Chapter V: Part 5

“What can be done about it? Don’t you think we might let them off _this_ time with a warning? I’m sure you must already have given them a pretty good scolding, for it seems to me you are getting to be quite a grumbler yourself, and I have no doubt you have been lecturing them all along the way.”

“Indeed I have!” replied the dame, “and a thankless job it was! They’re a troublesome lot, I tell you, and you’d better not let them off too easily! But, of course, you must suit yourself.”

“Oh dear! Oh dear!” cried Santa Claus again, as he tried to look sternly at the unhappy grumblers. “This is very sad--very sad indeed! It is too near Christmas for any one even to _look_ cross, to say nothing of scolding!” And here his round face broke into a broad smile, and all the grumblers smiled, too.

“See, Dame Quimp!” cried he, eagerly, “these poor people are all in a good temper already, and I feel sure that, if I trust them, they will try very hard not to be grumblers any longer. Is it not so, my friends?”

And Farmer Jones, the milliner’s little daughter, the baker’s boy, the grocer’s clerk, the doctor’s cook, little Tommy Brooks, the shoemaker’s wife, the minister’s twin grandchildren, the banker’s Dorothy, and the barber’s grandmother, all promptly answered, “Yes!”

“Now hurry home as fast as you can,” said Santa Claus, giving them each a big stick of candy. “You have been gone so long that your friends will be anxiously wondering where you are. Dame Quimp and the barber’s grandmother will wait and have a cup of tea with me, and I will take them home in my sleigh a little later.”

There was a perfect chorus of thanks and promises, a beaming smile from Santa Claus, a reluctant grunt of farewell from Dame Quimp, and each member of the grumbler procession set out at best speed on the return trip.

It was late when they all reached home, but, strange to say, with the exception of the doctor’s cook, the baker’s boy, and the grocer’s clerk, not one of them had been missed, for the various friends and relations had been having such a delightfully quiet and restful afternoon that they had forgotten all about the departed grumblers.

[13] Reprinted by permission of the author and “St. Nicholas Magazine.”

WHEN CHRISTMAS CAME AGAIN[14]

_Beulah Marie Dix_

“I want to go,” said Justine Eliot, “where I won’t even hear the word Christmas. If you’d only open the camp, Doctor Sarah, we could stay there, just by our two selves, until these ghastly holidays are over. Oh, won’t you, please?”

Justine Eliot was nineteen, far richer in money than she needed to be, and as pretty as a blush-rose. Until a year ago she had known nothing but sunshine. This fact Dr. Sarah Peavey took into swift account, and she did not say, “Don’t be a coward! Face it out!”

“You see, there were two of us a year ago,” Justine went on, “and now I’m all alone. Oh, if I’d only gone down-town that day with mother! But she said it was a secret, and I wasn’t to come. And I said I didn’t want to come, for I had a secret, too. It was a pillow I was covering for her as a Christmas present--the fir-balsam pillow that I’d made that summer at the camp. I finished it that afternoon, and tied it up with red ribbons. There were Christmas wreaths in all the windows, and holly paper and red ribbon everywhere. You know how mother loved the Christmas season, and how she remembered everybody. Oh, it was too cruel that she should leave us then! And if I’d only been with her, I know it wouldn’t have happened. But that crowded, slippery crossing, and that automobile bearing down--and I wasn’t there! I never want to see green holly or red ribbons again. I think if I hear people say, ‘Merry Christmas!’ I shall die. And I wish I could!”

Justine broke into sobs, with her face in her hands.

For a moment Doctor Peavey watched her through narrowed eyelids. Then she took a time-table from the drawer of her desk, and said:

“I’ll leave my patients with Deering. I’ll telegraph Serena Wetherbee to open the camp for us. Meet me at the station to-morrow evening, and--”

“Doctor Sarah! Then you will?”

“Yes, I’ll take you where Christmas won’t find you--if I can!”

Surely no better refuge could have been found for Christmas fugitives than the camp on Nobsco Head. Clad in black firs and bound with iron rock, the headland thrust itself into the icy waters of the bay. Half-buried now in the white drifts of winter, the little house stood solitary--three miles by road from the village of Crosset Cove, and a half-mile, at least, from the little settlement known as Hardscrabble.

It was from Hardscrabble that Serena Wetherbee came--a grim, gaunt woman, who not only had lost three children, but had never learned from the waves where they had flung the body of her sailor husband. To warn her not to talk of Christmas seemed superfluous. But on the fourth evening, while they were all three sitting round the glowing airtight stove in the camp living-room, Justine politely asked Serena what she was knitting, and received an unexpected answer.

“Christmas presents,” said Serena Wetherbee. “A pair of mittens for Jacob Tracy, and striped reins for his little sister Emmy. Haven’t you noticed? He’s Heman Tracy’s boy, that brings the milk over from Hardscrabble, and they’re poorer than Job’s turkey. There’ll be a tree over at Hardscrabble schoolhouse,--there always is,--and those Tracy young ones shan’t go without presents, not while I’m afoot.”

With a word of excuse and good night, Justine rose and went to her room. But Serena Wetherbee talked on:

“I don’t know, after all, if there’ll be a tree this year at Hardscrabble. Have you seen the school-ma’am, Doctor Sarah? She’s a Nash, from over in Jefferson--one of those bred-in-the-bone old maids that would turn cream sour just by looking at it. Like as not she’ll set up for not having a tree to the schoolhouse.”

But evidently Serena did not believe this dire prophecy, for she was as horrified as Doctor Peavey by the developments of the next day. The two women were in the kitchen when small Jacob Tracy clumped in out of the twilight, leading a sobbing little sister.

