Sandy’s Christmas snapdragon.”
XXXI. A CHRISTMAS FAIRY*
* Reprinted with the permission of the Henry Altemus Company.
JOHN STRANGE WINTER
It was getting very near to Christmas time, and all the boys at Miss Ware’s school were talking about going home for the holidays.
“I shall go to the Christmas festival,” said Bertie Fellows,” and my mother will have a party, and my Aunt will give another. Oh! I shall have a splendid time at home.”
“My Uncle Bob is going to give me a pair of skates,” remarked Harry Wadham.
“My father is going to give me a bicycle,” put in George Alderson.
“Will you bring it back to school with you?” asked Harry.
“Oh! yes, if Miss Ware doesn’t say no.”
“Well, Tom,” cried Bertie, “where are you going to spend your holidays?”
“I am going to stay here,” answered Tom in a very forlorn voice.
“Here–at school–oh, dear! Why can’t you go home?”
“I can’t go home to India,” answered Tom.
“Nobody said you could. But haven’t you any relatives anywhere?”
Tom shook his head. “Only in India,” he said sadly.
“Poor fellow! That’s hard luck for you. I’ll tell you what it is, boys, if I couldn’t go home for the holidays, especially at Christmas–I think I would just sit down and die.”
“Oh, no, you wouldn’t,” said Tom. “You would get ever so homesick, but you wouldn’t die. You would just get through somehow, and hope something would happen before next year, or that some kind fairy would–“
“There are no fairies nowadays,” said Bertie.
“See here, Tom, I’ll write and ask my mother to invite you to go home with me for the holidays.”
“Will you really?”
“Yes, I will. And if she says yes, we shall have such a splendid time. We live in London, you know, and have lots of parties and fun.”
“Perhaps she will say no?” suggested poor little Tom.
“My mother isn’t the kind that says no,” Bertie declared loudly.
In a few days’ time a letter arrived from Bertie’s mother. The boy opened it eagerly. It said:
My own dear Bertie:
I am very sorry to tell you that little Alice is ill with scarlet fever. And so you cannot come for your holidays. I would have been glad to have you bring your little friend with you if all had been well here.
Your father and I have decided that the best thing that you can do is to stay at Miss Ware’s. We shall send your Christmas present to you as well as we can.
It will not be like coming home, but I am sure you will try to be happy, and make me feel that you are helping me in this sad time.
Dear little Alice is very ill, very ill indeed. Tell Tom that I am sending you a box for both of you, with two of everything. And tell him that it makes me so much happier to know that you will not be alone.
Your own mother.
When Bertie Fellows received this letter, which ended all his Christmas hopes and joys, he hid his face upon his desk and sobbed aloud. The lonely boy from India, who sat next to him, tried to comfort his friend in every way he could think of. He patted his shoulder and whispered many kind words to him.
At last Bertie put the letter into Tom’s hands. “Read it,” he sobbed.
So then Tom understood the cause of Bertie’s grief. “Don’t fret over it,” he said at last. “It might be worse. Why, your father and mother might be thousands of miles away, like mine are. When Alice is better, you will be able to go home. And it will help your mother if she thinks you are almost as happy as if you could go now.”
Soon Miss Ware came to tell Bertie how sorry she was for him.
“After all,” said she, smiling down on the two boys, “it is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Poor Tom has been expecting to spend his holidays alone, and now he will have a friend with him–Try to look on the bright side, Bertie, and to remember how much worse it would have been if there had been no boy to stay with you.”
“I can’t help being disappointed, Miss Ware,” said Bertie, his eyes filling with tears.
“No; you would be a strange boy if you were not. But I want you to try to think of your poor mother, and write her as cheerfully as you can.”
“Yes,” answered Bertie; but his heart was too full to say more.
The last day of the term came, and one by one, or two by two, the boys went away, until only Bertie and Tom were left in the great house. It had never seemed so large to either of them before.
“It’s miserable,” groaned poor Bertie, as they strolled into the schoolroom. “Just think if we were on our way home now–how different.”
“Just think if I had been left here by myself,” said Tom.
“Yes,” said Bertie, “but you know when one wants to go home he never thinks of the boys that have no home to go to.”
The evening passed, and the two boys went to bed. They told stories to each other for a long time before they could go to sleep. That night they dreamed of their homes, and felt very lonely. Yet each tried to be brave, and so another day began.
This was the day before Christmas. Quite early in the morning came the great box of which Bertie’s mother had spoken in her letter. Then, just as dinner had come to an end, there was a peal of the bell, and a voice was heard asking for Tom Egerton.
Tom sprang to his feet, and flew to greet a tall, handsome lady, crying, “Aunt Laura! Aunt Laura!”
And Laura explained that she and her husband had arrived in London only the day before. “I was so afraid, Tom,” she said, “that we should not get here until Christmas Day was over and that you would be disappointed. So I would not let your mother write you that we were on our way home. You must get your things packed up at once, and go back with me to London. Then uncle and I will give you a splendid time.”
For a minute or two Tom’s face shone with delight. Then he caught sight of Bertie and turned to his aunt.
“Dear Aunt Laura,” he said, “I am very sorry, but I can’t go.”
“Can’t go? and why not?”
“Because I can’t go and leave Bertie here all alone,” he said stoutly. “When I was going to be alone he wrote and asked his mother to let me go home with him. She could not have either of us because Bertie’s sister has scarlet fever. He has to stay here, and he has never been away from home at Christmas time before, and I can’t go away and leave him by himself, Aunt Laura.”
