Tales of Christmas
Date: 1880-12-31T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Christmas; Maine; Country Life; family life
Description: A collection of charming stories celebrating the holiday spirit. While the first six in the sequence are targeted for juvenile readers, they can certainly be enjoyed by young and old alike.
Publisher: MobileRead.com
Rights: Public domain worldwide.

TALES OF
CHRISTMAS

SARAH ORNE JEWETT
(1849–1909)

MobileRead Edition
2021

A collection of charming stories celebrating the holiday spirit. While the first six in the sequence are targeted for juvenile readers, they can certainly be enjoyed by young and old alike.

Theodora Sarah Orne Jewett (September 3, 1849 – June 24, 1909) was an American novelist, short story writer and poet, best known for her local color works set along or near the southern coast of Maine. Jewett is recognized as an important practitioner of American literary regionalism.

Contents were first published 1881 ~ 1895. This ebook is in the public domain worldwide, because the author died more than 100 years ago, and contents were published prior to 1925.

CONTENTS

- Jack’s Merry Christmas
- After Christmas
- The Christmas Eyes
- The Becket Girls’ Tree
- A Christmas Guest
- Betty Leicester’s Christmas
- Mrs. Parkins’s Christmas Eve
- An Empty Purse

JACK’S
MERRY CHRISTMAS

Jack and all the rest of the boys were very fond of their Sunday-school teacher. I think this was a good thing, and it is not apt to be the case; boys go to Sunday-school usually not because they wish to go, but because they must, and if it were not for the library books, and for the looks of the thing, I think the classes would be smaller than they are. But Miss Duncan was somehow very good company on Sunday, and she continued to find things to say about the lesson which the boys liked to hear, and she had a fashion of making that hour on Sunday have a good deal to do with the rest of the week. I think it was a very pleasant class myself; one or two of the boys were not good boys by any means, but every one of them liked Miss Duncan and would do a great deal to please her. They had liked her from the beginning, (she had had the class for two years) and I believe that was the secret of her success. “People won’t do much for you if they don’t like you;” somebody says, “if you would have a friend you must be a friend.”

One Sunday in the middle of December, while the rest of the Sunday-school were singing, these boys who were not as a class gifted with musical powers, were talking together, and Miss Duncan who could not sing herself, found that the whispering was all about Christmas, and that they were planning what they should do. Jack sat next her; she always was very good to him, for he was a lonely boy who seemed to have nobody to care for him. There was something very pleasant in his smile, and he had the most honest, cheerful blue eyes which looked straight in everybody’s face. His father had been a soldier and had died soon after the war when Jack was a baby, and his mother had been dead for several years, too. He did not seem to have any grandfathers or grandmothers, or uncles or aunts, though I believe there were after all a brother and sister of his father’s, who lived away out west somewhere, but nothing had been heard from them for a good while. Jack lived at old Mr. Josiah Patten’s, some distance out of the village, and worked for his board and clothes and schooling. It was a good home for him; but Mr. Patten and his wife, and her sister, Aunt Susan, who was lame, were all elderly people, and the house was not very near any other houses, so sometimes after the supper our friend felt a little bit sad and wished for some of his cronies to keep him company. They were very kind to him and he had plenty to eat, and old Mr. Patten always spoke of him as a good steady boy; but to tell the truth Jack felt restless and tired of things sometimes, and wondered if it wouldn’t have been splendid if his mother were alive and they had kept house in the village somewhere. The Pattens didn’t like to have him go down to the village in the evening; they did not think it was a good plan for a boy to be out after dark, and at any rate it was over two miles. But once a fortnight the class were always invited to Miss Duncan’s to spend the evening, and Jack never missed going. They never came away until nine o’clock, for most of the boys lived close by. So the Pattens went to bed between eight and nine, as usual, and put the key of the end door outside the window. It was a great sacrifice for Jack’s comfort, though he was quite unconscious of it. They said at first that he had better leave before the rest did, but he looked so disappointed that Mrs. Patten, who was very kind-hearted, put in a word for him. But old Mr. Patten always kept awake and listened until he heard Jack come in, and then stole out into the cold side-entry from his bedroom to be sure that the door was locked.

Jack’s own room was upstairs, and he used to go up softly and throw off his clothes, and tumble into bed as quick as he could. The window faced northeast, and all winter there was a great bright star that used to look in. On these nights when Jack was awake later than usual, the star was almost at the top of the window, and it seemed to have been waiting, to be sure that he was safe in bed, before it climbed higher in the sky, and went out of sight. Somehow that star was a great deal of company for Jack.

But I must go back to the Sunday morning when they were talking about Christmas. Miss Duncan suddenly moved closer to them along the seat, and looked very good-natured. “It seems to me we are all thinking about what we are likely to get,” said she. “I was wondering what somebody would be likely to give me, myself. I’ll tell you what we will all do. Suppose we try to see how many people we can surprise on Christmas day, by doing something to make them have a good time, and we will make it a rule, as far as we can, to give things or do things without asking anybody for the money. Of course that won’t be a strict rule, but I think you will be astonished to find how many little pleasures, and great ones too, we can give people without buying them. And we won’t think so much about our fathers and mothers — whom I hope we shall give to anyway — as about outside people, whom we never thought of before at Christmas time. I always find myself thinking about what I am going to have,” said Miss Duncan, laughing; “and this year I am going to try to give my whole mind to what I can do for my friends. I believe it would be the best Christmas we ever spent in our lives.”

Somehow the way Miss Duncan said this made a great impression on the boys. I suppose they had been told a good many times before that Christmas was a time when one should try to make other people happy; and on the day when Christ came into the world to do so much for us, we ought to be as much like Him as we can, but they had not taken it home to themselves. And Jack more than anybody else, perhaps because he wished to please Miss Duncan, felt a warm little flush come into his cheeks as he thought he would do ever so many things that people would like. He had not been looking forward to Christmas very eagerly, except on account of the present that Miss Duncan herself might give him, as she had the year before. The day was never noticed at the Patten’s; they were very old-fashioned people, and they always spoke sedately of its being Christmas day, and then turned their minds at once to other more important subjects. At New Year’s Mr. Patten always gave Jack a dollar, and last year Aunt Susan had added fifty cents, because she said he was very obliging about bringing in wood for her. She could hardly stir out of the chair, she was so stiffened with rheumatism. “I don’t know ’s there was any need of it,” she said, by way of apology to Mrs. Patten. “It ain’t everybody would do so well by him as we do, but I thought I’d encourage the boy, and he would be full as likely to keep stiddy.”