“Now you just shut up, Emmy Tracy!” Jacob said, but not unkindly. “You ask Aunt Sereny and she’ll tell you it ain’t so at all.”

Serena Wetherbee lifted the child to her lap.

“Tell aunty all about it, deary!”

“She says--teacher says--there ain’t--there ain’t no Sa-anta Claus--and there won’t be a tree at Hardscrabble--and no Christmas! And I’d wrote Santa Claus--to bring me a dolly with hair--and there ain’t--there ain’t no--”

“Teacher doesn’t know everything!” snapped Serena Wetherbee.

With assurances and molasses cookies, the two women comforted the child. She left the house with a watery smile, but Jacob lingered to say:

“And do you think he’ll come to Hardscrabble, for all she said?”

A few moments later, when Doctor Peavey passed through the open door to the living-room, she found Justine seated with a book at the table.

“What were they crying for?” asked Justine.

“Miss Nash, who teaches the school at Hardscrabble, where the little ones go, told them that there was no Santa Claus.”

“To tell a child that at Christmas time!” flashed Justine. “She ought to be whipped!”

“That wouldn’t help the children much,” said Doctor Peavey, mildly, “or her, either.”

To Justine Doctor Peavey said no more, but she took counsel with Serena. That evening, after Justine had gone thoughtfully to bed, Doctor Peavey made out a list of the names and ages of the eighteen children who went to the little school at Hardscrabble. On the same sheet she made some tentative calculations--so much for oranges, so much for crinkly Christmas candy, so much for gifts, to be bought at the ten-cent store at Hanscomville. It was only a small sum, but, small as it was, it meant that Doctor Peavey would go without the evenings at the opera which were the one luxury of her winter.

The next morning, December 22d, Doctor Peavey tucked her list into her pocket and started afoot for Hardscrabble, where she planned to hire a horse and pung from Cephas Tooke. She had bidden Justine good-by for the day without explanation. A little wholesome neglect would be tonic for Justine, she believed; and she believed also that you may sometimes attain your goal, like Alice in the Looking-Glass country, by walking away from it.

She was to have speedy confirmation of her belief. She had barely started down the shining hill slope to the wood-path, when she heard the crackling of a step behind her, and turned to see Justine, as warmly bundled up as she was herself, with her purse in her mittened hand. The color came and went in Justine’s cheeks. For the moment she seemed again the girl that Doctor Peavey had known in joyous summers at the camp.

“Doctor Sarah!” Justine began, breathlessly. “I didn’t mean to peep, but your writing is so big and clear! I only glanced at your list by mistake, but I knew in a minute, and I might have known anyway, knowing you. But why didn’t you ask me to help? Oh, you surely don’t think I’m like that horrible Miss Nash? I don’t want Christmas for myself ever again, but I wouldn’t take it away from other people, and least of all from little children. So let me help, please!”

For one second Doctor Peavey’s heart contracted. She saw the purse in Justine’s hand, and she read the passing thought in Justine’s mind. Would she have to tell Justine that money alone could not buy a Christmas gift, even of the poorest sort? But Mrs. Eliot, as Doctor Peavey had often said, was one of the finest women that she had ever known, and Justine was her daughter.

“Oh!” said Justine, with a little catch of the breath. “You think that I should--” She slipped the purse into her pocket. “Of course you can’t do it all alone. Eighteen children!” she cried. “I’m coming with you, Doctor Sarah!”

Together they trudged through the cathedral gloom of the firs and over the dazzling whiteness of the fields to Hardscrabble. Together they clambered into the ramshackle pung and drove the nine bright miles to Hanscomville. Such plans as they made on that drive! They would have a tree set up in Serena Wetherbee’s cottage, if the odious Miss Nash still refused to let them have the schoolhouse. They would string pop-corn and red cranberries by the yard.

“And we’ll buy lots of sparkly snow and shiny doodaddles at the ten-cent store!” cried Justine. Her eyes were as bright as Christmas stars.

“We’ll cut the candy-bags in the shape of stockings. And we’ll buy a ‘dolly with hair’ for that wee Emmy. I’ll have time to make it a dress and a petticoat, at least. And I’m going to get a sled for Jacob Tracy.”

So they planned all along the road, which seemed short, and in Hanscomville they made the plans come true. Up and down the little main street they bustled, and made their purchases, Doctor Peavey painstakingly, Justine with a lavish hand.

Presently they were stuffing packages into the pung--bags of oranges and nuts and Christmas candies from the grocer’s, bulging, frail bundles from the ten-cent store, skates and pocket-knives--an extravagance at which Doctor Peavey held up her hands--from the hardware shop, and even lordly, important-looking parcels from the general store. Among the last was a doll’s carriage.

“It’s for Emmy’s doll,” said Justine, “and we must find room for it, even if we have to tow it behind the pung.”

On the way home they chatted about their Christmas tree.

“It’s the sort of thing that mother would have loved to do,” Justine said, and then she began to talk about her mother, and to tell sweet, homely incidents of the life that they had lived together.

They had passed through Crosset Cove when Doctor Peavey broke the not unhappy silence into which they had lapsed.

“Justine! If we haven’t forgotten to get a present for the schoolteacher!”

“For that Nash woman?” cried Justine. “She doesn’t deserve a present. I shouldn’t like to say what she does deserve.”

Then they reached the long tug of Nobsco Hill, where, in mercy to the tired old horse, they got out and walked. At the top of the hill they overtook a woman, who was trudging on foot in the twilight. She was thirty, perhaps, with a thin, tired face. She wore a coat that was not thick enough, and a little, old-fashioned neck-piece of worn fur. She was dragging a small fir-tree through the snow, and every little while she stopped to beat her numbed hands together.

