Chapter XI: Christie as Housekeeper

IT was snow this time, instead of rain. It came down in great lovely flakes, such as filled the baby's soul with satisfaction, and kept him a silent watcher at the window for a longer time, I really believe, than Baby Tucker was ever known to be quiet before.

They were alone—Christie and Karl and the baby. Father and mother Tucker, with Nettie tucked in between them, had gone gaily off to town some two hours before, and would get themselves caught in a snowstorm. Occasionally Christie worried over this as she looked up from her darning long enough to catch a glimpse of the great flakes which were rapidly turning every ugly thing into a lovely white.

"Nettie will catch cold, I'm just afraid," she said, her voice full of a pretty motherly anxiety for the little Tucker.

Now Karl, being a boy, could not be anxious about a person who was out in such a jolly snowstorm, so was just the one to comfort.

"Oh, no," he said cheerily; "if the snow gets to be too much for her, mother will duck her under the buffalo robe in a twinkling. That robe is a splendid thing to keep the snow off, if it is about worn out. I say, Christie, I don't suppose it ever snowed faster than this in New York State. Do you believe it did?"

"It may not have snowed 'faster,'" Christie declared, looking up from her darning with a critical eye, "but the difference is, it keeps at it longer. Just think! All this lovely whiteness will be gone before to-morrow morning."

"Yes, and everything turned to slush," said Karl, in a moment of disconsolateness. "I shall have to drive to the depot through a mess of dirty pudding and milk. I tell you what it is, I should like to spend one winter where snow stayed."

"Wells Burton spent a winter in Maine once," said Christie, thus carried back to the events of that ever-memorable journey of hers, now two weeks in the distance.

It required the merest nothing to take her back to the wonderful day and all its varied and beautiful, as well as troublesome experiences. And then she lingered long, while Karl, an interested listener, asked, ever and anon, the most appreciative of questions.

"He said the snow was three feet deep at one place where he spent a month. Only think of it, Karl! He took a sleigh-ride every day, and sometimes they had to leave the road because it was drifted all full of snow, and go into the fields where a track had been broken, and they would ride right over the tops of the fences."

"Mother has told us about that often," remarked Karl in a grave tone. Without knowing it, he was slightly jealous of this new story-teller whom he did not know at all, and whom Christie quoted as if he were an old friend.

"Oh, yes, I know," Christie said soothingly. "Mother has had more wonderful sleigh-rides than ever Wells Burton had, and more of them. Just think of the winter when she took one the third day of November, and another on the third day of April, and could have taken them any time between! That was snow for you! But then it was a good while ago, and sometimes it seems to me as though the world was changed now, and there wasn't so much snow as that anywhere, but Wells Burton was down there only last winter, and had these rides."

"He has got back." Karl was whittling.

He had brought some clean and delicate strips of board into the clean kitchen, and established himself in the corner, with a large sheet of brown paper to catch his whittlings, and was prepared to take a holiday on this stormy afternoon, and visit with Christie. He was trying to make a new-fashioned work-box for his mother, with sliding compartments suited to the size of the articles to be stored within. It was a very complicated piece of work for a boy, with only his brains and a jack-knife, but Karl had seen one at the corner store the other day, and had studied it carefully, thinking of several improvements while he stood there, waiting for his sugar. So now he was at it, improvements and all. It was a peculiarity of Karl's that he was almost sure to think of improvements, directly he looked at a bit of work. He whittled away carefully just then, having a delicate corner to turn, and did not see the start with which Christie dropped her darning, nor the pleased look in her face, as she said:

"Has he? How do you know? When did he come back? Did he speak to you, Karl?"

"I knew it this morning, because I saw him at the station going in for something that had been forgotten. If they want a spool of thread, they run into the city for it! Besides, I knew it last night; Nick told me. They came yesterday; the sick young man did not like it in the city. He was homesick, so they just packed up and came, though Mrs. Burton sort of wanted to stay all winter, and thought when she went in, that she could coax the young man into liking it. There's a queer thing for you: a fellow to be homesick for this little puckered-up town, when he could live in a city just as well as not! I'll bet a cent that I should never cry to come back here, if I had father and mother and all the folks worth having, along with me. Christie, what has that baby got in his mouth? He'll choke, I believe."

"My patience!" said Christie, dropping her darning now in haste, and springing to the rescue.

Baby had intended to put the whole of a spool of silk into his small mouth, and looked much inclined to resent it as Christie dived after the silk.