Jack did not know a great many people, and he was a shy boy. He did not dare to offer anything to strangers, and as he walked home after meeting along the rough frozen road, he felt a little discouraged, for there seemed to be nobody to do anything for. Then he said to himself that there were the folks at home; they weren’t his father and mother, so he could put them on the list. And he remembered that he had a good stock of walnuts, and he made up his mind he would carry a bag of them to each of the boys in the class. Walnuts had been very scarce that year, and he had been lucky in finding some trees a good way out of the town, at the edge of a piece of woods, where he had gone one day with Mr. Patten to mark some trees that were to be cut when the snow came. Then there was Miss Duncan; he must find something for her. He thought everything of her, and she had lent him ever so many books, and had been very kind to him. He never felt afraid of Miss Duncan.

When he was nearly home he caught sight of an old black house over in the field. It was a dismal looking little place, there were some dilapidated sheds, and the fences of the land that led down to the road were all falling to pieces. An old woman lived there all alone whom nobody liked. She was thought to have considerable money laid up, but she was very stingy. She squabbled with the men who did her haying, and every year somebody undertook to cultivate a field of hers on the halves and was scolded and cheated so that he never tried it again. They said she would even get up early in the morning and steal potatoes out of the hills. She was an untidy, cross-looking old creature who seemed in the course of a long life never to have made a friend. She was growing very feeble now, everybody knew, but she was so disagreeable and insolent when any of the farmers’ wives, who were her neighbors, undertook to do anything for her, that they seldom offered their services. She watched for the boys who even dared to look at her apple-trees and nut-trees, she always was expecting people to do her harm. Sometimes, since she had grown very lame and could not go to the village herself, she would call to Jack, as he went by and ask him to do errands for her, but one day she accused him of stealing from her some of the change, and he had never been hailed since. Poor old Becky Nash!

Jack looked at the house (there did not seem to be any smoke coming out of the chimney), and wondered if she had grown so stingy that she would not afford herself a fire. Perhaps she might be sick or even dead. Sometimes it would be many days that nobody would see her. He wondered if she ever heard of Christmas, and then he laughed as he thought how angry she would be if he tried to do anything to make her have a good time. But something kept the thought of doing it still in his mind. No matter if she were angry he meant to try; there were so few people who belonged to him in any way. The door opened as he watched it, and old Becky came out slowly, as if she moved with great pain, and gathered up a few sticks of wood. She had a little wood lot, not far away, but Jack noticed that her woodpile had quite disappeared.

“I guess she’s sick,” he said to himself, and after hesitating a minute he ran up the lane.

“What do you want?” the old woman growled when she saw him; she had been stooping over the ground to fill her apron with chips, and she could hardly straighten herself up again.

“I’ll take in some wood for you if you want me to,” said the boy.

“I s’pose you’ll want to be paid all outdoors for it,” she growled again. “I can’t afford to hire ye.”

Jack laughed and said he was hired out already, he would take it in for her and welcome. “You’re most out o’ wood, aren’t you?” said he.

“There’s plenty over in my wood lot that was cut last winter, but I can’t get nobody to haul it,” said the old woman. “Jim Decker promised me to haul it before the snow was gone, and then he tried to swindle me, and I sent him about his business. I had considerable here and I got along through the summer. I expect it’s all stolen by this time. Sam Downs cut it and he ain’t none too honest.”

Jack gathered up what wood he could find, and took it into the house, which was as forlorn and cold as a house could be. There were only two armfuls, and some chips, which he put into a basket that the old woman brought out. She seemed in a better temper than usual, and did no scold him from the door all the way down the lane, as she had a habit of doing. Somehow he pitied her more than he ever had before, and he made up his mind that he would get her some wood, if Mr. Patten would lend him the old horse to haul it, and he could saw it and split it, and have a load ready for Christmas day. The thought of doing this gave him great pleasure. He was sure that Miss Duncan would say it was a kind thing to do, and beside that, he knew it was right. Jack was trying to be good, and sometimes it was very hard work, for he was quick-tempered, and was always getting angry before he knew it. When he reached home the Pattens were wondering why he had been so long. He took his seat at the dinner table, and began to eat his Sunday dinner of baked beans, for he was a growing boy, and as hungry as they are apt to be. “I stopped up to old Becky Nash’s,” he said; “she’s sick, and she was trying to lug in some wood.”

“You’ve gone and got pitch all over your best clothes,” said Mrs. Patten, who did not seem to be in a very good humor. “She’s got money to hire help if she wants it,” and Jack flushed a little, and felt chilled and discouraged. “Well, he ought to think of his clothes, but ’twas right of the boy to do her a kind turn, seeing she was sick,” said Mr. Patten, and Jack felt very grateful to him for taking his part.

It was two or three days before he ventured to tell Mr. Patten of his plan for getting Becky a load of wood, and he was very pleased because the old man was willing, and gave a most cheerful consent. It was to be a secret, and Jack hurried through with his work, so that he could have time to saw or split for a little while every day. The snow kept off very late that year, and he finished it all in the woods, so that the day before Christmas it was all piled, ready for the old white horse to haul. There would not be more than two or three small loads of it. Jack fitted some boards on the sides of the old light farm cart. He had been to Becky’s once in the meantime , and she had sent him to bring in some broken boards from the fence. They were rotten old things, and he wondered how she could keep herself from freezing with such a fire as they must make. He split them up for her, and left them, and she was so cross that day that he almost repented of his generosity, and yet he wondered what she would say if she knew how hard he had been working for her. “I might die in my bed, for all any of my neighbors would lift a finger to help me,” she said, and he had half a mind to tell her it was nobody’s fault but her own.