For a minute Aunt Laura looked at the boy as if she could not believe him. Then she caught him in her arms and kissed him.
“You dear little boy, you shall not leave him. You shall bring him along, and we shall all enjoy ourselves together. Bertie, my boy, you are not very old yet, but I am going to teach you a lesson as well as I can. It is that kindness is never wasted in this world.”
And so Bertie and Tom found that there was such a thing as a fairy after all.
THE GREATEST OF THESE*
*This story was first printed in the Youth’s Companion, vol. 76.
JOSEPH MILLS HANSON
The outside door swung open suddenly, letting a cloud of steam into the small, hot kitchen. Charlie Moore, a milk pail in one hand, a lantern in the other, closed the door behind him with a bang, set the pail on the table and stamped the snow from his feet.
“There’s the milk, and I near froze gettin’ it,” said he, addressing his partner, who was chopping potatoes in a pan on the stove.
“Dose vried bodadoes vas burnt,” said the other, wielding his knife vigorously.
“Are, eh? Why didn’t you watch ’em instead of readin’ your old Scandinavian paper?” answered Charlie, hanging his overcoat and cap behind the door and laying his mittens under the stove to dry. Then he drew up a chair and with much exertion pulled off his heavy felt boots and stood them beside his mittens.
“Why didn’t you shut the gate after you came in from town? The cows got out and went up to Roney’s an’ I had to chase ’em; ’tain’t any joke runnin’ round after cows such a night as this.” Having relieved his mind of its grievance, Charlie sat down before the oven door, and, opening it, laid a stick of wood along its outer edge and thrust his feet into the hot interior, propping his heels against the stick.
“Look oud for dese har biscuits!” exclaimed his partner, anxiously.
“Oh, hang the biscuits!” was Charlie’s hasty answer. “I’ll watch ’em. Why didn’t you?”
“Ay tank Ay fergit hem.”
“Well, you don’t want to forget. A feller forgot his clothes once, an’ he got froze.”
“Ay gass dose taller vas ketch in a sbring snowstorm. Vas dose biscuits done, Sharlie?”
“You bet they are, Nels,” replied Charlie, looking into the pan.
“Dan subbar vas ready. Yom on!”
Nels picked up the frying-pan and Charlie the biscuits, and set them on the oilcloth-covered table, where a plate of butter, a jar of plum jelly, and a coffee-pot were already standing.
Outside the frozen kitchen window the snow-covered fields and meadows stretched, glistening and silent, away to the dark belt of timber by the river. Along the deep-rutted road in front a belated lumber-wagon passed slowly, the wheels crunching through the packed snow with a wavering, incessant shriek.
The two men hitched their chairs up to the table, and without ceremony helped themselves liberally to the steaming food. For a few moments they seemed oblivious to everything but the demands of hunger. The potatoes and biscuits disappeared with surprising rapidity, washed down by large drafts of coffee. These men, labouring steadily through the short daylight hours in the dry, cold air of the Dakota winter, were like engines whose fires had burned low–they were taking fuel. Presently, the first keen edge of appetite satisfied, they ate more slowly, and Nels, straightening up with a sigh, spoke:
“Ay seen Seigert in town ta-day. Ha vants von hundred fifty fer dose team.”
“Come down, eh?” commented Charlie. “Well, they’re worth that. We’d better take ’em, Nels. We’ll need ’em in the spring if we break the north forty.”
“Yas, et’s a nice team,” agreed Nels. “Ha vas driven ham ta-day.”
“Is he haulin’ corn?”
“Na; he had his kids oop gettin’ Christmas bresents.”
“Chris–By gracious! to-morrow’s Christmas!”
Nels nodded solemnly, as one possessing superior knowledge. Charlie became thoughtful.
“We’ll come in sort of slim on it here, I reckon, Nels. Christmas ain’t right, somehow, out here. Back in Wisconsin, where I came from, there’s where you get your Christmas!” Charlie spoke with the unswerving prejudice of mankind for the land of his birth.
“Yas, dose been right. En da ol’ kontry dey havin’ gret times Christmas.”
Their thoughts were all bent now upon the holiday scenes of the past. As they finished the meal and cleared away and washed the dishes they related incidents of their boyhood’s time, compared, reiterated, and embellished. As they talked they grew jovial, and laughed often.
“The skee broke an’ you went over kerplunk, hey? Haw, haw! That reminds me of one time in Wisconsin–“
Something of the joyous spirit of the Christmastide seemed to have entered into this little farmhouse set in the midst of the lonely, white fields. In the hearts of these men, moving about in their dim-lighted room, was reechoed the joyous murmur of the great world without: the gayety of the throngs in city streets, where the brilliant shop-windows, rich with holiday spoils, smile out upon the passing crowd, and the clang of street-cars and roar of traffic mingle with the cries of street-venders. The work finished, they drew their chairs to the stove, and filled their pipes, still talking.
“Well, well,” said Charlie, after the laugh occasioned by one of Nels’ droll stories had subsided. “It’s nice to think of those old times. I’d hate to have been one of these kids that can’t have any fun. Christmas or any other time,”
“Ay gass dere ain’t anybody much dot don’d have someding dis tams a year.”
“Oh, yes, there are, Nels! You bet there are!”
Charlie nodded at his partner with serious conviction.
