Libby shook her head. She had never heard of them. Miss Santa Claus explained. "And his messages pop into your head just that way," she added. "I was as busy as I could be one day, studying my Algebra lesson, when all of a sudden, pop came the thought into my head that little Jamie Fitch wanted a warm red jacket to wear when he sat up in bed, and that Uncle Santa wanted me to make it. I went down town that very afternoon and bought the wool, and I knew that I was not mistaken by the way I felt afterward, so glad and warm and Christmasy. That's why all his family love to help him. He gives them such a happy feeling while they are doing it."
It was Will'm's turn now for a question. He asked it abruptly with a complete change of base.
"Yes, indeed! And Cousin Rosalie has one. She's Uncle Norse's wife. I've just been visiting them."
"He means tusk," explained Libby. "All the cruel ones have'm, Susie Peters says."
"Sticking out this way, like a pig's," Will'm added eagerly, at the same time pulling his lip down at one side to show a little white tooth in the place where the dreadful fang would have grown, had he been the cruel creature in question.
"Mercy, _no_!" was the horrified exclamation. "That kind live only in fairy tales along with ogres and giants. Didn't you know that?"
Will'm shook his head. "Me an' Libby was afraid ours would be that way, and if she is we're going to do something to her. We're going to shut her up in a nawful dark cellar, or--or _something_."
Miss Santa looked grave. Here was a dreadful misunderstanding. Somebody had poisoned these baby minds with suspicions and doubts which might embitter their whole lives. If she had been only an ordinary fellow passenger she might not have felt it her duty to set them straight. But no descendant of the family of which she was a member, could come face to face with such a wrong, without the impulse to make it right. It was an impulse straight from the Sky Road. In the carol service in the chapel, the night before she left school, the dean had spoken so beautifully of the way they might all follow the Star, this Christmastide, with their gifts of frankincense and myrrh, even if they had no gold. Here was her opportunity, she thought, if she were only wise enough to say the right thing!