It was very hard to know what to do for the rest of the people whose Christmas Jack wished to make pleasant. He had to spend money for two people, Mrs. Patten and Aunt Susan, and he fortunately had two dollars, which he had made be driving cows that summer for their next neighbor. He had meant to save this toward buying some books which he wanted very much — for Jack had a great wish to be a good scholar, and he had a great liking for books. But he bought Mrs. Patten a spectacle case, for she was always mourning over hers, which she had somehow lost out of her pocket coming home from meeting. Luckily the spectacles had not been in it. She had spoken about getting a new one, but somehow she always forgot it when she went to the village. And one day he saw a blue and black silk handkerchief hanging in one of the store windows, and with much fear and trembling he went in to ask the price. It was seventy-five cents, and he thought it would be beautiful for Aunt Susan to tie round her neck. She always wore a handkerchief, for she was apt to feel a draft. He could pay for it easily, and he felt as if he were spending a great deal of money, and put the little bundle deep in his pocket, and felt very grand as he carried it home. Then there was Miss Duncan, whom after all he cared most to please, but he remembered that the year before she had said that she found it very hard to set enough of a certain kind of evergreen which she liked. She always made wreaths to put in her windows, and trimmed the rooms for Christmas, and he had found one or two places where a great deal of that evergreen grew. So a day or two before Christmas day itself he knocked at her door with two big baskets full. She was not at home, but next day he met her in the village, she was on horseback and stopped when she saw him, and you do not know how pleased she was! “I was going to drive out to Mr. Patten’s to see you and thank you, Jack,” said she. “I don’t believe you know what a kindness you have done me in bringing that evergreen. I never can make any other kind serve me half so well, and I only knew one place where I could find much of it, and yesterday I went to pick some and found that all that piece of woodland had been cleared and burnt over. It is on a cross road where I very seldom go. I was cold and disappointed when I came home, and the first things I saw were those great baskets. I couldn’t imagine who had been so thoughtful and kind.”

Jack looked up at her and smiled, and tried to say something in return, but he could not think of anything. “I’ll take the baskets as I go back,” said he. “Mr. Patten and I came down with the team,” and he added shyly, “I’ve been trying to make somebody have a good Christmas. I brought down some walnuts I had for the fellows in the class — they’re scarce this year, and I’ve got a pile of wood split for that old Becky Nash — it was her wood, but she’s so ugly — she wouldn’t get anybody to haul it. She fought with the man that cut it for her, so she let it lay there in the woods. She’s sort of crazy, I guess. And I am going to haul it for her early in the morning. I bought some things for Aunt Susan and Mrs. Patten over at our house, it ain’t much, but then they won’t be looking for anything. I don’t have anybody belonging to me like the rest of the boys.”

Miss Duncan’s eyes filled with tears, but Jack did not notice it, and in a few minutes she said good-bye, and rode away, and John went on up the street to do an errand for Mrs. Patten. Mr. Patten was very apt to forget such little things as sewing cotton or darning needle, and he had gone in another direction, to attend to some business at the selectmen’s office. Miss Duncan saw him standing on the post office steps, looking very much puzzled as he read a letter. “Here’s my sister down in Maine says she wishes I would take one of her sons that wants to live out. They’ve had a hard scratch to get along. I’ve always had to help them some. I declare I don’t know what to do about John. I suppose you don’t know of anybody that wants a boy?”

“I can’t think of anyone just now,” said Miss Duncan, looking as if she felt very sorry. “He’s a good boy, I hope he will find a comfortable home.” It seemed very hard that he should be at the mercy of the world, and that just now he should be made to feel his loneliness. She thought about him a good deal as she rode slowly away down the road, and suddenly she said to herself, “That’s a capital plan. I wish that father would come home tonight.”

Jack came up the street presently, hiding something behind him, which he put out of sight under the cart, and fastened there with some string. It was a new ox-goad, which he had happily remembered that Mr. Patten wanted, and he had promised the shop-keeper to pay for it in walnuts the next day. He remembered that he had not wished to go to the wood lot with Mr. Patten the day he found those trees, but it was proving a most lucky thing that he had.

Christmas day dawned bright and clear, and Jack was ready to get up as soon as he waked and thought what day it was. It was very cold, and the kitchen was like an ice house, but he started the fire as soon as he could. “That ain’t you, is it, John? How came you up so early this cold morning?” said Mr. Patten, for Jack liked to lie in bed as late as he could.

“Merry Christmas,” said Jack. “Did you know it was Christmas Day?” and Mrs. Patten, who just then made her appearance, said: “Why, so it is! but then I never heard anything about Christmas in my day.”

“I thought I’d get you some presents,” said Jack, feeling very much embarrassed and doubtful if he were doing the right thing. “All the boys were going to get them for their folks,” and he brought the ox-goad, and the spectacle case, and Mr. and Mrs. Patten looked at each other and thanked him, at first without much enthusiasm, but Mrs. Patten recovered herself first.

“I declare it was very pretty of him, I’ve sure. I wish we had something to give you, John, but you see it wa’n’t the custom when we were young folks. We’re much obliged to you. I have been in a great strait for a spectacle case, too.”

“This is as good a goad as I could have picked out myself,” said Mr. Patten. “We shall remember it of you, my boy;” and he went out to feed the cattle, and John followed, after giving the handkerchief to Mrs. Patten for Aunt Susan.

They were as pleased as children, but Jack could not help noticing that there was something strange about the old people. Mr. Patten was unusually silent, and when they came in from the barn the boy noticed they looked at each other in a queer way. He wondered if it could be anything about him or his presents. Aunt Susan had dressed herself and come down into the kitchen much earlier than usual, and she had put on her new handkerchief, which seemed to give her great pleasure, though she said she should keep it after that for company. Somehow they all seemed very fond of Jack that morning; they filled his plate with the best that was on the table; they couldn’t have treated him better if he had been the minister.

“It seems pleasant to have somebody remember us, seeing we haven’t got any young folks of our own. I shall tell everybody coming out of meeting tomorrow that we had Christmas presents as well as anybody,” said Mrs. Patten. Mr. Patten was sitting by the stove warming his hands, and John went in and out filling the great wood-box — it was Saturday and Mrs. Patten was going to do the baking, and the wood must be selected with care.