“Now, there’s the Roneys,” he waved his pipe over his shoulder. “The old man told me to-night when I was up after the cows that he’s sold all the crops except what they need for feedin’–wheat, and corn, and everything, and some hogs besides–and ain’t got hardly enough now for feed and clothes for all that family. The rent and the lumber he had to buy to build the new barn after the old one burnt ate up the money like fury. He kind of laughed, and said he guessed the children wouldn’t get much Christmas this year. I didn’t think about it’s being so close when he told me.”
“No Christmas!” Nels’ round eyes widened with astonishment. “Ay tank dose been pooty bad!” He studied the subject for a few moments, his stolid face suddenly grown thoughtful. Charlie stared at the stove. Far away by the river a lonely coyote set up his quick, howling yelp.
“Dere’s been seven kids oop dere,” said Nels at last, glancing up as it for corroboration.
“Yes, seven,” agreed Charlie.
“Say, do ve need Seigert’s team very pad?”
“Well, now that depends,” said Charlie. “Why not?”
“Nothin’, only Ay vas tankin’ ve might tak’ some a das veat we vas goin’ to sell and–and–“
“Yep, what?”
“And dumb it on Roney’s granary floor to-night after dere been asleeb.”
Charlie stared at his companion for a moment in silence. Then he rose, and, approaching Nels, examined his partner’s face with solemn scrutiny.
“By the great horn spoon,” he announced, finally, “you’ve got a head on you like a balloon, my boy! Keep on gettin’ ideas like that, and you’ll land in Congress or the poor-farm before many years!”
Then, abandoning his pretense of gravity, he slapped the other on the back.
“Why didn’t I think of that? It’s the best yet. Seigert’s team? Oh, hang Seigert’s team. We don’t need it. We’ll have a little merry Christmas out of this yet. Only they mustn’t know where it came from. I’ll write a note and stick it under the door, ‘You’ll find some merry wheat–‘No, that ain’t it. ‘You’ll find some wheat in the granary to give the kids a merry Christmas with,’ signed, ‘Santa Claus.'”
He wrote out the message in the air with a pointing forefinger. He had entered into the spirit of the thing eagerly.
“It’s half-past nine now,” he went on, looking at the clock. “It’ll be eleven time we get the stuff loaded and hauled up there. Let’s go out and get at it. Lucky the bobs are on the wagon; they don’t make such a racket as wheels.”
He took the lantern from its nail behind the door and lighted it, after which he put on his boots, cap, and mittens, and flung his overcoat across his shoulders. Nels, meanwhile, had put on his outer garments, also.
“Shut up the stove, Nels.” Charlie blew out the light and opened the door. “There, hang it!” he exclaimed, turning back. “I forgot the note. Ought to be in ink, I suppose. Well, never mind now; we won’t put on any style about it.”
He took down a pencil from the shelf, and, extracting a bit of wrapping paper from a bundle behind the woodbox, wrote the note by the light of the lantern.
“There, I guess that will do,” he said, finally. “Come on!”
Outside, the night air was cold and bracing, and in the black vault of the sky the winter constellations flashed and throbbed. The shadows of the two men, thrown by the lantern, bobbed huge and grotesque across the snow and among the bare branches of the cottonwoods, as they moved toward the barn.
“Ay tank ve put on dose extra side poards and make her an even fifty pushel,” said Nels, after they had backed the wagon up to the granary door. “Ve might as vell do it oop right, skence ve’re at it.”
Having carried out this suggestion, the two shovelled steadily, with short intervals of rest, for three quarters of an hour, the dark pile of grain in the wagon-box rising gradually until it stood flush with the top.
Good it was to look upon, cold and soft and yielding to the touch, this heaped-up wealth from the inexhaustible treasure-house of the mighty West. Charlie and Nels felt something of this as they viewed the results of their labours for a moment before hitching up the team.
“It’s A number one hard,” said Charlie, picking up a handful and sifting it slowly through his fingers, “and it’ll fetch seventy-four cents. But you can’t raise any worse on this old farm of ours if you try,” he added, a little proudly. “Nor anywhere else in the Jim River Valley, for that matter.”
As they approached the Roney place, looking dim and indistinct in the darkness, their voices hushed apprehensively, and the noise of the sled-runners slipping through the snow seemed to them to increase from a purr to a roar.
“Here, stob a minute!” whispered Nels, in agony of discovery. “Ve’re magin’ an awful noise. Ay’ll go und take a beek.”
He slipped away and cautiously approached the house. “Et’s all right,” he whispered, hoarsely, returning after a moment; “dere all asleeb. But go easy; Ay tank ve pest go easy.” They seemed burdened all at once with the consciences of criminals, and went forward with almost guilty timidity.
“Thunder, dere’s a bump! Vy don’d you drive garefuller, Sharlie?”
“Drive yourself, if you think you can do any better!” As they came into the yard a dog suddenly ran out from the barn, barking furiously. Charlie reined up with an ejaculation of despair; “Look there, the dog! We’re done for now, sure! Stop him, Nels! Throw somethin’ at ‘im!”
The noise seemed to their excited ears louder than the crash of artillery. Nels threw a piece of snow crust. The dog ran back a few steps, but his barking did not diminish.
“Here, hold the lines. I’ll try to catch ‘im.” Charlie jumped from the wagon and approached the dog with coaxing words: “Come, doggie, good doggie, nice boy, come!”
His manoeuvre, however, merely served to increase the animal’s frenzy. As Charlie approached the dog retired slowly toward the house, his head thrown back, and his rapid barking increased to a long-drawn howl.
“Good boy, come! Bother the brute! He’ll wake up the whole household! Nice doggie! Phe-e–“
The noise, however, had no apparent effect upon the occupants of the house. All remained as dark and silent as ever.
