CHAPTER IV

The weeks it took for Tommy’s broken bones to mend were a trying period, not only for Tommy himself, but for his mother and Erica as well. The boy tried valiantly to be patient, but he had never stayed in bed a day in his active young life before, and as the days grew into weeks it seemed to him that he could not bear the terrible inaction and monotony another hour. Then, in spite of his best efforts, he would snap at everyone about him, refuse to be pleased with Erica’s hard-working efforts to entertain him, and behave—as he would admit shamefacedly when the grumpy fit had passed—like a spoiled baby generally.

Even Erica grew a little pale and peaked toward the end of Tommy’s convalescence, missing the outdoor life she was used to, but steadily refusing to desert her patient, who came to depend more and more on her as the days passed. Mrs. Folger could not be in the sickroom always, as she had a dozen household duties which must be seen to every hour of the day, and Miss Charity, though she came over when she could, was likewise engaged with her own housekeeping.

The latter insisted that Erica should take at least one brisk walk each day, and of course there was school in the mornings, which could not be given up even for the duties of a nurse. Formerly, Erica had often gone home for early dinner with one of the girls in her class, when the morning session was over—Molly Macy, over on Pearl Street, or perhaps pretty Sara Anne Gardener, who fulfilled all Aunt Charity’s requirements for being a “genteel little lady,” yet managed to be a pleasant enough companion for a few hours “when nothing more exciting offered”—as naughty Erica used to explain to the twins.

But since Tommy’s accident Erica had refused all these invitations, and hurried home to retail a carefully-remembered account of the morning’s events to his envious ears. Tommy felt that, as he had been so unfairly deprived of his exciting sea adventure, it was decidedly hard that he must fall behind his class in school, as well. Erica offered to ask the teacher to assign him some home work, which she could bring back with her each day, but Tommy was not the student Lis had been, and the idea of studying alone, without anyone to explain problems and help him over hard places, did not appeal to him, and the idea was abandoned.

Another factor which served to make both the boy and girl more rebellious against the indoor confinement was that that fall was a particularly fine and sunshiny one on Nantucket. The autumn colors blazed splendidly on the commons; seas and skies were a thrilling and cloudless blue, and the crisp air caused the blood to race faster, and stored up a daily-renewed fund of unspent energy that made a shut-in existence torture to the two active young people.

After the first three weeks, Tommy was allowed to be up and dressed and to go about the house, and even for a few stumping blocks along Orange Street on his new crutches. But that seemed, somehow, only an aggravation to a boy who wanted to run, play ball, tramp the commons, and take up his familiar every-day life along its usual lines. At length, however, what Tommy called bitterly his “term in prison” drew to an end, as most things, both pleasant and unpleasant, have a way of doing. And his final release from the hated crutches coincided with the near approach of Christmas, always a specially festive time on Nantucket.

To be sure, this year Christmas could not be quite like all the other happy Christmases in the two Folger households without Lis—Lis who would be having his Christmas at sea, more than two-thirds of the distance to Canton.

On the road to Surfside on the south shore of Nantucket there was a stretch of low pine woods where the twins and Erica had been in the habit of foraging each year for their Christmas trees. The wind swept over the island with such constant violence that it stunted even the pines growing on the commons. They looked like trees in Japanese prints, little and twisted, with writhing branches stretching out away from the blast. Where the pines were massed closely together, however, as in these woody patches, they were straighter, less tortured by sea winds, though even there they were dwarf trees.

Erica had always loved the clean, pungent fragrance of that pine woods, and she delighted in the gray-feathered, short-eared owls, with their wise little cat faces and stealthy mothlike flight, who lived in the green dimness of its piny aisles. Sometimes on a walk she had started up more than a dozen of the creatures in a single afternoon. And in spite of Lis’s and Tommy’s loud-voiced amusement, she had named that particular stretch of woods on the Surfside road, the “Owls’ Country.”

She used to wonder, whimsically, whether the owls ever guessed that the twins and she robbed their country of two of the biggest and branchiest trees each December, to hang their Christmas packages and candles on. And whether that would serve as an excuse for breaking into the quiet of the grove, and putting the owls to the trouble of removing their stately selves from one tree to another. Sometimes the owls scolded noisily when they were disturbed, and always they stared down their curved, horny beaks superciliously at the intruders, from a safe distance.

Lis was not here to go tree-hunting this year, and partly because Erica felt instinctively that Tommy and she would miss him more if there were only two of them, partly because Tommy’s reknit leg was not yet quite up to all the demands such an expedition would put upon it, she suggested making a party of the occasion and including half a dozen or more young folks. So Mollie Macy and her brothers, Jud and Alex, were invited to join them, with Martin and Lilla Joy, the two fat Covington boys, and Sara Anne Gardener.