“I declare I don’t know what to say to the boy,” said Mr. Patten, while our friend was out of the room. “It seems as if we ought to keep him; he’s a clever boy as ever was, though he is heedless sometimes. But then we have got a duty to our own folks. I suppose Jane thinks likely I’ll give the farm to Samuel when I get through — she always had an eye to the windward, Jane had; but I don’t know but what she’s right, and perhaps Sam will work in first rate. He was a good strong fellow when I saw him and could do as good as a man’s work then. I ain’t near as smart as I used to be. John means well, but he’s nothing but a boy and small of his age anyway, but I do hate to turn him off right in winter weather. I guess I’ll keep him over till spring, anyway. He don’t seem to have anybody to look to. But then, he may get a place where he can get better schooling — he takes to his book.”

Mrs. Patten was in the pantry, and neither of them noticed that Jack was standing inside the door. He heard enough of what Mr. Patten said to make him certain that he had lost his home, and for a little while his heart was very heavy. He had tried so hard to do uncommonly well on that Christmas day that he had been sure that something he would like very much must be going to happen to him. In a minute Mr. Patten turned and saw him, and looked confused and worried. He was a little deaf.

“Well, I may ’s well tell you, John,” said he, “my sister’s son’s coming to live with me, I suppose, and I do’ know ’s we shall want ye both. You needn’t be no ways afraid. I shan’t let you go until you’ve got a good place.”

And poor Jack said “all right,” but he felt as if the world had suddenly turned upside down, and went back to the woodshed for another armful of pine sticks. He was afraid for a few moments that he was going to cry, but he managed to keep back the tears. When he went into the kitchen again Mr. Patten had disappeared and Mrs. Patten behaved as if nothing had happened.

She had been knitting some mittens for Jack, and she said she should hurry to finish them that day and put some bright colored taps on them; and when she showed them to him, she said she wished she had a better present. And Aunt Susan said she would give him a new hat if he would pick out such a one as he liked at the store, which pleased him very much.

As soon as he could, he hurried away with the old horse and started for Becky Nash’s with the load of wood, and it was not long before he was taking it up the lane. She did not appear until he had begun to throw it off, and then she suddenly opened the door.

“What are you a-doing of?” said she, as if she had caught him stealing,” and she stood there scowling at him.

“It is your own wood,” said Jack, laughing. “I thought I’d bring some of it over for you, you seemed to be about out. I thought I’d get it here for a Christmas present. It’s Christmas day.”

“My sakes alive!” said old Becky. “What kind of a boy be ye? Didn’t nobody send ye? But I suppose you’re expecting great pay.”

“I don’t want any pay,” said Jack, angrily. “Anybody would think I did it to spite you. I thought you’d be pleased and — well, it was Christmas Day and I wanted to make folks have a good time” — and he went on throwing down the wood.

“Well, I believe ye,” said old Becky, presently, in a different tone altogether, “and you’re the best boy I ever see, and I’m going to make it up to ye sometime or other. You are the first one that’s done me a kindness in many a long year, and I dare say it’s as much my fault as anybody’s, too. I didn’t know where to turn to get anybody to haul that wood, and I have been burning them rotten fences.” “I’ve got another load ready to bring,” said Jack, “and that’s all there is. I guess some that Sam cut has been stolen. He says so; he was looking at it one day.”

“You tell Sam if he’ll come once here someday, I’ll treat him decent, if he will me,” said Becky, with a good deal of dignity. “I ain’t going to starve and freeze myself any longer. I guess you kind of thawed me out a thinking of me with your Christmas presents. I can’t stop here in the door no longer. I’m dreadful bad in my joints today, but I shan’t forget ye.”

Toward noon when our friend had finished the last load, he took a big armful and knocked at the door, and went in. The old woman was wrapped in shawls and blankets and looked forlorn. Jack thought she had been crying, but he did not dare to look at her again, and went over to the wood box.

“Here’s something for you,” said she, reaching out her hand, “and I should take it kind if you’d split me a few kindlings before you go away. It won’t take you but a few minutes, and I ain’t able to touch an axe myself. I’m going to get Sam Downs to cut me some hard wood to go with this, and if it’s so that Pattens can spare ye this afternoon, I wish you’d go over to my niece, Sophia Turner, and tell her to come and see me, and if she can I wish she would stop for a spell until I get better, and I want her to go to the store and bring up some provisions. I’m about out of everything. Tell her she won’ t have nothing to scare her. I’ll treat her well as I can,” said old Becky, smiling grimly. “We ain’t spoke these twelve years. I guess you thawed me out,” she said again to Jack.

And what was our friend’s surprise to find when he was out of the door that she had given him a five-dollar bill.

When he went home, much amazed at the effect and success of his Christmas plans, he saw Miss Duncan’s horse fastened at the fence. She was just coming out of the house.

“Good-morning, Jack,” said she. “I have been waiting to see you. I brought you some books, and I wanted to wish you a merry Christmas myself. I am going to propose a plan to you, too, that I have just been talking over with Mr. Patten. He told me yesterday that his nephew would like to come and live with him and help carry on the farm, and that he thinks he shall not need you both. My father came home last night from town, and I told him that I thought it would be a very good thing for you to come to live with us. Henry, who has lived with us so long, is not so young as he was once, and I think you could do a good many little things to help him. You will have a better school than you have here, and we will try and do as well for you as I am sure you will for us. I told my father that I should be responsible for you,” said Miss Duncan, with her pleasantest smile.

Jack did not know what to say; it seemed to him as if he were going home. He liked the Pattens, but he had always been lonely there, and he made up his mind that Miss Duncan should not be sorry that she had urged her father to let him come.

“And I mean to be somebody,” said Jack to himself.

There never had been such a happy Christmas or such a merry one in Jack’s life. The five boys who had found the newspaper bundles of walnuts that he had tied up and marked for them and taken in on the team the day before all came out together to him, and they skylarked together all the afternoon, for Mr. Patten himself had first gone to see old Becky Nash after hearing Jack’s story, and then had carried her message to her niece. “It was a real Christian thing for that boy to do,” said Mrs. Patten that night. “I’m sorry to part with him, I declare I am, but I know it’ll be for his good.”

Jack felt very sleepy and happy just then, in his bed in the attic northeast room, and he opened his eyes once or twice to see the great bright star watching him through the window. He wondered if it might have been the same star that it told about in the Bible — the one that shepherds saw over Bethlehem, and he hoped he should see it as he fell asleep after he went to live at Miss Duncan’s. He had never been so happy in his life as he had been that Christmas Day.

First publication:
The Independent magazine, 15 Dec. 1881.

