Claus? Why shouldn't I? Didn't Santa Claus bring me a beautiful
butter-cracker last Christmas, and a lovely gingersnap, and a delicious
rind of cheese, and--and--lots of things? I should be very ungrateful if I
did _not_ believe in Santa Claus, and I certainly shall not
disbelieve in him at the very moment when I am expecting him to arrive
with a bundle of goodies for me.

"I once had a little sister," continued the little mauve mouse, "who did
not believe in Santa Claus, and the very thought of the fate that befell
her makes my blood run cold and my whiskers stand on end. She died before
I was born, but my mother has told me all about her. Perhaps you never saw
her; her name was Squeaknibble, and she was in stature one of those long,
low, rangy mice that are seldom found in well-stocked pantries. Mother
says that Squeaknibble took after our ancestors who came from New England,
where the malignant ingenuity of the people and the ferocity of the cats
rendered life precarious indeed. Squeaknibble seemed to inherit many
ancestral traits, the most conspicuous of which was a disposition to sneer
at some of the most respected dogmas in mousedom. From her very infancy
she doubted, for example, the widely accepted theory that the moon was
composed of green cheese; and this heresy was the first intimation her
parents had of the sceptical turn of her mind. Of course, her parents were
vastly annoyed, for their maturer natures saw that this youthful
scepticism portended serious, if not fatal, consequences. Yet all in vain
did the sagacious couple reason and plead with their headstrong and
heretical child.

"For a long time Squeaknibble would not believe that there was any such
archfiend as a cat; but she came to be convinced to the contrary one
memorable night, on which occasion she lost two inches of her beautiful
tail, and received so terrible a fright that for fully an hour afterward