“Sharlie, Sharlie, let him go!” cried Nels, in a voice smothered with laughter. “Ay go in dose parn; maype ha’ll chase me.”
His hope was well founded. The dog, observing this treacherous occupation by the enemy of his last harbour of refuge, gave pursuit and disappeared within the door, which Charlie, hard behind him, closed with a bang. There was the sound of a hurried scuffle within. The dog’s barking gave place to terrified whinings, which in turn were suddenly quenched to a choking murmur.
“Gome in, Sharlie, kvick!”
“You got him?” queried Charlie, opening the door cautiously. “Did he bite you?”
“Na, yust ma mitten. Gat a sack or someding da die him oop in.”
A sack was procured from somewhere, into which the dog, now silenced from sheer exhaustion and fright, was unceremoniously thrust, after which the sack was tied and flung into the wagon. This formidable obstacle overcome and the Roneys still slumbering peacefully, the rest was easy. The granary door was pried open and the wheat shovelled hurriedly in upon the empty floor. Charlie then crept up to the house and slipped his note under the door.
The sack was lifted from the now empty wagon and opened before the barn, whereupon its occupant slipped meekly out and retreated at once to a far corner, seemingly too much incensed at his discourteous treatment even to fling a volley of farewell barks at his departing captors.
“Vell,” remarked Nels, with a sigh of relief as they gained the road, “Ay tank dose Roneys pelieve en Santa Claus now. Dose peen funny vay fer Santa Claus to coom.”
Charlie’s laugh was good to hear. “He didn’t exactly come down the chimney, that’s a fact, but it’ll do at a pinch. We ought to have told them to get a present for the dog–collar and chain. I reckon he wouldn’t hardly be thankful for it, though, eh?”
“Ay gass not. Ha liges ta haf hes nights ta hemself.”
“Well, we had our fun, anyway. Sort of puts me in mind of old Wisconsin, somehow.”
From far off over the valley, with its dismantled cornfields and snow-covered haystacks, beyond the ice-bound river, floated slow, and sonorous, the mellow clanging of church bells. They were ushering in the Christmas morn. Overhead the starlit heavens glistened, brooding and mysterious, looking down with luminous, loving eyes upon these humble sons of men doing a good deed, from the impulse of simple, generous hearts, as upon that other Christmas morning, long ago, when the Jewish shepherds, guarding their flocks by night, read in their shining depths that in Bethlehem of Judea the Christ-Child was born.
The rising sun was touching the higher hilltops with a faint rush of crimson the next morning when the back door of the Roney house opened with a creak, and Mr. Roney, still heavy-eyed with sleep, stumbled out upon the porch, stretched his arms above his head, yawned, blinked at the dazzling snow, and then shambled off toward the barn. As he approached, the dog ran eagerly out, gambolled meekly around his feet and caressed his boots. The man patted him kindly.
“Hello, old boy! What were you yappin’ around so for last night, huh? Grain-thieves? You needn’t worry about them. There ain’t nothin’ left for them to steal. No, sir! If they got into that granary they’d have to take a lantern along to find a pint of wheat. I don’t suppose,” he added, reflectively, “that I could scrape up enough to feed the chickens this mornin’, but I guess I might’s well see.”
He passed over to the little building. What he saw when he looked within seemed for a moment to produce no impression upon him whatever. He stared at the hillock of grain in motionless silence. Finally Mr. Roney gave utterance to a single word, “Geewhilikins!” and started for the house on a run. Into the kitchen, where his wife was just starting the fire, the excited man burst like a whirlwind.
“Come out here, Mary!” he cried. “Come out here, quick!”
The worthy woman, unaccustomed to such demonstrations, looked at him in amazement.
“For goodness sake, what’s come over you, Peter Roney?” she exclaimed. “Are you daft? Don’t make such a noise! You’ll wake the young ones, and I don’t want them waked till need be, with no Christmas for ’em, poor little things!”
“Never mind the young ‘uns,” he replied. “Come on!”
As they passed out he noticed the slip of paper under the door and picked it up, but without comment.
He charged down upon the granary, his wife, with a shawl over her head, close behind.
She peered in, apprehensively at first, then with eyes of widening wonder.
“Why, Peter!” she said, turning to him. “Why, Peter! What does–I thought–“
“You thought!” he broke in. “Me, too. But it ain’t so. It means that we’ve got some of the best neighbours that ever was, a thinkin’ of our young ‘uns this way! Read that!” and he thrust the paper into her hand.
“Why, Peter!” she ejaculated again, weakly. Then suddenly she turned, and laying her head on his shoulder, began to sob softly.
“There, there,” he said, patting her arm awkwardly.
“Don’t you go and cry now. Let’s just be thankful to the good Lord for puttin’ such fellers into the world as them fellers down the road. And now you run in and hurry up breakfast while I do up the chores. Then we’ll hitch up and get into town ‘fore the stores close. Tell the young ‘uns Santy didn’t get round last night with their things, but we’ve got word to meet him in town. Hey? Yes, I saw just the kind of sled Pete wants when I was up yesterday, and that china doll for Mollie. Yes, tell ’em anything you want. Twon’t be too big. Santy Claus has come to Roney’s ranch this year, sure!”
LITTLE GRETCHEN AND THE WOODEN SHOE*
* From “Christmastide,” published by the Chicago Kindergarten College, copyright 1902.