"Why, baby!"—in indignation—"I'm astonished at you! You would have choked to death. Besides, that silk is to finish Mrs. Bates' dress, and you have gone and got it all wet. However did it get left on the window, I wonder? Get down, baby, and go and play with Karl's whittlings, that's a dear. There's a pretty stick you can have too. Is he lame, Karl?"

"What, the stick? No, it isn't lame, but it is rather rough; I'm afraid he will get splinters in his fingers. Here, baby, I'll find you a better one."

Christie stopped to laugh. "You know I mean Wells," she said; "I thought he would have to go on crutches. Does he walk lame?"

"Limps a little, and can't walk far, Nick said; but it wasn't a very bad sprain. Nick said the doctor said that the cold water bandages you put on were just the thing, and that when you got ready to set up for a surgeon, he would take you into partnership."

"Karl!" said Christie, her face aglow with delight. "Did they truly think it did any good?"

"Yes, they truly did. Nick said just that. I meant to have told you, but this going to town of father's and mother's put everything else out of my head."

"Karl, did Wells speak to you this morning?"

"No; how should he? I don't know him, and more than likely, he doesn't want to know me."

"That is all nonsense!" Christie said, speaking with more earnestness than usual. "He is just as nice and pleasant as he can be. And I don't believe you gave him a chance to speak to you, or he would have done it. You know what I told you about his saying that you never would speak?"

Karl whittled sturdily. "That is all very well," he said at last. "And you, being a girl, don't understand, of course. There isn't so much difference between the look of you, all dressed up as you were, taking a ride in the cars, and Wells Burton taking a ride in his every-day clothes. Of course he would be nice to you, especially when the first thing he did was to go and get into danger, and let you save his life. But I'm another sort of fellow, I can tell you! My every-day clothes and his don't look any more alike than sunshine and mud. If you had seen us both this morning, you would have known what I mean."

"Clothes are not everything," Christie said, but she said it with a little sigh.

She understood what Karl meant, better than she liked to own. A swift glance at him, and a memory of the trim figure in his handsome, well-fitting suit, pointed the truth for her.

"No more they ain't," said Karl, with reckless indifference to grammar, "but for all that, a fellow feels better in clothes, I can tell you. See here, baby, shavings were not made to eat. I say, Christie, couldn't we get up a treat for their supper, baked potatoes or something?"

He did not mean for the shavings' supper, as Christie very well understood. She looked up brightly at the suggestion, the little wave of trouble having already gone from her pleasant face.

"I guess so," she said. "That would be nice: I mean 'something' would be nice. I don't think baked potatoes are much of a treat. I'll tell you what, Karl, we might have some cream toast. There is a loaf of bread that mother said this morning would make nice toast, and there is a cup of cream we can have, and cream is kind of scarce nowadays, you know. That would be a real treat."

"I'm agreed," said Karl. "I'll toast the bread. I'm a master hand at that. That Sunday-school book of mine is about a fellow who toasted bread for his sister, only he burnt his to a cinder, and that I shall not do. Maybe I would, though, if I had the same reason. It's a splendid story, Christie.

"They were awful poor, he and his sister; had no father and mother, nor anything but just themselves. She worked in a factory, and he was a newsboy, but he froze his feet, and could hardly walk for most a month, and that made things harder for them. And they about starved, and froze, too, but one day the overseer of the factory gave the girls in the sister's room a holiday, let them come home at three o'clock, and gave them each a present. The owner of the factory did, you know, in honour of his son's coming of age; he gave them each a whole dollar. And they celebrated, this girl and her brother did. Her name was Jennie, and his was Ben. They decided to have toast and eggs for supper—wouldn't some eggs go good with our cream toast. Look out there, Christie, that baby is creeping too near the fire!"

"What happened that made him burn the toast?" asked Christie as she set the baby at a respectful distance from the fire, and gave him a string of empty spools to play with.

There was hardly anything that Christie liked better than a story. The reason she was not poring over that Sabbath-school book, at this moment, was because she knew that the darning must be done, and that if she did not do it, her mother would have to in the evening. And the reason she did not coax Karl to read the book aloud, was because she knew that the new-fashioned work-box was to be a surprise for his mother, and a whole afternoon with the mother away was a golden opportunity not to be lost for a trifle. So after all, I am glad to be able to tell you that there were things which Christie Tucker liked better than story books, and one was to do faithfully and cheerfully what she knew she ought to do. But all this did not hinder her from being deeply interested in the story that Karl was telling. He was not fond of telling stories.

"You never can get things as they were in the book," he would say, "and they sound flat."