“I thought I knew everybody in these parts,” said Doctor Peavey, under her breath, “but she’s a stranger. Why, it must be Miss Nash!”

The woman turned as Doctor Peavey spoke to her. Oh, yes, she would be glad of a lift, she said, in a tired voice. She had been out getting a little tree for her school children. She did not want them to think that Santa Claus had forgotten them.

Doctor Peavey’s eyes, seeking Justine’s, read assent in their softened expression.

“We were planning a little surprise for your children,” she said, “but we’ll need help to put it through. Couldn’t you spend the night with us, and string cranberries and sew candy-bags?”

So the amazing thing came to pass--the odious Miss Nash sat that evening at the camp table, and worked swiftly to make real the Christmas plans. So silent and so white she was that even Serena forbore to sniff at her.

And a yet more amazing thing came to pass. The next morning, when Doctor Peavey had prepared a hot early breakfast for Miss Nash, and had set her part way on her road to the schoolhouse, she returned to camp to find Justine--the old Justine of Nobsco summers--waiting to confide in her.

“She isn’t horrid at all!” Justine broke out. “It’s Ellen Nash, I mean. After you sent us upstairs last night and said that we must rest--did you do it on purpose, Doctor Sarah?--she talked to me. She said she hadn’t talked in months. It was the picture, you know, there on my bureau. She asked if it was my mother, and I--I told her how she died a year ago. And then she told me. Doctor Sarah, there are just she and her mother--and her mother is at the sanitarium with tuberculosis. What chance she has to get well is spoiled by her fretting to have her daughter near her, and they have so little money that that is out of the question. So Ellen Nash has been trying to earn a little by teaching. On Wednesday she got notice from the committee that she wouldn’t be reëngaged for next term. And the same day she had a letter from her mother--a pitiful letter! That Christmas was coming, and they couldn’t be together--that they would never be together! And she says she guesses she was half-crazy, but that morning, when little Emmy Tracy asked her if Santa Claus would come this Christmas, she answered right out of her heart that there wasn’t any Santa Claus, and that all the talk about love and Christmas fellowship was just a story. O poor thing! I can understand! Why, Doctor Sarah, she only went one little inch farther than I had gone, and she is so much worse off than I. For my blessed mother never suffered any, and we were together up to the very last hour. Doctor Sarah!”

“Yes, Justine?”

“I--I haven’t been doing this year as mother would have expected me to do.”

“That’s all over now,” said Doctor Peavey, heartily. She hardly knew how truly she had spoken, but she knew an hour later, when Justine again was at her side.

“Doctor Sarah,” she said, with her old energy, “can we go home to-night, on the night train?”

“What of our tree at Hardscrabble?”

“Of course we won’t disappoint the children. We’ll write a letter, in the name of Santa Claus, and ask them to Serena Wetherbee’s on Christmas day. She says she’d be glad to have them. You wouldn’t think, to look at her dear old granite face, that she loved children so. And Ellen Nash will have the tree and the presents all ready. O Doctor Sarah, it would have made you cry to hear how she went out to get a tree, and had even taken some of her hard-earned money to buy nuts and apples for the children, because she wanted to make up for what she had said! But now they’ll have a sure-enough Christmas at Hardscrabble, and we’ll go home. There’s so much I must do, and only a day to do it in! So many children that mother wouldn’t want to have go unremembered! And you, Doctor Sarah, you’re willing to go home?”

“Yes,” said Doctor Peavey.

It was a Christmas of bright sun and glad weather. Sarah Peavey and her sister set crimson roses beneath their mother’s picture and opened their gifts in its presence. Sarah Peavey had the medical book that she had needed, and a brown print of a Madonna, and even a ticket for the opera. But the gift that she valued most came in the twilight. The telephone-bell rang, and over the wire came Justine Eliot’s voice:

“Is it you, dear Doctor Sarah? I wanted to tell you. I’ve seen my old cousin Hester. She’s tired of hiring maids, you know, and she’s been looking for a woman to be a sort of companion housekeeper in her little apartment. I told her about Ellen Nash, and she’s sending for her. She’ll pay her three times what the Hardscrabble school paid, and Miss Nash will be able to go often to see her mother. Doctor Sarah!”

“Yes, Justine.”

“Do you remember my telling you about that fir-balsam pillow I made up last year--the one I thought I couldn’t ever touch again?”

“I remember, child.”

“I sent it off yesterday, in holly wrappings--to Ellen Nash’s mother. And that’s all, Doctor Sarah, dear, only--I wanted to wish you--Merry Christmas!”

[14] This story was first printed in “Youth’s Companion,” December 14, 1911. Reprinted by permission of the author and “Youth’s Companion.”

THE KING OF THE CHRISTMAS FEAST[14]

_Elaine Sterne_

The little boy in No. 60 pressed his nose against the cold window-pane and looked out over the school yard. It was a deserted white courtyard, with a few muddy footprints zigzagging across the snow toward the second dormitory. There was, to be sure, a rusty puddle in one corner where the drops from the rain-pipe spattered, but aside from that, four gray walls with staring windows looked him back square in the eye, no matter how far he twisted his head.

The little boy had been ill. Even now, a bright red flannel compress was wound about his tender throat, and he was propped up in a much-too-big Morris chair, with a plaid rug across his knees. There is nothing to being sick at school--nothing at all. The little boy in No. 60 could have told you that, because he had had two months of it, and only now, at Christmas time, had he begun to get well.