ELIZABETH HARRISON
The following story is one of many which has drifted down to us from the story-loving nurseries and hearthstones of Germany. I cannot recall when I first had it told to me as a child, varied, of course, by different tellers, but always leaving that sweet, tender impression of God’s loving care for the least of his children. I have since read different versions of it in at least a half-dozen story books for children.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, far away across the great ocean, in a country called Germany, there could be seen a small log hut on the edge of a great forest, whose fir-trees extended for miles and miles to the north. This little house, made of heavy hewn logs, had but one room in it. A rough pine door gave entrance to this room, and a small square window admitted the light. At the back of the house was built an old-fashioned stone chimney, out of which in winter usually curled a thin, blue smoke, showing that there was not very much fire within.
Small as the house was, it was large enough for the two people who lived in it. I want to tell you a story to-day about these two people. One was an old, gray-haired woman, so old that the little children of the village, nearly half a mile away, often wondered whether she had come into the world with the huge mountains, and the great fir-trees, which stood like giants back of her small hut. Her face was wrinkled all over with deep lines, which, if the children could only have read aright, would have told them of many years of cheerful, happy, self-sacrifice, of loving, anxious watching beside sick-beds, of quiet endurance of pain, of many a day of hunger and cold, and of a thousand deeds of unselfish love for other people; but, of course, they could not read this strange handwriting. They only knew that she was old and wrinkled, and that she stooped as she walked. None of them seemed to fear her, for her smile was always cheerful, and she had a kindly word for each of them if they chanced to meet her on her way to and from the village. With this old, old woman lived a very little girl. So bright and happy was she that the travellers who passed by the lonesome little house on the edge of the forest often thought of a sunbeam as they saw her. These two people were known in the village as Granny Goodyear and Little Gretchen.
The winter had come and the frost had snapped off many of the smaller branches from the pine-trees in the forest. Gretchen and her Granny were up by daybreak each morning. After their simple breakfast of oatmeal, Gretchen would run to the little closet and fetch Granny’s old woollen shawl, which seemed almost as old as Granny herself. Gretchen always claimed the right to put the shawl over her Granny’s head, even though she had to climb onto the wooden bench to do it. After carefully pinning it under Granny’s chin, she gave her a good-bye kiss, and Granny started out for her morning’s work in the forest. This work was nothing more nor less than the gathering up of the twigs and branches which the autumn winds and winter frosts had thrown upon the ground. These were carefully gathered into a large bundle which Granny tied together with a strong linen band. She then managed to lift the bundle to her shoulder and trudged off to the village with it. Here she sold the fagots for kindling wood to the people of the village. Sometimes she would get only a few pence each day, and sometimes a dozen or more, but on this money little Gretchen and she managed to live; they had their home, and the forest kindly furnished the wood for the fire which kept them warm in cold weather.
In the summer time Granny had a little garden at the back of the hut where she raised, with little Gretchen’s help, a few potatoes and turnips and onions. These she carefully stored away for winter use. To this meagre supply, the pennies, gained by selling the twigs from the forest, added the oatmeal for Gretchen and a little black coffee for Granny. Meat was a thing they never thought of having. It cost too much money. Still, Granny and Gretchen were very happy, because they loved each other dearly. Sometimes Gretchen would be left alone all day long in the hut, because Granny would have some work to do in the village after selling her bundle of sticks and twigs. It was during these long days that little Gretchen had taught herself to sing the song which the wind sang to the pine branches. In the summer time she learned the chirp and twitter of the birds, until her voice might almost be mistaken for a bird’s voice; she learned to dance as the swaying shadows did, and even to talk. to the stars which shone through the little square window when Granny came home too late or too tired to talk.
Sometimes, when the weather was fine, or her Granny had an extra bundle of newly knitted stockings to take to the village, she would let little Gretchen go along with her. It chanced that one of these trips to the town came just the week before Christmas, and Gretchen’s eyes were delighted by the sight of the lovely Christmas-trees which stood in the window of the village store. It seemed to her that she would never tire of looking at the knit dolls, the woolly lambs, the little wooden shops with their queer, painted men and women in them, and all the other fine things. She had never owned a plaything in her whole life; therefore, toys which you and I would not think much of, seemed to her to be very beautiful.
That night, after their supper of baked potatoes was over, and little Gretchen had cleared away the dishes and swept up the hearth, because Granny dear was so tired, she brought her own small wooden stool and placed it very near Granny’s feet and sat down upon it, folding her hands on her lap. Granny knew that this meant she wanted to talk about something, so she smilingly laid away the large Bible which she had been reading, and took up her knitting, which was as much as to say: “Well, Gretchen, dear, Granny is ready to listen.”
“Granny,” said Gretchen slowly, “it’s almost Christmas time, isn’t it?”
“Yes, dearie,” said Granny, “only five more days now,” and then she sighed, but little Gretchen was so happy that she did not notice Granny’s sigh.
“What do you think, Granny, I’ll get this Christmas?” said she, looking up eagerly into Granny’s face.
“Ah, child, child,” said Granny, shaking her head, “you’ll have no Christmas this year. We are too poor for that.”
“Oh, but, Granny,” interrupted little Gretchen, “think of all the beautiful toys we saw in the village to-day. Surely Santa Claus has sent enough for every little child.”
“Ah, dearie,” said Granny, “those toys are for people who can pay money for them, and we have no money to spend for Christmas toys.”
“Well, Granny,” said Gretchen, “perhaps some of the little children who live in the great house on the hill at the other end of the village will be willing to share some of their toys with me. They will be so glad to give some to a little girl who has none.”
