Part 10

So off once more went Dame Quimp, with 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 following behind her, one after another.

They walked and they walked,--over the bridge and past the mill; out beyond the golf-links; up one hill and down another; across ploughed fields, and through narrow woodland paths, till they were all very tired and cold, and the barber’s grandmother, being such an old woman, was quite worn out. Dame Quimp, however, would listen to no complaints, but kept them all strictly in line and hurried them on, until, in a couple of hours’ time, they reached Christmas Town.

They found Santa Claus in his shop busily engaged in tying up delightful-looking parcels in gay paper, with seals and labels, gold and silver cord, scarlet and green ribbons, and sprigs of holly scattered around him in every direction.

“Good day, old friend!” cried Dame Quimp as she entered. “I have done a good morning’s work, as you see--all these are fine, first-class grumblers, and not one of them deserves a Christmas gift. Let me introduce them--here are 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. Take a good look at them so you will make no mistakes.”

“Oh dear, dear!” cried Santa Claus, in much distress. “Is it really as bad as that! I never should have thought you could find so many grumbly people in a town full of pleasant things, with so much to make them happy! I suppose I ought to give them a severe lesson to check this terrible habit, but I’m afraid, Dame, that I should quite spoil my own Christmas pleasure if I were to pass them all by!

“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.”