Of course, on the other hand, the infirmary is good sport, with Mrs. Darling fussing over you and feeding you hot broths from a little blue china bowl. But even with Mrs. Darling tucking you in here and patting you down there, and even with the boys stumbling in for a few minutes to chatter about the junior team and the senior squad, there is something very “wantable” that you miss most fearfully much. Something that begins with a capital “M.” The little boy in No. 60 never let himself get farther than the capital “M,” because his mother was a whole ocean away, and it wasn’t any good wishing for her anyway, you see, it cost so much to come.

The little boy in No. 60 sat by the window a long time, until the shadows began to get long and black and reaching, and a crisp chilliness was in the air. He wound the plaid rug tightly about him, until only his sharp little chin peeked out, and he was glad when he heard the door click and Mrs. Darling rustled in.

“And was the little plum-pudding left all by himself?” she asked, switching on the lights briskly. “Such a busy day as it’s been--what with putting the place to rights after the young gentlemen, and getting the perfessers off for the holiday, why we forgot all and everything about you. You’re not cold, are you?”

“Not very,” said the little boy, quietly; “not very, at all.”

“Well, I’m having Nora build us a fire in the study, and I’ll carry you down across my shoulder, like the little pack of bones that you are.”

“Perhaps I could walk, if you--”

“Walk! And do you think I couldn’t lift you, after caring for you two whole months? Mercy! but the boy’s getting well!”

Even as she spoke, she was bundling the plaid about him and lifting him gently. There is something rather revolting in having a woman carry you, just like a tiny baby, and the little boy’s mouth stiffened, and he stuck out his chin.

“Just as you like,” he said. “Only do be sure nobody sees you doing it.”

Mrs. Darling laughed aloud. “I’ll be so careful that I’ll drop you like a hot potato if any one comes sneaking around.”

And so the little boy in No. 60 was carried ignominiously down the long stairs, his fair head resting against Mrs. Darling’s plump shoulder.

Nora, down on her hands and knees, was piling logs on a roaring fire. It did look cozy. The little boy was almost glad he had come, only fires and crackling logs somehow need a great laughing crew about them. You really shouldn’t be at all lonesome beside a fire, because it is such a big, warm, glorious, friendly thing. Mrs. Darling set him down carefully and stuffed a pillow behind his back. The little boy quite hated the sight of a pillow, but he let it stay because it _did_ feel good in that spot, and then she bustled away, for just “half a minute,” and left him watching Nora, still poking and prodding the fire as though she were trying to keep it awake.

Suddenly he spoke. “Nora,” he said, “what ever are you crying for?”

Nora did not answer, but her shoulders began to shake, and she dropped the poker.

“Nora, I guess perhaps I know why you’re crying,” he said thoughtfully.

“O-o-h!” moaned Nora, her hands over her face. “It’s homesick I am, and I’ve thried me bes’ niver to shid a tear, an’ now what’ll Mrs. Darlin’ say?”

“Never mind her,” he said soothingly. “Never mind her at all. Perhaps, Nora, if you keep on crying, I’ll cry too, and it wouldn’t be very good for me, I don’t--believe.” There was the least bit of a catch in his voice, and Nora swung around.

“For shame on me!” she cried, “whin it’s you as should be mournin’--bein’ so sick an’ little an’ swate. Sure, an’ don’t you begin to cry, for Mrs. Darlin’ will be blamin’ me.”

“I’ll try not to,” he said quietly. “I’ll try very hard. Nora,” he said, “have you a-a--m-oth--”

“No,” she said, shaking her head, “I’ve niver had one--that is, since I was too schmall to remimber.”

“Then what are you homesick for?”

“It’s me brothers, and sisters, and their childer, an’ the tree, an’ stockin’s,--an’--oh, it’s Christmas--”

“I see,” he said solemnly.

“Nora,” he added suddenly, “why couldn’t we have a tree?”

“Sure, an’ where’d we get it?”

“I don’t know, except where everybody gets trees--I guess you buy them.”

“Yes, an’ they’re after costin’ a heap of money, too.”

“I suppose so,” he said. Then he clasped his hands. “Nora,” he said, “we simply _must_ have some kind of a tree, because, you see, it wouldn’t be Christmas at all if we didn’t.”

“There ain’t nothin’ in the house that’d do for a tree, I don’t suppose.”

“No--not unless--oh, Nora, the hat-tree! The _hat_-tree!”

“The hat-tree, is it? A shiny mahogany tree? Oh, it’s better than that we can do.”

“I believe,” his eyes were very bright--“I believe that would do all right. Of course we’d have to pretend it was a glorious tree that reached to the ceiling, and that it was aglow with candles--and--and, Nora, w-we could play I was the king, and you, and Mrs. Darling, and old Patrick, and the cook were poor subjects that I had invited in for the--the--feast; and we could have apples--and stockings--and nuts--and--”

“Sure, I don’t believe Mrs. Darlin’ will be lettin’ you do it.”

But just at that moment Mrs. Darling, bearing a big tray, appeared.

“Guess what you’re going to have for supper to-night,” she called across the cloud of steam that rose, but the little boy was too eager to guess.

“Oh, Mrs. Darling!” he cried, “can’t we have a Christmas party here? Can’t we have you and Nora and Patrick and--”

“A Christmas party! And this Christmas eve! Whatever are you thinking of? With Nora, and old Patrick, and no tree or nothing--”

Something about the little boy’s face stopped her short. Perhaps it was his eyes. You see, they had grown very large and “wishful” since his illness, and they had a way of speaking much more distinctly than his lips. He did not say a word, but just watched Mrs. Darling until she felt a big lump spring into her throat.

“I guess we can manage it somehow,” she said suddenly, “although I don’t see exactly how.”

The little boy clapped his hands.