AFTER CHRISTMAS

Jack and Annie Thomas had been busy for a long time before Christmas Day. Jack would not let anyone come inside the door of his workshop, at the top of the house, and when he went out he carried the key in his pocket. It was sometimes inconvenient, for the way to the outside of the roof lay through that room, and once, when some workmen came to mend the slates and Jack was nowhere to be found, they had to go down stairs again, with all their slates and tools, and beg an entrance through the next house. Jack was very sorry when his father represented the trouble he had caused and the loss of time; but he kept the door locked afterward all the same, though he tried not to forget to give the key to his grandmother, as a solemn trust, when he was going to school in the morning, or away with some of his cronies for the whole of the afternoon.

As for Annie, she spent a great deal of time out of the house, for her work could not be attended to in public, any more than Jack’s, and she had a little afghan at the house of one friend, and a white shawl at another place, which she was crocheting for her father and grandmother respectively. She spent an afternoon or evening over these, whenever she could; but she did not like to shut herself in her own room at home. Her father said one day, uneasily, that Annie seemed to be out a good deal; but her mother only laughed, and said they would be sure to see more of her a little later in the season.

There were various treasures hidden away in the least visited closets and the bureau-drawers; and, altogether, there were more secret undertakings known to the different members of the Thomas family than there had ever been before. Jack declared that he was afraid to speak, for fear he should either tell some of his own secrets or somebody’s else.

The two young people were looking with great eagerness for the coming of their favorite aunt, whom they always welcomed with perfect delight. Jack said she was just as good as another fellow, and Annie would rather have a walk or a talk with Aunt Grace than with any girl she knew. Somehow Miss Elliston had a way of winning the confidence and love of a great many people and you always felt better and happier for being with her.

It was late in the afternoon of Christmas Day, and the presents had all been given and taken, and the surprises were all over with, and our friends had been to church in the morning and had somehow or other contrived to see almost everybody they knew to say “Merry Christmas” and to compare notes about the gifts and the plans of the day. The Christmas dinner had been an early one, and even that was over, and the servants had gone away to keep the rest of the holiday with their own people — all except old Ellen, who had been the nurse and whose friends lived far up in the country.

It was a very cold afternoon and the city streets were almost empty. Jack and Annie were going to a Christmas party that evening, at the house of one of their cousins; but, in the last hours of the afternoon, there did not seem to be much to do.

Our friends were sitting in their aunt’s room, one at each front window, and Miss Elliston was lying on the couch that had been pulled before the open wood-fire. It was a very comfortable corner, and she had three or four books beside her, that had been among her presents; but it was too dark in the room for reading, though the daylight had only just begun to fade a little out of doors.

“It seems so funny to have had dinner at one o’clock,” said Jack. “It makes me lose my reckoning. If I weren’t so lazy, I would go out for a little while,” and he gave a desperate yawn, so that Tatters, the dog, who had been lying in front of the fire, got up and came to look at him with an air of deep anxiety, at which his master laughed and patted him and smoothed the hair under his new collar.

“Tatters seems to be as sleepy as the rest of us,” said Aunt Grace, laughing. “I think he must have had a famous dinner. He looks rounder and lazier than ever. Poor little doggy! he’s growing quite old and sober. I meant to tell you, in better season, such a pretty thing that I read the other day, in a book about Norway. They always give all the animals belonging to a household double their usual allowance, and so there is a great Christmas feasting; but, more than that, both the peasants and the people in the towns always feed the wild birds. They buy little sheaves of oats and barley in the markets or tie them up for themselves on the farms, and these are fastened on trees or outside the houses. Nobody forgets, not even the very poorest people, to give the birds a Christmas dinner.”

“I’m going down-stairs this very minute for some crumbs,” said Annie. “Here is a whole flock of sparrows just outside, on the parlor window roof,” and away she went in a hurry.

It was a good bit of fun to watch the sparrows squabbling over the bits of bread, and Jack and Annie were much entertained for awhile; and, at last, Miss Elliston yielded to their entreaties, and came to see two valiant members of that family of birds, which had seized a piece of crust together and would not let go. They fluttered about and rustled their wings in the leafless vine that grew on the house, and they lost hold for a minute, and then caught fast again. It was truly an exciting moment. Jack clapped his hands with delight and behaved as if he were four, instead of fourteen; but presently the sparrows all flew away down the street and the entertainment was over.

“I do think Christmas is a lovely day,” said Annie, after a little silence. “I don’t think I ever had such a good time as I have had today. Everybody is so nice and everybody does the kindest and pleasantest things for you. It is a good deal of trouble to get ready for it; but nobody minds. Even the people in the streets look at you and laugh.”

“I do think it is wonderful how everyone feels something of the peace on earth and good will to men,” said Aunt Grace. “I think the great pity is that with so many it is the only day in the year when that feeling does come. And a great many give presents just because they think they must, and they make a hard piece of work over it and don’t know what they shall get and wonder what they will do. It is too bad ever to have that cold-heartedness about Christmas, and it is worse to forget afterward the kindness our friends have shown us and to go on just the same as ever. When we give something to one of our friends, I think it ought to be to show our love and to give pleasure. I have been thinking this afternoon what a business we make of doing kind things on this one day, and I wonder why we don’t wish to do them every day in the year and try to put the same spirit into the whole of our lives. I wish we could have a whole year of Christmas days. I mean a whole year of trying to do everything we can for everybody.”

“I know one thing,” said Jack; “my money wouldn’t hold out long.” And Miss Elliston and Annie both laughed.

“But do you know, Jack, that I think the things we give away are, after all, the least of it. It is feeling that people are fond of us and have tried to make us pleased and happy. You grandmother has said half a dozen times to me about that shawl that Annie gave her: `I can’t get over the dear child’s having taken all those stitches and done all that work for me!’ And your father is wondering how she found time, with her going to school and practicing and all, to make him the little afghan for the library sofa; and Mamma has been so much delighted with the worktable you have made for her and inlaid so prettily. It really is a charming thing, Jack; but she likes it best because you spent so much time and such loving care in doing it for her, and in order to buy presents, you went without things yourself and saved your allowance. Don’t you see you have shown a dear, generous, good will to all of us?” And, now Christmas is over, I don’t think we ought to stop and behave as if we were done with all that; and, since we have shown our affection one day in the year, our friends must be contented and wait until they get their next Christmas present. I wish we could try to make the days after Christmas happy ones for the people we are with. There are so many little pleasures and small services to be given, I think it is a pity we shouldn’t wish our neighbors a merry day very often and do a great deal more to make things pleasant for them. I have lived long enough to find out one thing: That it is doing little things for our friends that makes them happiest. A great service or an expensive gift oftentimes carries with it a weight of obligation; but we all like to feel that the small comforts and concerns of our lives are of interest and importance to the people we love. And I believe, if we try to do all the kind little things we can every day for the people we live with, the great gifts and services will take care of themselves.