The day before Christmas, Tommy harnessed his mother’s sedate brown mare, Polly, to the ancient springless cart that was used for hauling barrels of flour and apples from market, and for bringing in loads of potatoes, garden truck, and fragrant summer hay from the Folger farm out Madaket way. This farm belonged to Miss Charity, Mrs. Callie Folger and Captain Eric jointly, and was managed for them by a capable farmer named Amos Brett.

Tommy drove, since his leg was not strong enough for long walks, and the girls bundled into the cart behind him, sitting on a pile of hay spread out on the bare floor-boards. The other boys tramped alongside, finding no difficulty in keeping up with old Polly’s sober pace.

Miss Charity put a generously filled lunch basket in the cart just as it started, containing cold fried chicken, thick slices of homemade brown bread, still warm from the oven, red apples, crisp brown doughnuts, and a stone jug of sweet cider. Miss Charity was justly proud of her fame as a good cook and provider, and, knowing that Tommy and Erica had had very little pleasure that fall, she had taken particular pains to make the present party one to be remembered.

The cavalcade of young people started out of town in high spirits, and headed for Surfside and Erica’s “Owls’ Country” by one of the sandy rut roads that wound across the commons. It is usually fairly mild on Nantucket until January, and on a sunny day the commons will be almost warm in the hollows around noon. That day was no exception to the general rule. The sun shone down in a hot blaze of gold, and though the wind, when it came, left a nip and tingle in its passing, down in a certain deep depression Erica and Tommy selected for their picnic site near the pine woods the party was quite protected from the blasts.

The ground was carpeted to the depth of a foot or more with dried but still faintly colorful huckleberry vines, with here and there patches of sweet-fern, mealy plum, and soft clumps of the gray Iceland moss. An old blanket was spread out to serve as table and tablecloth in one, and the basket and stone jug were set in the place of honor in the center.

The eight hungry girls and boys sat about the edge of the blanket, and Erica unpacked the basket. Everybody’s appetite had been sharpened to extra keenness by their morning in the crisp December air, and they speedily made ravenous inroads on the tempting fare Miss Charity had provided. But since the business of tree-choosing and chopping was still ahead of them, no one lingered longer than necessary over the meal.

When everything had been neatly replaced in the basket, four shining, newly whetted axes were brought out of the hay on the floor of the cart, and, leaving old Polly to follow at her leisure, the boys and girls hurried on to the woods.

Choosing just the right size and shape always took time; and this year there were not two Christmas trees to be selected, but three, since the young Joys also wanted one for their holiday celebration. The rest of the children were willing enough to lend a hand in the work of cutting down the trees and to offer unsought advice as to the relative merits and failures of the pines finally chosen.

So it was not surprising that the business in hand took most of the short afternoon, and that the expedition should be overtaken by sunset and the soft, smoky purple twilight of early winter, before they had covered half the distance back to town.

They hurried a little faster then, prodding the indignant Polly to greater exertions—not because any of them was afraid of darkness on the familiar commons, but because this was Christmas Eve and there was much to do at home. Later, bands of carol-singers would go from house to house through the town, singing under their neighbors’ windows, and in each window lighted candles would blaze an answering greeting to them across the friendly dark of Christmas Eve.

Lilla Joy pointed toward the northwest, where a low, heavy-looking cloud had risen over the horizon soon after sunset.

“That’s a real snow cloud,” she insisted. “We’ll have a white Christmas, after all.”

“I’m glad,” Erica sighed happily, leaning back in the hay and drawing her woolly red cape about her more tightly, for the wind was decidedly sharp now. Her cheeks burned red from the cold and the day’s exertions, and her eyes, which were the exact shade of the harbor water when the sky was cloudless, shone starrily. She loved Christmas—_loved_ it; every sweet old custom from choosing and bringing home the tree to trimming it with tinsel balls, gilt paper cornucopias, and bunches of gay red holly; and later still, the hanging up of the long, limp stockings over the mantel in the parlor. Last of all, there was the little ceremony of lighting the Christmas candles in all the front windows, upstairs and down.

Snuggled down cozily in the warm hay, Erica shivered excitedly and began to sing, very softly at first, that most beautiful of all the sweet old Christmas songs:

“Silent night, holy night, All is calm, all is bright—”

Her voice lifted a little, joyously, with the second line, and one by one the other children took it up and sang with her, the fresh, happy voices ringing out clearly in the dusk. And so, still singing, they walked and drove into town just as lights began to be lighted in the houses along Orange Street, and a few hardy stars came out overhead through the gathering snow clouds and twinkled down in benediction, as they must have twinkled over a far-away land across the seas, twenty centuries ago, on a group of young shepherds who also came, singing, to celebrate that first Christmas of all.

“Father’s boat was to get in today,” Lilla Joy declared as they dropped Mart and herself at their door. “He promised he’d be home for Christmas. I wonder what he’s brought from Boston.”

“Passengers, for one thing,” Mart laughed. “He was going to bring some cousins of the Gardeners’ over to spend the holidays—off-islanders, you know. I wish’t it was Lis who was coming,” he added, awkwardly. “Doesn’t seem just right to have Christmas without him, does it, Erica?”

