Part 13

But he didn’t like the girls. He simply couldn’t stand the girls. Girls swished their skirts, for one thing, the important silly creatures; swished them into the room and down the aisles, and even when they got safely into their seats they swished and fidgeted and squirmed around, spread out those skirts in wide circles around them, and patted them down in such an utterly silly way. They snickered, too, all the time. Hee, hee, hee! Tee, hee, hee! Jerry could positively hear them in his sleep; he could see them in the dark, putting up small hands before their faces, hee-heeing and tee-heeing behind them, and rolling foolish eyes around. Also, they were cowards and cravens--squealed at the sight of a spider, couldn’t climb a tree worth a cent, sniffled when their feelings were hurt. A detestable tribe, girls!

Jerry used to wonder if his baby sister would grow up to be one of them, swishing her skirts and giggling and sniffling. Most likely. Anybody that would eat hairbrushes would no doubt grow up just as silly. And he used to wonder, too, how it was that women like his mother and the teacher, such utterly lovely people as they now were, had ever been just girls. Could his teacher really have been like these? Did she never throw a ball right, or climb a tree decently, or carry a toad in her pocket? Oh, yes, toads! The girls said they made warts. Fancy that, if you can. Warts! And supposing toads did make warts, who cared? No, Jerry couldn’t endure girls, and that was why he didn’t want a single girl in his whole book when he got it, if he ever did get it. A world without girls was impossible, it seemed; there were such hordes and swarms of them; but a book without girls was entirely feasible, and that was the kind of book Jerry wanted.

And then one day, two weeks before Christmas, it suddenly began to look as though Jerry might get his book after all. It was the teacher’s idea, and when she had suggested it Jerry wondered why in the world he hadn’t thought of such a simple thing. The teacher said: “Now today we’re going to write our letters to Santa Claus. Peter, you pass the pencils, please, and Katinka may distribute the papers. And you must all tell Santa just what you want, and don’t forget commas and periods. Santa Claus is very partial to commas and periods. Last week Katinka wrote a whole page without a single comma. I can’t think what made her.”

Katinka, who was passing papers blushed guiltily, and Jerry, though he hated girls, felt a little sorry for her. Katinka was hardly as odious as most girls. She had reddish short curls, and she wore green butterflies on them. She was fattish, her face was usually sticky from lollipops, her aprons were always torn and dirty, but even she switched herself around a good deal; couldn’t help it, being a girl, Jerry supposed. And once she had stopped in front of Jerry’s house to pat Mutt with a grimy, affectionate paw.

Well, Jerry wrote his letter. He knew precisely what he wanted. So he told Santa Claus all about it, told him about the dragons and pirates and lions and soldiers he wanted in the book, mentioned the blue cover, explained the size, called Santa’s attention to his record as a good boy all year, and stated that there must be no girls in the book. Then he went over the letter, scattering commas and periods lavishly in every sentence, and signed his name, Jerry Juddikins, 123 Whippoorwill Road. As Jerry watched it go up the chimney, he felt a tug at his heart he had never quite felt before; he would get his precious book on Christmas morning; Santa Claus would see to that.

Benjamin Bookfellow came into his workshop the next morning rubbing his hands and telling himself what a really fine job he had in the world, anyway. To live in the North Country with Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus and all the toymakers, to write books all year long for children’s Christmas stockings--what could be finer than that, asked Benjamin Bookfellow of himself. Most of all, he thought, he liked this cozy room of his where the sun shone in so gayly and the Plot Tree, thick with plots for stories, reared its beautiful branches over his head. Benjamin Bookfellow was very happy that morning as he settled down to Page Twenty-four of “Chief Thunder-cloud’s Revenge,” a book he was writing for a little tomboy of a girl, named Katinka, who liked Indian stories almost as much as she liked lollipops, which was saying a good deal.

Pretty soon Hickety-Stickety came in. Hickety-Stickety was the postmaster of the Claus establishment. He had a letter in his hand and he looked worried.

