It was at least two months before Christmas when nine-year-old Almie Rose told her father and me that
she wanted a new bicycle. As Christmas drew nearer, her desire for a bicycle seemed to fade (消退), or so
we thought. We bought her a lovely doll, and a doll house. Then, much to our surprise, on December 23rd,
she said that she "really wanted a bike more than anything else." But it was just too late. With such a lot of
preparations to do for the Christmas dinner we did not have the time to buy our little girl a bike. So, here we
were Christmas Eve around 9:00 p.m., with Almie and her six-year-old brother, Dylan, sleeping in their beds.
Now we could only think of the bicycle and the disappointment of our child. "What if I make a little bicycle
out of clay (泥) and write a note that she could trade (交易, 交换) the clay bike in for a real bike?" her dad
asked. So he spent the next four hours making a tiny clay bike. On Christmas morning, we were excited for
Almie to open the little