“Dear child, dear child,” said Granny, leaning forward and stroking the soft, shiny hair of the little girl, “your heart is full of love. You would be glad to bring a Christmas to every child; but their heads are so full of what they are going to get that they forget all about anybody else but themselves.” Then she sighed and shook her head.
“Well, Granny,” said Gretchen, her bright, happy tone of voice growing a little less joyous, “perhaps the dear Santa Claus will show some of the village children how to make presents that do not cost money, and some of them may surprise me Christmas morning with a present. And, Granny, dear,” added she, springing up from her low stool, “can’t I gather some of the pine branches and take them to the old sick man who lives in the house by the mill, so that he can have the sweet smell of our pine forest in his room all Christmas day?”
“Yes, dearie,” said Granny, “you may do what you can to make the Christmas bright and happy, but you must not expect any present yourself.”
“Oh, but, Granny,” said little Gretchen, her face brightening, “you forget all about the shining Christmas angels, who came down to earth and sang their wonderful song the night the beautiful Christ-Child was born! They are so loving and good that they will not forget any little child. I shall ask my dear stars to-night to tell them of us. You know,” she added, with a look of relief, “the stars are so very high that they must know the angels quite well, as they come and go with their messages from the loving God.”
Granny sighed, as she half whispered, “Poor child, poor child!” but Gretchen threw her arm around Granny’s neck and gave her a hearty kiss, saying as she did so: “Oh, Granny, Granny, you don’t talk to the stars often enough, else you wouldn’t be sad at Christmas time.” Then she danced all around the room, whirling her little skirts about her to show Granny how the wind had made the snow dance that day. She looked so droll and funny that Granny forgot her cares and worries and laughed with little Gretchen over her new snow-dance. The days passed on, and the morning before Christmas Eve came. Gretchen having tidied up the little room–for Granny had taught her to be a careful little housewife–was off to the forest, singing a birdlike song, almost as happy and free as the birds themselves. She was very busy that day, preparing a surprise for Granny. First, however, she gathered the most beautiful of the fir branches within her reach to take the next morning to the old sick man who lived by the mill. The day was all too short for the happy little girl. When Granny came trudging wearily home that night, she found the frame of the doorway covered with green pine branches.
“It’s to welcome you, Granny! It’s to welcome you!” cried Gretchen; “our old dear home wanted to give you a Christmas welcome. Don’t you see, the branches of evergreen make it look as if it were smiling all over, and it is trying to say, ‘A happy Christmas’ to you, Granny!”
Granny laughed and kissed the little girl, as they opened the door and went in together. Here was a new surprise for Granny. The four posts of the wooden bed, which stood in one corner of the room, had been trimmed by the busy little fingers, with smaller and more flexible branches of the pine-trees. A small bouquet of red mountain-ash berries stood at each side of the fireplace, and these, together with the trimmed posts of the bed, gave the plain old room quite a festival look. Gretchen laughed and clapped her hands and danced about until the house seemed full of music to poor, tired Granny, whose heart had been sad as she turned toward their home that night, thinking of the disappointment which must come to loving little Gretchen the next morning.
After supper was over little Gretchen drew her stool up to Granny’s side, and laying her soft, little hands on Granny’s knee, asked to be told once again the story of the coming of the Christ-Child; how the night that he was born the beautiful angels had sung their wonderful song, and how the whole sky had become bright with a strange and glorious light, never seen by the people of earth before. Gretchen had heard the story many, many times before, but she never grew tired of it, and now that Christmas Eve had come again, the happy little child wanted to hear it once more.
When Granny had finished telling it the two sat quiet and silent for a little while thinking it over; then Granny rose and said that it was time for them to go to bed. She slowly took off her heavy wooden shoes, such as are worn in that country, and placed them beside the hearth. Gretchen looked thoughtfully at them for a minute or two, and then she said, “Granny, don’t you think that somebody in all this wide world will think of us to-night?”
“Nay, Gretchen,” said Granny, “I don’t think any one will.”
“Well, then, Granny,” said Gretchen, “the Christmas angels will, I know; so I am going to take one of your wooden shoes, and put it on the windowsill outside, so that they may see it as they pass by. I am sure the stars will tell the Christmas angels where the shoe is.”
“Ah, you foolish, foolish child,” said Granny, “you are only getting ready for a disappointment To-morrow morning there will be nothing whatever in the shoe. I can tell you that now.”
But little Gretchen would not listen. She only shook her head and cried out: “Ah, Granny, you don’t talk enough to the stars.” With this she seized the shoe, and, opening the door, hurried out to place it on the windowsill. It was very dark without, and something soft and cold seemed to gently kiss her hair and face. Gretchen knew by this that it was snowing, and she looked up to the sky, anxious to see if the stars were in sight, but a strong wind was tumbling the dark, heavy snow-clouds about and had shut away all else.
“Never mind,” said Gretchen softly to herself, “the stars are up there, even if I can’t see them, and the Christmas angels do not mind snowstorms.”
Just then a rough wind went sweeping by the little girl, whispering something to her which she could not understand, and then it made a sudden rush up to the snow-clouds and parted them, so that the deep, mysterious sky appeared beyond, and shining down out of the midst of it was Gretchen’s favourite star.
“Ah, little star, little star!” said the child, laughing aloud, “I knew you were there, though I couldn’t see you. Will you whisper to the Christmas angels as they come by that little Gretchen wants so very much to have a Christmas gift to-morrow morning, if they have one to spare, and that she has put one of Granny’s shoes upon the windowsill ready for it?”