“Santy Claus sent ye this here,” he began. “It’s from a boy as goes to Peppermint Place school. He wants a queer thing, he do. He wants a book as hasn’t got no girls in it.”

Benjamin Bookfellow reached out for the letter. “Pyrits,” it said, “soldieres, draggens”; all that was easy. “no, girls, in it Santa Claus not; one.” A book without girls in it? Benjamin Bookfellow had never heard of such a thing. Girls were absolutely necessary to books. Dragons had to eat them, knights had to rescue them; how could you possibly have a book without a girl in it?

And yet maybe the Plot Tree would have that kind of story on it after all. Benjamin reached up and picked off a luscious fruit. He opened it carefully and out fell the plot, a little round ball with words written all over it. He read it hastily. No, here was a girl right off, a girl and a gnome and a prince, quite obviously a fairy story.

He pulled down another plot, then more plots and more plots and more plots, cut them open and took out the round ball and still not a single story without a girl in it, just as he had feared. Poor Benjamin Bookfellow! His face was as long as your arm.

At supper that night in Santa Claus’ dining room, when Benjamin and Hickety-Stickety and the Twelve Toymakers were all at table with the Clauses, Santa Claus said first thing: “Well, Bookfellow, and did you find a story without a girl in it?”

“I didn’t, sir,” replied Benjamin sadly. “I took off every single plot from the tree, and they all had girls in them.”

Santa Claus’ rosy chops fell. “Have you called in the Authors, Bookfellow?” Santa Claus wanted to know.

Benjamin Bookfellow knew what was coming. The Authors sometimes wrote books to help Benjamin when he got crowded with work.

“No, sir, I haven’t yet.”

“Then do send for them immediately,” said Santa Claus. “We must get Jerry Juddikins’ book, you know, at any cost.”

The next morning Santa Claus sent the reindeer down to the edge of the North Country to meet the Authors, while Benjamin Bookfellow fidgeted and fussed around his study.

At last they came, a whole sleighful--stylish authors, down-at-the-heel authors, shy authors, important authors, authors with fur overcoats, authors with no overcoats, lady authors twittering, authors, authors, authors. But the interview was short. Not a single author could even imagine a book without a girl in it, much less produce one.

“I give it up,” said Benjamin Bookfellow. “Jerry Juddikins will just have to take a regular book, a book with girls in it, and try to be contented with it.”

So he set to work on all the other books he had to finish before Christmas.

Whereupon he discovered, to his horror and dismay, that there wasn’t a plot in the place. He had plucked them yesterday and laid them on his work table, and now they were gone, every single one of them, gone. Benjamin Bookfellow, in great agitation, looked high and low for his plots, in every corner and crevice. He moved the furniture and looked behind the pictures.

And then Benjamin Bookfellow knew the worst. The Authors had stolen his plots, and now he couldn’t write his Christmas books. With a groan Benjamin Bookfellow sank in his chair.

Great was the sorrow of jolly old Santa Claus and great was the sorrow of Mrs. Claus and the Twelve Toymakers when they learned the dreadful news. No Christmas books for children! What a terrible thing!

Well, there they were, Santa Claus and all his helpers, with Christmas not two weeks off, and no books for children’s stockings. Oh, there were some books of course. Benjamin Bookfellow had been writing books all year long, but there was no book for Katinka, for hers was only half finished; and there was no book for Jerry Juddikins, who didn’t want anything but a book for Christmas.

Santa Claus thought maybe the Plot Tree would grow some new plots for the rest of the books, but Benjamin Bookfellow said no. There were some buds on the trees, but you can’t expect buds to be fruit in a week.

“Perhaps if you watered it an extra lot the plots would grow,” said Santa Claus at dinner next day.

“Perhaps if you pruned it--” began Toymaker Number Five, but that was no good either; the Plot Tree had been beautifully pruned just a few weeks before and now was a marvel of perfect branches and healthy sap.

“Did you ever try using a little imagination on it?” asked Toymaker Number Eleven timidly. Everybody stared.

