "Why It's just a million Christmasos rolled Into one. How do you suppose Santa Claus ever thought up anything so grand?" The twins 'feTS truly in ecstasy. And who wouldn't be? For until this morning they had been motherless. Yes, they had never known a mother. And now. at dawn, when they stole down into the silling room to look at their stockings hung on the mantle, there on the bear skin before the hearth just as Santa had left her, sat a beautiful, golden-haired, blue-eyed doll? No, a mother. Her dress was of softest topaz color and all trailing and soft, just as a mother's should be. On one of her pretty white fingers a big diamond gleamed in the firelight, and under it was a plain gold band. Father seemed as happy as the twins about this Christmas mother. "Santa is a wise old bird," lie said. But the Christmas mother did not answer him at all. She was buried under the embraces of the twins. And, anyway, she wasn't father's Christmas present. The Christmas card pinned to her sleeve said plain as day "A mother for Jane and John. Merry Christmas from Santa Claus." Ethel Cook Eliot. (, 1923, Western Newspaper Union.) |