"Why, something tremendous happened. You see the sister Jennie was grown-up—she was most ten years older than Ben—and once there had been a young man who was to be married to her, but he went away to California and she did not hear from him at all. And after two years, she knew he was dead, and wore a black dress all the time, only Sundays, then she put on her one white one, for Ben's sake, to make him feel less lonesome, you know. Well, while the third slice of bread was toasting—they were each to have two slices, because it was a holiday—there came a knock at the door, and Jennie opened it, and there stood a man who took her right in his arms and kissed her, and 'kissed' her. And she screamed, and he cried and laughed, and Ben stared, and the toast burned up."

"Where had he been all the two years?" demanded Christie, the spirit of the coming woman blazing in her eyes. "I wouldn't have let him kiss me if he had stayed away all that time, and left me alone."

"Oh, he had been sick, and robbed by a highway-man, and most killed, and I don't know what all had happened. 'He' couldn't help it. And he was rich; he had found a place in the gold mine that nobody knew about, and it had lots of gold. They were married, he and Jennie, and they sent Ben to school, and he had no end of a good time and all the toast and eggs he wanted."

"It is only in books that such things happen," said Christie, turning cynical, though there was a bit of wistfulness in her voice. "Nobody ever comes knocking at our door with some wonderful news. I wish there would, but I don't expect it."

"I wish there would too, and bring me an arithmetic, the kind they use at the school; then maybe I could catch up with them." And now there was a wistful sound in Karl's voice. What a pity that some of the boys and girls whose cast-off arithmetics are lying useless on upper shelves could not have heard him!

Christie considered the matter in grave silence. She wished very much for an arithmetic, and for several other things, but the winter was a hard one, and she saw no way to secure them. Occasionally she sighed over that reckless expenditure of money which had been made in going to Uncle Daniel's. That would have bought an arithmetic. She had offered to give up the journey—she was glad to remember than—but they had all insisted on her going, Karl as stoutly as any of the others; and even now, she could not be sorry that she went.

She did not get to Uncle Daniel's, it is true, but she lived a whole story book in that one day, which would answer to read over all winter.

It was a pleasant kitchen in which these two sat and worked. The floor was bright with hard rubbing, and gay with certain braided mats over which both Karl and Christie had worked faithfully for many an hour. The soft coal in the little cook stove needed only the poke which Karl occasionally gave it, to break into a glow and a bustle. The little stove shone with a polish that Christie's own hands had given it, and reflected the play of the flames most brilliantly. There was an old-fashioned table standing against the wall, one of the kind whose leaves turned down. By and by it would do duty as a dining table. Now it was covered with a cloth made of pieces of bright wools.

"Crazy patchwork," Christie called it. And occasionally, when Karl tried to help clear up the room, and could not get the cloth on straight, he took refuge in the fact that it was "crazy."

There were three or four wooden chairs, shining with cleanliness: there was a large arm-chair, cushioned, for "father," a cunning little high chair, standing close beside it with the very brightest and softest of cushions in it, that, of course, was baby's. There was a cunning little home-made couch, or "settee," as they called it, fashioned, the frame of it, by Karl, with his skilful jack-knife, and a hammer and nails, upholstered in unique style by Christie herself; and this was the exclusive property of the small lady Nettie.

Then there was the one extravagance of which this room could boast—a lovely little wicker rocking chair which Mrs. Tucker declared fitted every crook in her tired back, and for which father and children had carefully saved, I should hardly like to tell you for how many months, lest you might think they were poor, and there are plenty of people poorer than they.

This was about all the furniture that the neat room contained, save baby's box of playthings, and a torn picture book or two, laid carefully away on the mantelpiece. I hardly know what made it look so cheerful, save that there was an air of home about it, and the faces gathered within it were generally bright.

Oh yes, there was an old-fashioned clock in the corner which faithfully ticked the hours, and at which Christie looked every now and then.

"I wonder when we ought to begin getting our treat ready?" she said. "There is one bad thing about cream toast; it wants to be eaten as soon as it is ready."

"And there is one bad thing about folks," said Karl; "they never come home when you think they will. Halloo! Have they come already? That man said 'Whoa,' right out here."

He shook the shavings from his clothes and hastened to the window.

"They can't have come yet," said practical Christie, "for father was to see Mr. Marshall, and he couldn't see him until after four o'clock."

"Christie Tucker, it is the big station wagon, and it has stopped here, and the man that helps load things is coming up our walk! What do you suppose he wants?"