“What’s imagination?” asked Hickety-Stickety.

“Why--” commenced Santa Claus and stopped.

“Why--” began Mrs. Claus and stopped.

“Why--” Benjamin Bookfellow started and stopped.

So Toymaker Number Eleven finished up for them.

“Why, Hickety-Stickety,” he said in a little thin voice, “if you think up a lovely story that never happened, but is better than anything that ever did happen, that’s imagination. There’s a spring,” he added dreamily, “where the waters of imagination grow. I know where that spring is.”

“You do?” everybody at the table cried.

“Yes,” answered Toymaker Number Eleven, still in the same musing voice. “It’s in the deep woods down between green banks. Even in winter the banks are green; the snow melts when it touches them. A hawthorn tree almost hides the spring from view, but at night when the moon is shining you can see the water quite plainly; it’s silver and black and it sings a little song.”

“Well,” boomed Santa Claus in a big voice, “that solves the whole thing. To-night we’ll get some of that wonderful water, and sprinkle it on the Plot Tree and then it will burst forth with plots and Bookfellow can write his books.”

Which is just what happened. When the moon came up that night Benjamin Bookfellow, led by Toymaker Number Eleven, went in the deep woods down to the green banks behind the hawthorn, scooped up a pailful of the wonderful water and took it back to the Plot Tree. At the first sprinkle the buds began to flower; at the next sprinkle the flowers bloomed into green fruit; at the last sprinkle the green fruit turned yellow like oranges and seemed ready to burst. Three sprinkles, and the buds were full-grown plots, ready to be nipped off by Benjamin Bookfellow and used for children’s books. A wonderful thing, imagination. Nobody ever need scoff at it again.

But still Jerry Juddikins’ book was not forthcoming, for even the new plots all had girls in them. Jerry didn’t know he wouldn’t get his book of course. He didn’t dream that in all the store of Santa’s treasures there wouldn’t be a book without a girl in it. So he was very happy.

It was in the evening of two days before Christmas, and already the air of Christmas was abroad. The air crackled with Christmas, the windows of people’s houses flaunted Christmas, the snow crunched with Christmas in every crunch, and everywhere there was that tingling feel of Christmas. Even Mutt had Christmas in his bones and had gone off on an adventure, tail up, nose up, barking with Christmas joy. And then to cap the climax, Mr. Juddikins came home with a job in his pocket! Oh, such joy in the Juddikins’ house! They were all quite delirious with it.

They wished Mutt would come back though. They knew how happy he would be when they told him. Mr. Juddikins hurried out and bought a fat bone for him, such a bone as Mutt had dreamed of all his life but had never yet set teeth upon. They unbolted the door, the more quickly to open it when Mutt came back. Then they sat down and waited, the bone on a plate, the door unlatched.

But Mutt did not come back. Six o’clock came, and half-past six and seven. Eight o’clock came, and half-past eight and nine. The Juddikins went out into the snow-covered garden calling, “Mutt, Mutt, Mutt.” They went up and down Whippoorwill Road hunting and calling and searching. But he was gone and they sat around the fire, Mr. Juddikins and Mrs. Juddikins and Jerry, with terror and ache in their hearts. Even the baby looked sad as she slept in her high chair.

Then, all at once, as they sat there, they heard steps up the walk; not dog steps but human steps, a big, long stride like a man’s and a little short hippety-hop like a girl’s. A knock came at the door, a big rap from a man’s hand, a little tattoo from a girl’s hand. Mr. Juddikins looked fearfully at Mrs. Juddikins, and Jerry looked at them both. Here was somebody to tell them Mutt was dead. They couldn’t move.

The knock came again.

“Go,” said Mrs. Juddikins to Mr. Juddikins.

Mr. Juddikins went, and in tumbled a bundle of red curls, sticky lips, smeared hands, torn coat. It was Katinka. At her heels followed a tall black overcoat with a kind face; Katinka’s father.