Jack had been silent, and so had Annie, and it had grown dark out of doors. They never minded their Aunt Grace’s little sermons, as they did some other people’s, there was something that always made them glad to listen. Annie came across the room, and sat on the rug by the sofa in the firelight; and Jack said, valiantly: “I was wondering, a little while ago, what I should do with myself, now it is after Christmas; but I never thought of keeping it all the year round.”

First publication:
The Independent magazine, 28 Dec. 1882.

THE CHRISTMAS EYES

Margery’s mother was busy reading a letter, and Margery herself sat disconsolately by the window wishing that she could go out doors to play. It was not because other children had gone, for, to tell the truth, this child almost always played by herself. It was snowing fast, and she was the more dismal because she feared that she must wait until spring before she went again to a lovely place which she had found only the day before. This had been a mild day for the season, for indeed, she had not been cold at all while she walked about the large garden. Down at the farthest end of it she had found an English sparrow’s nest built into a place in the wall where a stone had slipped out. This was behind a place of hedge that was so thick in summer that nobody thought of seeing anything the other side; but now the leaves had fallen, and when Margery’s ball had bounced sideways and rolled in under these bushes, and she had crept through to get it, she had been at first startled, and then very much pleased.

For there had been a great rustling and fluttering over her head and then everything was silent but her own little heart, which was beating away famously. She was afraid it was the place where the bats lived, which flew about in the summer evenings, always making her very uncomfortable; but in a minute, when she dared to look around, she saw the bird’s nest in the wall. Then she crept all the way through the bit of hedge and found that she could stand upright and could look into the nest, and could even walk to and fro a little way, as if it were a small room, and there were chinks in the wall from which the mortar (which had smoothed it all over when it was built) had fallen out.

Margery thought it would be an excellent place to play in. It was very warm that day, and she began to make plans about bringing some of her playthings there, and then she said to herself that she would wait a little while to see if the sparrows would come back. She would bring some pieces of bread from the house and see if she could not tame the birds; and, to tell all the truth, with a very few words, she was as happy as she possibly could be. She hurried to the house and ran back again with some bread, as if her corner of the wall might disappear while she left it, and she put some large crumbs (which the birds might have seen all the way across the garden) on the edge of the nest and scattered others upon the ground.

And then she kept very still and made herself as small as she could, and watched.

Presently there was a chirping and chattering over head, and then a bird came down almost to the nest, and saw Margery and flew away again, and yet she hoped that its quick eyes had had time to see the bread, so she did not doubt that the sparrow would know she was its friend. She still kept very quiet, and I suppose that the birds looked at her and talked about her, and found out what a good friend she was, while she could not see them. And presently one came down to the bush and sat on a twig and bobbed its head about and looked at her with its bright eyes to make perfectly sure she could be trusted, and then went over to its nest. Margery crouched, and waited, and saw at last that some of the crumbs had disappeared, and hated the thought of moving lest she should frighten her shy friend away.

After a while somebody came out to look for her and she had to speak and to move. The sparrow scurried away again, but Margery was as pleased as she could be, because she thought she could go to the sparrow-house, as she at once called the new play-place, every day, and she did not doubt that the sparrows would eat from her fingers and perch on her shoulders and be very good friends with her in a day or two.

But alas, the very next morning poor Margery waked to find that she had taken a bad cold, and more than that, there was a great white snow storm. Her poor little bones ached, and she thought of the bird’s nest and the long winter which she did not like, and she cried a little while she ate her breakfast, and afterward when she was sitting in the library with her mother, she cried a little more, and she would not stay by the fire, though everybody said it would be better, but wrapped herself in a little shawl of her grandmother’s and went to the window seat and curled herself up against the corner of it, as forlorn as she could be, and as if she were a little wet bird herself who was quite discouraged with the weather.

“Margery,” said her mother, looking up with a smile from the letter which she had read three or four times, “do you know what day it will be a week from Tuesday?”

“Christmas?” asked Margery, for she knew that it was almost as near as that to the day she longed to see.

“Yes,” said her mother, “and from whom do you think I have a letter?”

Margery did not know.

“It is from your Grand-aunt Peggy, and she asks if you will come to her for a little visit.”

Margery shook her head, but did not say anything.

“I think it would be very nice if you would like to go,” said mamma. “I shall miss you very much, but Aunt Peggy is a very old lady now and you are her little namesake, and I wish you to be fond of her because she is so fond of you. Bridget shall go with you, and that will keep you from being lonely, and I think you will have such a good time that you will always like to remember it.”

“Yes,” said Margery, “I will go, if Bridget can stay with me until I go to sleep every night. It is so frightening in that big bed with the curtains. But I like to go to see Aunt Peggy. Can I have my presents all in a box to open Christmas morning?”

“Yes,” said mamma, and she came to kiss Margery, and she brought a little silk blanket striped with gay colors, and tucked her all up in it, and kissed her again, and then went to the library table to write Aunt Peggy a letter, for she was an impatient old lady, as everyone well knew. But Margery thought more of the snow and the bird’s nest than she did of the visit, for that was a week’s distance away. She watched the snowflakes, she looked out across the garden and the black rows of box, and the gray rosebushes and the thin trees. She wondered why everything out of doors took off its leaves in winter. She thought they would look so much warmer if they wore them, and it would keep the winds away. In fact she did not see any reason why there should be any winter at all. And then she thought about the visit a little, and was sure there would be plenty of little round frosted cakes, and she was quite grand in her own small way, because she was going to pay a visit by herself; for though Bridget would be there, it was not like having mamma to say that one must go to bed or must not eat this thing or that, which were not so good for her as something else. Though Margery meant to be a good girl, and though sometimes she made mistakes like all the rest of us, she was usually to be trusted.

