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occasion, there was certainly a lot of yelling going on. It was stressful for the children, standing in a long line with a hundred or so of their peers, waiting for a chance to make their fondest desires known. It was tiring, too. Some of them cracked under the pressure and started bawling. This had much the same effect as one barking dog in a quiet neighborhood; pretty soon, they were all doing it.
    But for all the hollering and crying, the being thrown up on and some other even less pleasant accidents he had endured thus far, Rick had to admit he was enjoying himself. Because every now and then, in between the whiners and the grabbers, he would discover a gem.
    At the moment, he had one on his lap, in the form of a six-year-old girl with the biggest brown eyes Rick had ever seen. She was looking at him. Just him. For the time being, even the candy cane each child received had been placed in the pocket of her cute paisley overalls and forgotten.
    “And what’s your name, little one?” Rick asked her.
    “Susan,” she replied softly.
    “Susan.” He smiled. “Susie?”
    She shook her head solemnly, never once taking her eyes from his face. “No. Not Susie.” Each word was spoken slowly and clearly, so there would be no mistake. “I like Susan.”
    “Then Susan it shall be,” Rick said, treating her with the dignity she so obviously desired. “Have you been a good girl this year, Susan?”
    “Not ‘specially.”
    Rick arched his bushy white false eyebrows. “No?”
    “My daddy doesn’t think so.”
    Puzzled by this unprompted display of honesty, Rick looked to the girl’s mother for confirmation. She was young, perhaps twenty, with the same big brown eyes as her daughter. Blushing furiously, the young woman gave a shrug and patted the little girl’s sleek black hair.
    “She’s actually been pretty good. For Susan.”
    “I see,” Rick said with a knowing smile, then returned his attention to Susan. “Maybe you’d better tell Santa what you did that made your father mad.”
    “I washed Peaches,” the girl replied, at last lowering her gaze. Her jet black lashes were incredibly long and fluffy against her cheeks. “Daddy didn’t like that.”
    “Peaches?” Rick asked.
    “My kitty.”
    “Oh.” Fearing some sort of horror story, Rick again looked at the child’s mother. But she was just grinning ruefully and shaking her head, so he pressed onward. “Well, kitties don’t much like anyone washing them. They’d usually rather do it themselves.”
    Susan was gazing at him again. But this time there was the strangest look in her eyes. “Peaches can’t wash herself, Mr. Claus! She’s stuffed!”
    Realizing that it wouldn’t do for Santa to admit such a faux pas, Rick decided to blunder on and hope for the best. “But your daddy didn’t like it when you washed her?”
    “Nope.”
    “Why not?” Rick asked. He wasn’t about to stop now.
    “I couldn’t reach the sink. So I put her in the bathtub.”
    “And left her there,” her mother continued. “For an hour. With the water running. Peaches is very clean now. So is everything else. The bathroom was on the second floor.”
    “Daddy went ballistic,” Susan said. She had trouble with the word but obviously knew what it meant, because she pointed toward the ceiling. “Boom!”
    Rick was having trouble keeping a straight face. Then he just gave up. It was his job to laugh. “Ho, ho, ho!”
    Shannon could hear him laughing all the way over in the cosmetics department, where she was watching the register for a moment while the usual clerk took a quick break.
    “My, that certainly is a jolly Santa!” the woman she was helping observed.
    “He does seem to be getting into the spirit, doesn’t he?” Shannon agreed.
    The woman smiled. “Well, he’s certainly raising my spirits!”
    When the cosmetics clerk returned, Shannon went back to her own department, whistling along with the piped-in Christmas music. She had to admit Rick was raising