“Let me do it!” he cried. “I’m going to pretend that I am--well--a sort of a--” It was much easier telling Nora things than Mrs. Darling. Some people have such an understanding way.

“Sure,” broke in Nora, “it’s a king he’s goin’ to be, with us a-bowin’ an’ a-scrapin’ before him!”

“I thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind,” said the little boy, apologetically, a pink flush mounting into his pale cheeks. “You see, it would only be pretending, and I--guess--perhaps--Patrick, and the cook, and Nora wouldn’t mind pretending, on Christmas, just this once, when it’s only a make-believe Christmas, after all.”

“You can be as big a king as you want to,” said Mrs. Darling, with a laugh, “if you eat the chicken soup I’ve brought you and the buttered toast.”

The little boy sighed contentedly and obediently tucked a napkin under his chin. He could feed himself now. He was very glad of that. But to-night his hand trembled a bit, and he set down his spoon hastily.

“I don’t believe I want any soup,” he said slowly, but Mrs. Darling shook her head.

“Here, let me give it to you. And then you’ll have time after dinner to think up what you are going to do. I believe we could roast some of the chestnuts Patrick picked up to-day.”

So the little boy drank each mouthful as quickly as he could, and munched the toast without speaking another word. After he had finished, Mrs. Darling brought him a pad and pencil.

“Here, Your Majesty,” she said, smiling, “write down your commands.” The little boy’s eyes brightened, and he looked up at her shyly.

“You don’t mind playing it, do you?” he asked.

“Mind! Why, I guess it will do us all a world of good, old as we are,” she said.

Of course after that, there was nothing for him to do but to write down, in a shaky hand, his commands.

“Cut down the highest tree in the forest,” he wrote first. “It must be so high and so strong that it takes three men to chop it down. Then carry it into the banquet-hall and set it up.” Here he stopped. “Do you suppose we _can_ have the hat-tree, Mrs. Darling?” he asked.

“You can have anything you want,” she said firmly.

“Order the Great-High-Tree-Trimmer, Sir Patrick, to enter, and to hang the gold and silver bells on the tree, and to light the candles-- We can pretend the hat-tree has candles on it, can’t we?” he paused to ask.

“Of course we can,” she assured him.

“Then light the-- What was it they burned at Christmas, Mrs. Darling?”

“The Yule log.”

“Yes. Light the Yule log, and pile up the presents under the tree--all kinds--whatever any one has ever wished for in the world. Then hang the stockings on the mantel, and let the Great-High-Filler, Lady Nora, fill them with toys and books and--and--electric engines. Then let the doors be flung open and the guests enter. There!” he said, with a little sigh, “that’s all.”

“That’s enough for to-night,” said Mrs. Darling, looking at his flushed cheeks. “Just put your seal to it.”

The little boy solemnly wrote “Rex,” just as he had seen it done in books, and handed the paper to Mrs. Darling with a smile.

“It will be a--a glorious--Christmas,” he said bravely; “just a glorious one!” Then he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, for he was suddenly very tired.

* * * * *

Have you ever awakened on Christmas morning, with the cold clear sunlight slanting across your floor, and the blue sky peeking in your window, and yet not even felt the least bit glad it _was_ Christmas? The little boy opened his eyes and looked around as though he half expected to see a bursting stocking, and to hear his moth-- He jerked over on his side. Even if it was Christmas morning, what was to prevent a fellow from taking another nap! But something hot and wet slid down his cheek, before he could stop it, and, as long as there wasn’t any one around, it didn’t make so much difference. But the little boy brushed it angrily away and sat up in bed.

“Merry Christmas!” he said fiercely to the table in the corner. “Merry Christmas!” and he lay back on his pillows with his eyes fixed on the ceiling and his lip between his teeth. Somebody was whistling in the lower corridor. He could hear it quite distinctly, and it sounded so glad and cheerful that the little boy slid to the floor, although his legs wabbled under him, and opened the door.

“Hullo, down there!” he called over the banisters. “Merry Christmas!”

“Hullo, up there!” came back old Patrick’s crackled voice. “Merry Christmas, Your Majesty.”

The little boy laughed out loud.

“Patrick, Patrick, do come up! How did you know to call me that?”

“Sure, Your Majesty, I’ll be there as soon as I mop up the last few steps. Git back into bed, and I’ll come and pay you me respects.”

The little boy climbed back gladly under the warm covers and waited for the old man, his eyes shining eagerly.

Patrick thumped heavily up the stairs, then rapped loudly on the little boy’s door.

“You may enter,” said the little boy, stiffly, though he did giggle just the least bit, for old Patrick had pulled off his cap and shuffled in with his head bent.

“The top o’ th’ mornin’ to Your Majesty!” he said, his eyes twinkling.

“The same to you, Sir Patrick. Have you cut down the--the highest tree?”

“Sure, and it’s so high that I’m after thinkin’ the little people have bewitched it.”

“And--and where have they put it?”

“Right beside your throne, Your Majesty.”

“Oh,” said the little boy, with a gasp, “I forgot about having a throne! Isn’t that fine!”

“And the ceremonies are to begin immejetly after your royal breakfast.”

“But, Patrick--Sir Patrick, I mean,--can we have the chestnuts you picked?”

“Sure thirty men have been gatherin’ chestnuts for Your Majesty since yesterday mornin’--and the chief cook is roastin’ ’em on the kitchen stove.”

“Oh--oh--and when can we have the feast?”

“Whin every one’s wished for whatever they wants the most in the world,” said old Patrick, with never a smile, “and not a minute before!”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that, Your Majesty; just that!” he said solemnly as he backed out of the room.

“Oh, wait, Sir Patrick!” the little boy cried.