As she sat by the window she saw a sparrow come flying through the snowflakes, and, to her delight, he perched upon the outer window sill, and stayed there for a minute, looking at her as if he had something very particular to say. Margery had only time to wish there were some crumbs ready, when he turned and darted away, and she gave a little sigh and wished that he had stayed. Mamma’s pen was scratching away as fast as it could, to finish the letter, and Margery listened to it and found she was growing sleepy.  Then suddenly the sparrow came flying back, and this time it came right through the glass, and perched on the windowsill, inside, and walked sideways until it was as close to Margery as it could get, and asked in a queer, little, chirping voice, if she were perfectly sure there was no cat in the room.

“Oh, yes,” said Margery; “mamma does not like cats, you know” — and the bird quietly began to smooth its feathers, which were wet and rumpled, but presently when they were all in order, it sat up very straight and asked, “What do you suppose I have come for?”

But Margery did not know.

“We were very sorry to find the weather so bad today; we hoped that you would come to see us again,” said the bird politely.

“Oh,” said Margery, “you are that bird, aren’t you? All sparrows look just alike, you know; but I suppose you can tell each other apart just as people can.”

“Of course,” said the sparrow, and he pecked at Margery as if he were angry with her, and she could not help laughing.

“If you only knew us as well as we know you!” said the bird; “but most of you torment us when you are young and forget us when you grow up. You keep cats, and you frighten us every time you go out of doors. We have rights as well as you.” And he hopped back and forth two or three times. “I don’t mean that you do such things. All the birds in the garden know you and like you; and I came to bring you a present, because you were very nice to us yesterday and gave us such a good supper.”

“I was so glad you were not frightened,” answered Margery, “but you needn’t have brought me anything.” Though, if the truth must be told, she was longing to know what the present might be.

The bird stood on one claw and felt under one wing with the other, as if there were a pocket there, and took out two little pieces of something that looked like glass. Margery saw them, and felt greatly disappointed; she thought there would be something much nicer than those. She would have liked even a pretty feather better, and she could not help thinking that the birds must find so many pretty things that have been lost. She had been wondering if somebody wouldn’t give her a ring for a Christmas present.

“When people are very good to us, and very gentle, and when they like to please other people,” chirped the small guest, in his funny voice, which made Margery keep wishing to smile, “we give them some new eyes. You put them over the old ones, and you can see better forever afterward, for you will see what people are wishing for. They will make you more and more useful, and so you will grow happier and happier. Now open your eyes wide!” and the sparrow flew quickly to Margery’s notes and held it with one claw while he reached with the other first to the right eye and then to the left, and dropped the new eyes upon the old ones. And then he flew away, while Margery rubbed her eyes because she thought they felt queerly. And she wondered if she really should see anything that she had not seen before.

And suddenly her mother stood beside her, laughing, and she said she had been waiting some time for Margery to wake up, and at last had touched her small nose with one finger, because the dressmaker had come to try her new dress on and was in a great hurry. Margery was bewildered with the sudden change that affairs had taken. She looked out of the window earnestly, but the bird was nowhere in sight, and she wished that her mother had not waked her and was sorry that she must try the dress on. Miss Noyes, the dressmaker, looked cold and tired as our friend went slowly into the room upstairs where she was sitting, and suddenly, instead of thinking of turning herself reluctantly about to be pinned and unpinned, Margery really began to understand what Miss Noyes was thinking of.

“Here is this child who has more clothes already than she can wear out,” Miss Noyes seemed to be saying to herself, “and there’s my little niece Janie, who is longing for a new pretty dress to wear to the Christmas party, but I don’t see how I can possibly get it. There are all those heavy bills to pay for her mother’s long illness.”

“Where’s Janie now?” asked Margery — for sometimes she had seen the little niece and liked her, though, as I have said, Margery liked best to play alone. Miss Noyes looked surprised and answered that Janie was at home.

“May I give her my red dress that I have outgrown, mamma?” asked Margery, and mamma said, Yes indeed, if it would fit Janie; she had thought of it herself. And Miss Noyes looked at first one and then the other, and flushed a little, half with surprise and half with delight. “It is more welcome than I can tell anybody,” she said — but Margery told nobody her surprising secret.

The days went one by one, and time after time Margery astonished herself and other people. She watched her father and mother and Bridget and the other people in the house, and tried to see how many wishes of theirs she could read with her new eyes. I cannot say that her conscience did not give her a good deal of help, but everyone said how thoughtful she was growing, and papa had only to sit down and look tired in his big chair before the library fire, for the little girl to bring him his slippers and a cigar and a match, and mamma would be lying down and hear the letters drop into the mail-box on the door, and Margery would go as quick as a flash to bring them in, and she would put away the things she had been playing with because mamma thought the room looked untidy when she same in. And if she were making a noise, she would know that people wished she would stop, and altogether she grew very wise, and more than once she ran up stairs and brought down things mamma had forgotten, and nobody could understand it.

The time at last came when she was to go to Aunt Peggy’s, and everybody was very sorry to have her leave home. The last thing she did was to ask the gardener to carry some pieces of bread to her friends behind the hedge, and as the snow was not deep he was quite willing, though he laughed a little when Margery asked him, and promised not to tell when she confided the secret of the bird’s nest.

It was the day before Christmas, and a very good day for the journey to Aunt Peggy’s, which was not a very long one, though Bridget and Margery felt a great responsibility in making it. They had never taken a great many journeys, and they were very glad when they were safely inside Aunt Peggy’s door. She was a very grand-looking old lady, with little bunches of gray curls each side her face. She was quite severe upon people who had not good manners, and who did not do the things she though they ought, but after all she was very kind-hearted, and she was very fond of her little namesake Margery: and all day, before it was time for Margery to come, she had been hurrying the maids, and had been going up and down stairs, and looking everywhere, and trying to think of everything lest something should be forgotten and the visit be made a failure. It was a large, old-fashioned house, and very lonely for one person, and so, after the little traveler had had her wraps taken off, and had warmed her hands and her feet, and had gone to speak to Susan and Martha, and to say how do you do all over again to old Thomas, though he had opened the door for her; — after all this it was very pleasant for Aunt Peggy to take hold of the child’s little hand and lead her to the dining room, and look up again and again to see her at the other side of the table. And Margery wondered once or twice if the new eyes would be of any use to her now. Aunt Peggy seemed to have everything she wanted, and she did so many things for other people, but how could anybody do anything for her?