A moment more and the little girl, standing on tiptoe, had reached the windowsill and placed the shoe upon it, and was back again in the house beside Granny and the warm fire.
The two went quietly to bed, and that night as little Gretchen knelt to pray to the Heavenly Father, she thanked him for having sent the Christ-Child into the world to teach all mankind how to be loving and unselfish, and in a few moments she was quietly sleeping, dreaming of the Christmas angels.
The next morning, very early, even before the sun was up, little Gretchen was awakened by the sound of sweet music coming from the village. She listened for a moment and then she knew that the choir-boys were singing the Christmas carols in the open air of the village street. She sprang up out of bed and began to dress herself as quickly as possible, singing as she dressed. While Granny was slowly putting on her clothes, little Gretchen, having finished dressing herself, unfastened the door and hurried out to see what the Christmas angels had left in the old wooden shoe.
The white snow covered everything–trees, stumps, roads, and pastures–until the whole world looked like fairyland. Gretchen climbed up on a large stone which was beneath the window and carefully lifted down the wooden shoe. The snow tumbled off of it in a shower over the little girl’s hands, but she did not heed that; she ran hurriedly back into the house, putting her hand into the toe of the shoe as she ran.
“Oh, Granny! Oh, Granny!” she exclaimed, “you didn’t believe the Christmas angels would think about us, but see, they have, they have! Here is a dear little bird nestled down in the toe of your shoe! Oh, isn’t he beautiful?”
Granny came forward and looked at what the child was holding lovingly in her hand. There she saw a tiny chick-a-dee, whose wing was evidently broken by the rough and boisterous winds of the night before, and who had taken shelter in the safe, dry toe of the old wooden shoe. She gently took the little bird out of Gretchen’s hands, and skilfully bound his broken wing to his side, so that he need not hurt himself by trying to fly with it. Then she showed Gretchen how to make a nice warm nest for the little stranger, close beside the fire, and when their breakfast was ready she let Gretchen feed the little bird with a few moist crumbs.
Later in the day Gretchen carried the fresh, green boughs to the old sick man by the mill, and on her way home stopped to see and enjoy the Christmas toys of some other children whom she knew, never once wishing that they were hers. When she reached home she found that the little bird had gone to sleep. Soon, however, he opened his eyes and stretched his head up, saying just as plain as a bird could say, “Now, my new friends, I want you to give me something more to eat.” Gretchen gladly fed him again, and then, holding him in her lap, she softly and gently stroked his gray feathers until the little creature seemed to lose all fear of her. That evening Granny taught her a Christmas hymn and told her another beautiful Christmas story. Then Gretchen made up a funny little story to tell to the birdie. He winked his eyes and turned his head from side to side in such a droll fashion that Gretchen laughed until the tears came.
As Granny and she got ready for bed that night, Gretchen put her arms softly around Granny’s neck, and whispered: “What a beautiful Christmas we have had to-day, Granny! Is there anything in the world more lovely than Christmas?”
“Nay, child, nay,” said Granny, “not to such loving hearts as yours.”
XXXIV. CHRISTMAS ON BIG RATTLE*
* This story was first printed in the Youth’s Companion, Dec. 14, 1905.
THEODORE GOODRIDGE ROBERTS
Archer sat by the rude hearth of his Big Rattle camp, brooding in a sort of tired contentment over the spitting fagots of var and glowing coals of birch.
It was Christmas Eve. He had been out on his snowshoes all that day, and all the day before, springing his traps along the streams and putting his deadfalls out of commission–rather queer work for a trapper to be about.
But Archer, despite all his gloomy manner, was really a sentimentalist, who practised what he felt.
“Christmas is a season of peace on earth,” he had told himself, while demolishing the logs of a sinister deadfall with his axe; and now the remembrance of his quixotic deed added a brightness to the fire and to the rough, undecorated walls of the camp.
Outside, the wind ran high in the forest, breaking and sweeping tidelike over the reefs of treetops. The air was bitterly cold. Another voice, almost as fitful as the sough of the wind, sounded across the night. It was the waters of Stone Arrow Falls, above Big Rattle.
The frosts had drawn their bonds of ice and blankets of silencing snow over all the rest of the stream, but the white and black face of the falls still flashed from a window in the great house of crystal, and threw out a voice of desolation.
Sacobie Bear, a full-blooded Micmac, uttered a grunt of relief when his ears caught the bellow of Stone Arrow Falls. He stood still, and turned his head from side to side, questioningly.
“Good!” he said. “Big Rattle off there, Archer’s camp over there. I go there. Good ‘nough!”
He hitched his old smooth-bore rifle higher under his arm and continued his journey. Sacobie had tramped many miles–all the way from ice-imprisoned Fox Harbor. His papoose was sick. His squaw was hungry. Sacobie’s belt was drawn tight.
During all that weary journey his old rifle had not banged once, although few eyes save those of timberwolf and lynx were sharper in the hunt than Sacobie’s. The Indian was reeling with hunger and weakness, but he held bravely on.
A white man, no matter how courageous and sinewy, would have been prone in the snow by that time.
But Sacobie, with his head down and his round snowshoes padding! padding! like the feet of a frightened duck, raced with death toward the haven of Archer’s cabin.
Archer was dreaming of a Christmas-time in a great faraway city when he was startled by a rattle of snowshoes at his threshold and a soft beating on his door, like weak blows from mittened hands. He sprang across the cabin and pulled open the door.