“I can’t wait, Your Majesty, for there’s much to be done, includin’ shovelin’ the snow off the front path.” And with a wave of his hand he was gone.

The little boy bombarded Mrs. Darling with questions when she appeared with his breakfast.

“What did Patrick mean? When are we going to begin? Oh, what ever does Patrick, and Nora, and the cook want for Christmas? What do you suppose I can give them that will make them ever so happy?”

“Help! help! Your Majesty!” cried Mrs. Darling, putting her hands over her ears. But the little boy persisted.

“Please, couldn’t I give them something?”

“Well,” said Mrs. Darling, importantly, “if you won’t tell, I have a present for each one of them.”

“Oh, but you had them to give yourself!”

“It doesn’t matter who gives things, Your Majesty, so long as people get them. It’s the getting them that counts.”

The little boy nodded gravely. There was a great deal in that. And he waited for Mrs. Darling to continue.

“There are a pair of heavy woolen mittens for Patrick to keep his hands warm all winter, and for Nora a red scarf of just the right shade to set off her black hair and eyes. For the cook there is a stout new pair of overshoes, hers being worn to the very sole.”

But still the boy was not satisfied. Mrs. Darling saw it in his eyes, and she guessed the reason.

“As for me,” she said carelessly, “I don’t expect to get anything--let alone what I really want and need most of anything in the world.”

“W-what _do_ you need?” asked the little boy, eagerly, entirely forgetting about his breakfast.

Mrs. Darling shrugged her shoulders. “It’s something I have use for every day, and nobody could be expected to think of it.”

The little boy hitched his shoulders impatiently. “It’s fun telling what you want, anyhow,” he said.

“Well, then, I never can remember the things I have to do without putting them down on a pad, and I never have a pad handy. If only some one would string some sheets of paper together for me to scribble things on. But what’s the use of talking! Whoever would think of such a thing!”

The little boy smothered a laugh the best way he could, and tried to look very solemn while Mrs. Darling lifted the tray off his knees.

“The packages have all got to be tied up, and, although I haven’t a bit of red ribbon, pink and blue will do every bit as well,” she said.

“Yes,” agreed the little boy, “only--only don’t come back for--about half an hour, will you? I want to write--to--well, some letters, you know.”

Mrs. Darling nodded, and closed the door softly.

* * * * *

Of course, when you have only half an hour to make a whole Christmas present, it behooves you to hurry. The little boy reached over for his dressing-gown and slipped his arms into it, then drew on his slippers. He remembered his arithmetic pad--or, rather, there _had_ been an arithmetic pad before he was taken ill--and it ought to be in his desk drawer, behind the French Grammar. He opened the drawer and pushed aside the French Grammar with a shout, for there lay the pad! He lifted it out, and, as he did so, something slipped from its pages. It was a letter. He knew the writing, even if he had not recognized the foreign stamp. He stood very still, staring at it where it had fallen, a white blur, on the floor. Then he winked his eyes hard and picked it up.

“My darling little son,” it ran, “if I could only be with you this--”

“Pshaw!” he said huskily, “it costs so much to come!” And he turned his back abruptly on the desk without another word.

When Mrs. Darling knocked at the door, a short time later, there was a long pause before a hurried “Come in,” replied.

The little boy looked very uncomfortable, as though he were just about to be caught doing something he shouldn’t do, and there was a look about one of his pillows as though something had been hastily stuffed beneath it. Mrs. Darling’s arms were full of packages and paper, besides a quantity of pink and blue ribbon which gave her very much the appearance of a Maypole.

“Will Your Royal Majesty fasten up the presents now?” she asked.

“Yes,” said the little boy, gravely; “but how about the stockings? There must be stockings.”

“The stockings are already hung by the mantelpiece in the study, just as Your Majesty commanded, and Lady Nora is filling them with fudge and nuts and apples, besides a sprinkling of ginger-cookies, that she made at the last minute.”

“O-o-oh!” cried the little boy; “how splendid!”

“And Sir Patrick is trimming up the tree with great boughs of evergreen.”

The little boy’s face was radiant.

“And nobody knows what they’re going to get?”

“I should say not!” said Mrs. Darling; “although I heard Nora wishing for a red scarf a few minutes ago.”

Then the little boy set to work. There are any quantity of ways to tie up Christmas presents so that they will look as though they were full of your heart’s desire. Of course to do that you must have tissue-paper that is soft and crinkly, and red, red ribbon, besides a sprig of holly to lay across the top. The little boy had only stiff brown paper, but it did very well, for it bulged out in places where it shouldn’t have, and made the packages look a great deal more imposing than they really were.

Mrs. Darling insisted on his getting dressed after that. There was a very best suit in the closet that he had not worn for weeks, and he slipped it on, although it hung rather loosely upon him.

“Kings always have to dress up,” she explained; “that’s one of the worst things about being a king.” So the little boy submitted to having his hair brushed and his face washed, although he would a great deal rather have been left alone to finish his present.

“Of course you can’t go down into the study until the feast is ready,” she said. “You see, every one is getting dressed for it, including old Patrick himself, so as to be fit to enter the banquet-hall.”

The little boy nodded. He understood exactly how one must appear before a king, and he felt just a little sorry for Patrick and the rest. Mrs. Darling gathered up the packages.

“Nora is going to hang them on the tree,” she explained, “and when the guests have all assembled, why, then I’ll send the heralds to escort you to your court.”

After Mrs. Darling had left him, he sat still a long time, listening to the hum of voices in the lower corridor. There was an excitement in the air, something that seemed to hum and throb and thrill. Perhaps it was the sweet smell of the cranberry sauce that was wafted up to him, or perhaps it was Nora’s shrill whispering, but it was there--a great unknown _something_ that sent the little boy’s pulses leaping.