“He’s all right, Jerry!” cried Katinka falling into the room. “Mutt’s all right! He’s just a little hurt, and he’s asleep now by our fire. I wrapped his leg up and gave him an enormous supper.”

Katinka’s father spoke next, smiling kindly. “Your dog had a little accident, Mr. Juddikins,” he said.

Accident! Jerry turned white, and Katinka struck in again. “But he’s quite all right, Jerry. He gave me the sweetest looks when I was fixing his leg, and we’ll bring him home in the morning.”

Then Katinka’s father explained to the anxious and bewildered Juddikins what had happened. “It was about seven o’clock,” he said, “and the butcher boy was hurrying his horse down the road, to get home to his supper, I suppose. We heard the horse; he was going like lightning. Katinka was in the yard, and the next thing my wife and I knew was a noise in the road. Katinka was screaming, a dog was yelping. It was your dog, Mr. Juddikins. He had run in front of the cart, and Katinka had run in front of it, too, and had snatched the dog from the horses’ feet.” He looked at Katinka with the proudest eyes. “She really saved him from being killed, I think.”

Katinka had saved Mutt from being killed! That little girl with her sticky hands had run right under the horses’ hoofs and brought their Mutt to safety. The Juddikins couldn’t speak. Their hearts seemed to choke into their very mouths, but they looked at her as if she were something holy.

Katinka started for the door. “It’s all right now,” she said. “I wanted you to know. Oh, he’s a darling dog, Jerry. And his leg is only cut a little because I had to throw him, and he hit the curb.”

“And weren’t you hurt?” asked Mr. Juddikins, the first word any of them had spoken.

“Me? Oh, no. I never get hurt,” answered Katinka loftily, and made for the door.

* * * * *

The next morning Santa Claus received the most surprising letter. He thought it was too late for Christmas letters, but here came one on this very day before Christmas. It was from Jerry Juddikins, and it was written in the wildest haste. You could tell that by the handwriting. It said: _Dear Santa Claus: I, love girls now, please, please. put a girl just like Katinka in my book,._

So Benjamin Bookfellow wrote all morning and all afternoon, a beautiful blue book with pirates and dragons and soldiers in it and a heroine who was just like Katinka, and that night Santa Claus took it to Whippoorwill Road and put it in Jerry’s stocking.

And every day after that Jerry carried his precious book under his arm, and every night he slept with it under his pillow, and he was the happiest boy in the whole world and Katinka was his best friend.

[16] Reprinted from “Jerry Juddikins” by special permission of David McKay Company, publishers, and the author.

THE BISHOP AND THE CARDINAL[17]

_George Madden Martin_

The spread of the spruce-tree at its base, where its branches rested on the snow in the bishop’s yard, was thirty feet. The apex, to which the branches mounted in slanting tiers, was fifty feet above the ground.

The December afternoon was cold--not much above zero. Weather of that kind was most unusual in a region so far south. The sky was gray. Now and then a few big snow-flakes came silently down to join the white brotherhood that had already fallen a foot deep on the level and more than two feet deep in the drifts.

The shrubs about the yard looked like snow hillocks; the round bushes were cone-shaped, the branching ones were wreathed. Not a berry or seed-vessel or grass-spear or weed-tuft was anywhere visible.

In these bleak surroundings, a valiant and energetic gentleman in the scarlet cassock and biretta of a cardinal--a cardinal with wings and beak and feathers, you understand--was darting from point to point of the big evergreen, from apex to branch, from branch to apex, a gorgeous splash of color against the clear green of the boughs and the blue-white of the snow.

The spruce, with the flitting cardinal on its boughs, stood at the side of the bishop’s grounds between his slate-roofed and ivy-clad house and the brick orphan asylum.

The bishop’s bedroom was on the same side of the house as the spruce, and just now the bachelor bishop himself was at a window of the square bay of this chamber, looking out upon his grounds and the big evergreen in the bleak and wintry setting. He was just becoming acquainted with the spruce and his side yard.