A short, stooping figure shuffled in and reeled against him. A rifle in a woollen case clattered at his feet.
“Mer’ Christmas! How-do?” said a weary voice.
“Merry Christmas, brother!” replied Archer. Then, “Bless me, but it’s Sacobie Bear! Why, what’s the matter, Sacobie?”
“Heap tired! Heap hungry!” replied the Micmac, sinking to the floor.
Archer lifted the Indian and carried him over to the bunk at the farther end of the room. He filled his iron-pot spoon with brandy, and inserted the point of it between Sacobie’s unresisting jaws. Then he loosened the Micmac’s coat and shirt and belt.
He removed his moccasins and stockings and rubbed the straight thin feet with brandy.
After a while Sacobie Bear opened his eyes and gazed up at Archer.
“Good!” he said. “John Archer, he heap fine man, anyhow. Mighty good to poor Injun Sacobie, too. Plenty tobac, I s’pose. Plenty rum, too.”
“No more rum, my son,” replied Archer, tossing what was left in the mug against the log wall, and corking the bottle. “and no smoke until you have had a feed. What do you say to bacon and tea! Or would tinned beef suit you better?”
“Bacum,” replied Sacobie.
He hoisted himself to his elbow, and wistfully sniffed the fumes of brandy that came from the direction of his bare feet. “Heap waste of good rum, me t’ink,” he said.
“You ungratefu’ little beggar!” laughed Archer, as he pulled a frying pan from under the bunk.
By the time the bacon was fried and the tea steeped, Sacobie was sufficiently revived to leave the bunk and take a seat by the fire.
He ate as all hungry Indians do; and Archer looked on in wonder and whimsical regret, remembering the miles and miles he had tramped with that bacon on his back.
“Sacobie, you will kill yourself!” he protested.
“Sacobie no kill himself now,” replied the Micmac, as he bolted a brown slice and a mouthful of hard bread. “Sacobie more like to kill himself when he empty. Want to live when he chock-full. Good fun. T’ank you for more tea.”
Archer filled the extended mug and poured in the molasses–“long sweet’nin'” they call it in that region.
“What brings you so far from Fox Harbor this time of year?” inquired Archer.
“Squaw sick. Papoose sick. Bote empty. Wan’ good bacum to eat.”
Archer smiled at the fire. “Any luck trapping?” he asked.
His guest shook his head and hid his face behind the upturned mug.
“Not much,” he replied, presently.
He drew his sleeve across his mouth, and then produced a clay pipe from a pocket in his shirt.
“Tobac?” he inquired.
Archer passed him a dark and heavy plug of tobacco.
“Knife?” queried Sacobie.
“Try your own knife on it,” answered Archer, grinning.
With a sigh Sacobie produced his sheath-knife.
“You t’ink Sacobie heap big t’ief,” he said, accusingly.
“Knives are easily lost–in people’s pockets,” replied Archer.
The two men talked for hours. Sacobie Bear was a great gossip for one of his race. In fact, he had a Micmac nickname which, translated, meant “the man who deafens his friends with much talk.” Archer, however, was pleased with his ready chatter and unforced humour.
But at last they both began to nod. The white man made up a bed on the floor for Sacobie with a couple of caribou skins and a heavy blanket. Then he gathered together a few plugs of tobacco, some tea, flour, and dried fish.
Sacobie watched him with freshly aroused interest.
“More tobac, please,” he said. “Squaw, he smoke, too.”
Archer added a couple of sticks of the black leaf to the pile.
“Bacum, too,” said the Micmac. “Bacum better nor fish, anyhow.”
Archer shook his head.
“You’ll have to do with the fish,” he replied; “but I’ll give you a tin of condensed milk for the papoose.”
“Ah, ah! Him good stuff!” exclaimed Sacobie.
Archer considered the provisions for a second or two. Then, going over to a dunnage bag near his bunk, he pulled its contents about until he found a bright red silk handkerchief and a red flannel shirt. Their colour was too gaudy for his taste. “These things are for your squaw,” he said.
Sacobie was delighted. Archer tied the articles into a neat pack and stood it in the corner, beside his guest’s rifle.
“Now you had better turn in,” he said, and blew out the light.
In ten minutes both men slept the sleep of the weary. The fire, a great mass of red coals, faded and flushed like some fabulous jewel. The wind washed over the cabin and fingered the eaves, and brushed furtive hands against the door.
It was dawn when Archer awoke. He sat up in his bunk and looked about the quiet, gray-lighted room. Sacobie Bear was nowhere to be seen.
He glanced at the corner by the door. Rifle and pack were both gone. He looked up at the rafter where his slab of bacon was always hung. It, too, was gone.
He jumped out of his bunk and ran to the door. Opening it, he looked out. Not a breath of air stirred. In the east, saffron and scarlet, broke the Christmas morning, and blue on the white surface of the world lay the imprints of Sacobie’s round snowshoes.
For a long time the trapper stood in the doorway in silence, looking out at the stillness and beauty.
“Poor Sacobie!” he said, after a while. “Well, he’s welcome to the bacon, even if it is all I had.”
He turned to light the fire and prepare breakfast. Something at the foot of his bunk caught his eye. He went over and took it up. It was a cured skin –a beautiful specimen of fox. He turned it over, and on the white hide an uncultured hand had written, with a charred stick, “Archer.”
“Well, bless that old red-skin! “exclaimed the trapper, huskily. “Bless his puckered eyes! Who’d have thought that I should get a Christmas present?”