After a while, he heard some one stamping up the stairs.

“Sure and is the king ready for the feast?” called out Patrick’s voice.

“Yes, oh, yes!” said the little boy, breathlessly; “but, Patrick, Patrick, do hang this on the tree for Mrs. Darling, won’t--”

He stopped short, for at his door stood a bowing Patrick in a shabby black suit, and a curtseying Nora in a bright blue dress. Between them they held a cushion. The little boy recognized it. It was one of the green plush cushions from the headmaster’s couch, and he laughed aloud.

“If you’ll be climbin’ on the pillow,” said Nora, as they lowered it between them, “we’ll be carryin’ you to the feast.”

Somehow when the little boy--white and fair and eager--was perched on the cushion, he did look like a flaxen-haired little king, between two loyal subjects. It was a very serious matter to him, and although his mouth would curl at the corners when they fell out of step, his eyes were very grave, and he bowed his head first to Mrs. Darling, then to the cook, who awaited him at the foot of the stairs.

“Three cheers for the king!” shouted old Patrick at the top of his voice.

“Three cheers!” they called.

“Let the king make a speech,” cried Patrick, and Mrs. Darling echoed, “Speech!”

“Oh!” cried the little boy. Then he recovered himself, and his eyes wandered over their heads, beyond, to the closed door. “Dear, dear people,” he said, in a hurried, breathless sort of way, “may this be the--the--merriest Christmas you have ever had. May you get whatever you want--even if it is the impossiblest thing in the world--even if it--it--costs so much--”

“Ah hah!” cried Patrick quite forgetting that a king must never be interrupted, no matter how long he takes. “Ah hah, it’s a pair of gloves I’m wishin.’ for, but never a glove will I get!”

“And as for me,” cried Mrs. Darling, “His Majesty is the only one who knows what I want, and that’s quite enough, seeing it’s such a hopeless thing!”

“It’s a beautiful rid shawl I’m after wantin’,” sighed Nora; “but it’s niver a rid shawl I’ll see this Christmas--”

“And I need a pair of overshoes the worst way,” said the cook, smiling; “but whoever would think of that!”

“Oh!” cried the little boy, his eyes shining with gladness. “Oh! now we can surely go to the feast, for every one’s wished for what they want most in the world--do hurry and open the door!”

“Wait!” said old Patrick, raising his hand, “I haven’t heard His Majesty askin’ for a thing--I--”

“But kings, Patrick--kings don’t ever _get_ things, they all the time _give_ them!”

“This is Christmas, Your Majesty, and before that door is opened, every one, king included, wishes for the thing he wants most. Quick now--what’ll you have?”

“Oh,” said the little boy, suddenly shrinking, “please--_please_--”

“Go on, Your Majesty,” said Patrick, firmly, “for until you wish the feast stays on the other side of the door.”

“Oh--oh--” the little boy covered his face, “I--I--mustn’t even think about it--and--and I’m trying--”

“Is it a ball you’re wantin’?”

“Oh, no!”

“A steam-engine?”

“No!”

“A pair of boxin’-gloves?”

“No--no--_no_! It’s--my--mother--I want!” he said, with a sob.

“Hullo!” said Patrick, flinging the door open suddenly, “and why couldn’t you have said that long ago, instid of keepin’ her sittin’ here and waitin’ for you full half an hour--”

* * * * *

Late that night, after Nora, with her red scarf over her shoulders, had gathered up the remains of the Christmas feast, and only a low, red, cozy light gleamed beneath the burnt-out logs, the little boy raised his head from his mother’s shoulder and laid his hand on her cheek.

“But it cost so much to come!” he said softly, with a little shake in his voice. She drew him down in her arms, with a way mothers have.

“Look!” she whispered, “there’s the last spark! “Wish--quick--wish!”

“I wish,” he said slowly, “--I wish every girl and boy in the world has had as happy a Christmas as I have. I wish--”

But he didn’t get any farther, for the tiny red spark went out quite gently, as if it did not want at all to disturb the little boy in No. 60 and his mother.

[14] Reprinted from “St. Nicholas Magazine” with permission.

NANCY’S SOUTHERN CHRISTMAS[15]

_Harriet Prescott Spofford_

They had always kept Christmas at home, even if in no very expensive way. On the very last one, Johnny had had his skates, tied to his stocking, and inside it, an orange and nuts and raisins, and some little trick-joke, and a stick of candy; and Robby had had his sled, and Marnie her book, and Bessie her tea-set; and Mr. Murtrie, the father, had a pair of wristers that Nancy had crocheted, and a muffler that his wife had knit; and the mother had a needle-book that Marnie had made, and a bread-plate that Johnny had whittled out, and a piece of jig-saw work from Robby, and a muff from the father. And Marnie had written a poem to Father and Mother, which all the others criticized violently and ruthlessly, but which was privately regarded as a great achievement by every one of them.

But what was there to do here with sleds and skates! Great use for a muff out in the middle of the Texas prairie, to which they had come from the North. Why, yesterday the thermometer was just at summer heat, and roses were blossoming!

At home how gay it was with every one coming and going, with purchases and parcels and merry secrets, with the hanging of the green, with big snow-drifts, and coasting down Long Hill by starlight, with going to church in the forenoon, and coming home to turkey and cranberry sauce, and a pudding in blue flames! Here there was nothing, there was nobody. There wasn’t a shop within a hundred miles, and if there were, there was no money with which to buy anything. For Mr. Murtrie had come to grief in his business, losing, when all debts were paid, everything but this ranch, to which he had brought his family, and where it seemed like a new world.