Erica put out her hand impulsively and clasped his strong, calloused palm with sudden gratitude. “Thank you, Mart,” she said, softly. “No, it—it seems sort of—all wrong.”

[Illustration: STILL SINGING, THEY WALKED AND DROVE INTO TOWN]

When the others had been left at their several homes, Tommy helped Erica drag her tree into the house and set it up in the usual place between the hearth and the north window. Then, without waiting to trim it, the cousins went across the garden, dragging the last tree between them.

A sound of voices in the sitting room made them stop in the hall of the other house and peep in at the open door. Aunt Callie was seated in her big rocker by the hearth, with Aunt Charity opposite her, and between them, in chairs drawn comfortably up to the red glow of the coals, sat a fair, ruddy-cheeked young man with an unmistakably seafaring air about him, and a slender girl about Erica’s own age, dressed in black.

The girl’s face was pale in the firelight, and so thin the features looked oddly pinched and sharp. Her forehead was puckered in three fine, vertical lines that gave her a fretful, unhappy expression.

At Mrs. Folger’s feet—where the two at the door had not seen her in this first glance—a pretty little girl of three or four sat on a low hassock, one plump, rosy cheek pressed confidingly against Aunt Callie’s knee. The child’s hair, which clustered in tight, bronze-colored curls over her charming little head, reflected the firelight in warm splashes of reddish gold with each move she made, and now, at some sound from the hall, she turned a blue-eyed, baby smile that way.

Mrs. Folger called: “Tommy! Erica! Is that you, dears?”

They came in then, dragging the bushy pine tree, and the curly-haired baby uttered a little shriek of delight at sight of it.

“Clistmus t’ee!” she shouted, gleefully. “Barbee’s Clistmus t’ee. All for Barbee!”

Mrs. Folger addressed the young man with the seafaring look about him, who had risen politely at Erica’s entrance.

“Bernard, this is my niece, Erica Folger—you remember Captain Eric, of course. And my son Tom. Children, this is a cousin of mine, Mr. Bernard Gatchel, whom I have not laid eyes on since my marriage. He came to Nantucket today on Captain Joy’s sloop, on a sad errand.” She hesitated, and laid a gentle hand on the thin, fretful girl’s dark hair.

“These are his sister’s children—Mildred and Barbara Thorne. Their mother and I went to school together in Boston.” Mrs. Folger had not been a Nantucket girl. “Besides being second cousins, we were very close friends and loved one another dearly. Tommy has certainly heard me talk of Cousin Jane Thorne.”

The boy nodded bewilderedly, and then smiled in answer to a flash of small white teeth between Barbee’s parted lips.

“Cousin Jane died a month ago,” Mrs. Folger said. “So this is not a happy Christmas for my poor Milly.” Again that motherly touch on the dark hair; but there was no lighting or softening of the fretful face below it, and Erica, looking on, was conscious of a resentful sense of vicarious rebuff.

“Their father died more than two years ago,” Mrs. Folger wound up her explanation and introduction in one, “and Cousin Bernard here, being mate on a packet that sails out of New York next week, cannot, of course, take charge of Mildred and little Barbee. And Cousin Jane had asked him, before she died, to bring them to me. She knew her babies would be as welcome as my own.”

“You mean,” Tommy asked, startled into unconsidered speech, “that they’re going to—to _live_ here, mother?”

Even as the words escaped him he realized their inhospitable import, and bit his lip, coloring miserably. But—a strange girl in the house—that cunning baby, Barbee, didn’t count, of course—eternally underfoot, making a fellow stay constantly on his company behavior!

The object of his uncomplimentary thoughts turned to stare at him around the back of her chair, her eyes looking enormously big and black in her white, sulky face, and the boy thought he saw in them a malicious enjoyment of his confusion.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, clearly and too sweetly. “Yes, I believe Barbee and I _are_ going to live here. Your mother has very kindly asked us to stay.”

The black eyes passed on to Erica, and stared at her with a keenness that seemed to miss no smallest detail of her appearance.

“Do you live here, too?” the dark girl asked then, fretfully, tapping the toe of her black shoe on the brass andiron nearest her.

“No, I live next door, with Aunt Charity,” Erica said, politely, feeling inwardly guilty because she was so glad she was not to live in the same house with this sulky, unattractive stranger. Feeling, too, tremendously sorry for poor Tommy, who had exchanged the daily companionship of Lis for Milly Thorne.

She had a swift, dismayed vision of the change from the old, happy existence Lis, Tommy, and she had known, which the coming of Mildred and Barbee Thorne would mean. Then the sight of Milly’s black dress softened her to shamed remorse.

“And here I was thinking about Tommy’s and my Christmas being spoiled,” she scolded herself, silently. “Erica Folger, you deserve just no Christmas at all!”