The robe that he wore at the moment had less of the episcopal dignity than that of the cardinal in the evergreen; the bishop’s was a gray-and-black dressing-gown, and it was tied about his body with a gray-and-black cord and tassels.

His expression, or what could be seen of it,--for this square-featured, clean-shaven bishop wore a green celluloid shade over his eyes,--was rueful. It was the first Christmas after his arrival from a distant state to be head of this Southern diocese. And behold, three weeks after his coming, here he was--ill with the measles!

He was in his venerable predecessor’s house, and that was why the stately spruce and the cardinal were new to him.

The dwelling, in its old grounds, with a small, slate-roofed church to the left of it and the asylum to the right of it, stood on the car-line a little way out from the chief city of the diocese. The wife of the late bishop had owned it long before trolley-cars were dreamed of; had built the church and the asylum, and given them to her husband’s diocese; had died, and left the dwelling to her husband. When, within a year, he followed her, he had left the place as an episcopal residence for his successors.

The old bishop’s pensioned servants remained, integral parts of the institution. Neither a new broom nor a new bishop must sweep too clean. Even one who has authority, when he finds himself among the old associations and traditions and institutions of a sedate community, must move slowly.

The bishop found the household of which he was bachelor proprietor somewhat dreary. There was old Mrs. Dyer, the housekeeper, a distant relative of the old bishop’s, gold-spectacled, tall and spare. There was old Aunty Sally, the colored cook, silver-spectacled, short and fat. There was Thomas, the colored coachman and gardener, gray-haired, and, for the time, confined to his room over the tool-house by rheumatism. There was old white Tim, the general factotum and furnace-tender of the asylum, the rectory and the church; he had gone to town that morning for his Christmas purchases, and so far, at four o’clock in the afternoon, had not returned. In this venerable company the new bishop felt a mere infant in arms, an infant with measles!--the more so, because from the beginning he had refused to have a trained nurse, and had put himself into the hands of Mrs. Dyer and Aunt Sally.

The house overflowed with flowers and delicacies that his good people, few of whom he yet knew, had sent him. But to-day as he stood at his window and gazed out on the winter scene he was feeling lonely and a little aggrieved. No doubt it was the bleakness of the day and the nearness of the Christmas season under the present conditions of captivity, that depressed him.

In a direct line across from him, at no great distance, stood the asylum; its side windows looked on his own, and both sets of windows looked upon the spruce-tree. As he had barely established himself in his present residence when he took the measles, he had had no chance to become acquainted with the asylum, or its affairs, or its inmates.

Had that little red-feathered fellow out there on the snow-clad evergreen-tree gone crazy? The bishop came from the city, and knew neither the spruce nor the cardinal by name. The cardinal was dipping and rising about the tree, fluttering and darting, now here, now there, from branch to twig, from twig to branch.

“And always as if he had his red-ringed small eye on the gallery,” said the bishop, who meant by “gallery,” himself at the window.

Just then the cardinal left the big spruce-tree altogether, and dropped to the snow-mantled clump of spirea nearer the house. Immediately there appeared upon the branches of the spruce two flashing, swaggering, top-knotted blue jays.

The cardinal flew from the spirea; down from the spruce dropped the jays to the bush that he had left; and almost at once two brown and speckled sapsuckers perched upon the branches of the evergreen.

The bishop looked on with interest. Almost parrot-like the cardinal was clinging with the coral-red claws of his coral-red legs to the sharp edge of the window-sill; his red head and coral beak were held sidewise, and his beady eyes were upturned sharply. Behind him was a world that was cold and desolate and threatening. The white flakes were falling persistently.

Then the bell of the bishop’s telephone rang. The doctor who twice a day came in to see him and cheer him up had forbidden him to use his eyes or to do any hard work or to see his secretary, who had not had the measles; but he could use his ears and his tongue. So he had had the telephone brought into his room and set upon a table, and he talked daily with his dean at the cathedral in town, with various members of his clergy, and with other official persons.

He turned from the window at the ring, and lifted the receiver.