At first, it had been so novel, no one thought of homesickness. Nancy herself had enjoyed as much as any one the singing of the mocking-birds at night, the flashing of the cardinal’s red wings in the radiant mornings and the bubbling of his song, the fragrance of the jasmines, the beauty of the innumerable flowers, the charm of the wide landscape, the giant trees draped in their veils of gray moss; she had enjoyed hearing the boys tell about the batcaves, with their streams of unnumbered wings going out by dark and coming in by dawn in myriads; she had enjoyed lying awake at night to hear the water gently pouring through the irrigation ditches from the _madre_ ditch, and drowning all the land in its fertilizing flood to the sound of slow music; she had enjoyed watching the long flights of wild ducks; seeing a spot apparently covered with yellow flowers that suddenly turned into a flock of birds that rose and flew away. She had enjoyed the strange cactus growths that seemed to her like things enchanted in their weird shapes by old magicians; she had enjoyed the thickets of prickly pear, the green and feathery foliage of the mesquit bushes, many of them no higher than her head, but with mighty roots stretching far and wide underground, the Indians having burned the tops in their wild raids, year after year, long ago. But now Nancy was longing for the bare branches of her old apple-tree weaving their broidery on the sky, for the young oak by the brook which held its brown leaves till spring, for the wide snow-fields, the shadows of whose drifts were blue as sapphire. She was longing to hear the bells ring out their gladness on Christmas eve and Christmas morning, for the spicy green gloom of the church, for all the happy cheer of Christmas as she had known it. Bells? There wasn’t a bell within hearing; there wasn’t a church, except the ruins of an old Spanish mission three or four miles distant. How could there be Christmas green where there wasn’t a spruce or a fir! There was only this long, dreary prairie of the cattle-range under its burning blue sky. It was the very kingdom of loneliness. Christmas without snow, without an icicle, without whistling winds,--oh, it wasn’t Christmas at all!

And then suddenly, as the angry words resounded and echoed in her mind, she asked herself what made Christmas, anyway? Certainly it wasn’t the things people did. In some places they kept it with blowing of horns and burning of fire-crackers, as they did Fourth of July. Perhaps in that way they expressed as much gladness as others did with the pealing from belfries and the rolling of organ tones. For Christmas was a time to be glad that Christ came to make all Christendom good, and blessed, and happy.

And, just as suddenly, Nancy could not help asking herself what she was doing to express gladness or to make Christmas happy. North pole or south pole, Christmas was Christmas, and it wasn’t all in pleasure or all in gifts; and she got out of bed, and knelt down and said a prayer, and went to sleep in a better frame of mind.

But if it wasn’t all in pleasures or all in gifts, there must be _some_ gifts; and next day, Nancy set herself to thinking out the problem. It was still some time before the great holiday, and every hour must be improved.

For the first thing, she betook herself to one of the men on the range who often came about the buildings; and he found for her several huge horns, and, with his help, and taking Johnny into her confidence, they took grease and brick-dust and scraped and polished these horns till they shone almost like silver. Then the three dug for a big mesquit root and secured one, at last, that grew from a great stock; and they scraped and polished that into a very handsome piece of wood; and, having a little knack of carpentry, they fitted the enormous horns into the mesquit root, and there was a chair for any palace. It was to be their father’s, and was to stand on the gallery, where, some night, the night-blooming cereus that laced the whole front would open its slow, delicious flowers, and shed the balm of heaven about him.

They found it a little difficult to keep this secret, because they began work upon it before Mr. Murtrie went off on his hunting-trip with some friends; but after he had gone, things were easier, as the mother was not inclined to prowl about and look into everything, as the head of a house sometimes thinks necessary.

And for the mother,--they knew where some tall flat grasses grew, near a stream that was brimming at this season, and Johnny waded in and got them. Nancy plaited them into a low work-basket, and lined it with a bit of silk that had been her doll’s skirt in her day of dolls. The doll, that had been religiously put away, was taken from her slumbers and furbished for Bessie’s Christmas. “Why, really, it’s going to be a Christmas, after all,” she said.

“Only it’s so queer to have it so warm,” grumbled Johnny. “Winter without snowballing isn’t winter!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Nancy, beginning to defend the thing she had adopted.

The man who had found the horns for her found also a little baby fox, and that was kept in great seclusion to become, on Christmas morning, a pet for Johnny; and Marnie and Nancy had great times together feeding it. He had the funniest little bark already. “Oh, we are coming along!” cried Nancy.

But there was more to be done. She remembered that once, when her father had taken her to see the ruins of the old mission, she had observed a number of Mexican “shacks,” or huts, near by. She saw the dinner of one family, which consisted of half a sweet-potato and a red pepper. But she had also seen a big cage full of canarios. And so Nancy and Johnny set out to walk over to the mission, losing their way several times, but finding it again all at once. There an Indian woman, who was about thirty years old and looked a hundred, flung her baby, which was the loveliest little harmony of brown and rose you ever saw, into her husband’s arms, and, after a great deal of pantomime and dumb show, sold, for the price of the last piece of silver in Nancy’s purse, a pair of the canarios in a cage made of reeds, each one an exquisite pinch of feathers, a lot of living gems, of all colors of the rainbow, blue, and yellow, and green, and purple, and red, and brown--iridescent little things, with a song like the faintest, prettiest echo of a Hartz canary’s song. And there was Marnie’s Christmas present settled.

But for Robby? Oh, there was the horned toad she had heard about. Robby had seen one in some show or other at home, and had longed for it. Here it was to his hand,--if she could find it. And with the help of the man who had helped her before, and who could not fancy what she wanted it for, find it she did. Robby would be delighted.