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Show By Vera Tarpley STANDING ON her tiptoes, Mandy could see the whole bright array ar-ray of them shiny red, blue and silver ornaments spread out on the table, waiting for Santa's nimble fingers to arrange them on the tree. ' Pretteeee." she murmured longingly. long-ingly. If only Santa would let her help him. Just handing them to him one by one would be wonderful. She turned to Gerald, who was busily fumbling with train tracks and getting get-ting nowhere. "Gerry, you touch?" she asked, looking back at the ornaments. or-naments. Gerald looked up despairingly from his train tracks. "Sure, I touched them lots of times," he said carelessly. "Only you can't," he added. "You're too little." I - A If she could just touch them just touch one, then nothing else would matter. Voices floated into them from the kitchen. Raised voices angry voices. "The kid's old enough to know there isn't a Santa Claus, anyway!" That was John Martin who said that. John Martin, the most wonderful Daddy in the world. They must still have been talking about what happened before supper. Mommy had fixed hamburgers they always had hamburgers on Christmas Eve, and this was the first year Mandy could have a hamburger ham-burger like everybody else. There was really nothing to get mad about. Mandy and Gerald had been standing in the kitchen smelling smell-ing the wonderful smells, while Mommy was fixing supper. The " basement door was standing open to let out some of the smoke from frying, and up the stairs he came, one step at a time, and peeked his little head around the door. Mandy saw him first and screamed in happy delirium. Gerald Ger-ald ran over and picked him up he wriggled and squirmed and licked Gerald . all over the face. Gerald knew it was a fox terrier pup he knew all the names of the different dogs, but he had always wanted a fox terrier. Daddy came into the kitchen at that point. He acted even more queerly he was mad! And he started saying terrible things to Mommy terrible things that made Mandy cry and Gerald want to run far away so he wouldn't hear. "I told you to keep the basement door closed!" Daddy roared. "It's just plain stupid carelessness on your part!" And he snatched the puppy from Gerald's arms and carried car-ried him down the basement stairs. TlrANDY WAS STILL looking over the edge of the table at the beautiful ornaments. If she could Just touch them just touch one-then one-then nothing else would matter. She hadn't meant to jerk the newspapers under them so hard she just wanted to pull the ornaments orna-ments a little closer to the edge of the table. But there It was broken ornaments all over the floor still shiny red, blue and silver but broken. "Pretteeee," she said. "That does It!" shouted Mommy, bursting Into tears. She swept up the pieces and dumped them into the wastebasket. "You put the kids to bed, John. I'm going over to Mother's for awhile maybe there'll be some Christmas spirit left over there." But John lay down on the sofa in the living room and fell asleep. He didn't wake up until Martha shook him frantically, screaming, "The children! The children are gone!" There was no anger no accusations accusa-tions now. Just terror. John was the first to recover enough to start thinking. He ran down to the basement base-ment and found the puppy gone. He went outside, and Martha was left sobbing alone. She was picking up the telephone when she saw it. A light in the garage. John was standing at the garage door looking in just standing stand-ing there. A small pine branch was propped up in one corner John had snipped it off himself that afternoon because It made the tree look lopsided. From each twig of the pine branch hung a bright shiny piece of ornament, laboriously tied on with a string. At the base of the Christmas tree slept a huddled mass of legs and arms and a tail. The tail twitched a little and brushed Mandy's fore-head. fore-head. "Pretteeee," she murmurea softly. |