Yet, after tea was over, and they had gone back to the parlor, the bird’s eyes did see a wish, for poor Aunt Peggy looked over at the little girl and thought it would be a great wonder if she were not homesick. How could she care about a humdrum old lady like herself, and was it possible that a dear little girl like Margery, really cared anything about her. It was most likely she came because her father and mother sent her, and thought it would be best. She wished that her little grand-niece would really grow fond of her, it would make life so much pleasanter, for she was lonely now that most of her old friends were dead.

And Margery left her cricket (stool) on the other side of the fireplace, though she would not have thought of it before she had the new eyes, and she went softly to Aunt Peggy’s side, and gave her a dear kiss, and said, “I was so glad when I could come, Aunty;” and then whispered, “I love you very much.” And Aunt Peggy lifted her into her lap, though some people might have said Margery was too heavy, and kissed her again and again, and said she was a great comfort.

The next day was Christmas, and a great many queer things happened; for when the old lady forgot to tell Thomas something, and remembered it too late, Margery scampered after him down the street, because she happened to have her hat and cloak on, and said what Aunt Peggy had wished; and she even knew when the old parrot wanted his cage door opened so that he could come out and walk about, and she knew when Bridget wished she need not stay by her after she went to bed, because she would like to spend the Christmas evening with her friends, and so Margery bravely said she would not be afraid to go to sleep alone, and everybody said that there never was so good a child, or one who did so many sweet things, and that she was like sunshine in the house. But if Margery overheard any such praise, she told herself that the bird had been very good to give her the new eyes and to make this Christmas such a pleasant one. For besides giving pleasure to other people, she herself was made happy a great many times a day. And she could not help laughing afterward at the surprise of some old ladies who came to see Aunt Peggy, and who wished she were not there, so she would not hear some things they wished to say, for she at once got up and walked away, and when Aunt Peggy asked the reason she said shyly, without thinking, that the ladies had wished she would go for a little while. It was very funny that after they went away they sent her a present of a little bronze bird that looked just like her wise sparrow that lived in the wall. Margery was almost sure that the bird had something to do with it himself.

When the visit was over poor Aunt Peggy said she did not know how she should get on without her dear little guest; and if Margery had not longed to see something more of the bird who could talk, I think she would have felt worse about going away. But he never came through the window again, and though she saw sparrows by the dozen, they always flew away from her, and not one ever came to speak to her, and the snow is still so deep in the garden that she cannot go to the nest. Though she has the new eyes all the time — at least she thinks she has — but even if the fancy about the bird has helped her to use them, and if she might have seen all her chances sooner for being thoughtful and kind to people if she had cared to see them, still the dream has brought her pleasure and happiness, and it is a dear lesson that she never will forget, that came to her just in time for Christmas.

So, if we think we have only one kind of eyes that see the outsides of things, and if we are dull, and find it hard to do what people want us to, and if we do the wrong thing, and make our friends uncomfortable, let us remember that anybody who really wishes for the other eyes can have them. If we have been thinking that we should like to make everybody happy this Christmas day, and trying to think of just the right present to give to the friends we are fond of and wish to please, we must have eyes that see clearly. And the whole secret is this, if we only let a loving and thoughtful heart look through we can soon make new eyes of our own old ones. If we do everything that we see we can do for the people we work and play with, we shall have a true Christmas day of peace and good will.

First publication:
The Christmas Traveller, Boston, Dec. 1883.

THE BECKET GIRLS’ TREE

It had been a great while to wait before Christmas seemed even near at hand; for Johnny and Jess Parsons had been making plans about it since late in the Summer. One must have something to look forward to, after Fourth of July is a thing of the past; and both the children’s birthdays came in the Spring. As for Thanksgiving, they liked it well enough; but they had already grown used to having the inevitable turkey for dinner and to having old Mrs. Peters, who was both deaf and cross, for their only guest. She was a cousin of their mother’s mother, and a lone woman, who had seen better days; and Mrs. Parsons always took great pains to be polite to her; and put the children on their best behavior whenever she came to the house. Anybody would have thought it was their worst by the way the old lady scowled at them over her great silver-bowed spectacles with the green sidelights, and asked if they were fond of their books, and if they knew how much they had to be thankful for. When the dinner was well under way, Mrs. Peters became more mellow and better satisfied with life, and seemed to enjoy herself; but there was always a feeling of great relief when the day was over and she had gone away, and had made her little speech about its probably being the last time, and that she wished she could return their hospitality. Poor old soul! She was, indeed, very sad and lonely. The children themselves had never been half so frolicsome as she was once. But her years and her sorrows had dried her up, little by little; and she was gray and withered as a lilac bush in Winter.

Now, all this has been told about Thanksgiving so that you would understand that the cheerful holiday was made into a very solemn occasion for these two young friends; and, therefore, they looked forward most eagerly to the day when they felt sure of a good time, which was sure to be merry and full of surprises. The Summer before they had both saved a good deal of money. Johnny had grown to be such a tall fellow that he could manage a dory by himself capitally well; and so he had often taken out small parties of people from the hotel, which was only a mile away on the other side of the point. He had caught cunners and lobsters likewise, and had put ten dollars in the bank on the first of October, besides buying himself a new suit of clothes throughout for Winter. He meant to add enough to the money in the bank next season to buy himself a trig sailboat the year following, when he felt that his fortune would be as good as made, since he could take out large parties for longer excursions, and would also be strong enough to go away on fishing trips with his Father and the other men alongshore. After the clothes were bought he had a dollar and seventy cents; and this sum was still unbroken except by the thirty cents which he had been forced to pay for a “Mental Arithmetic,” which he cordially hated. But the dollar and forty cents was thriftily laid by for Christmas; and Johnny had guarded it carefully, even expecting his Mother to furnish the cent a week which it was considered proper to carry to Sunday-school, and the new writing-book which he had needed at the beginning of the Winter term at the district school.

And as for Jess; what had not Jess done to earn her money? She had picked berries chiefly, and carried them to the boarding houses; and she had even gone lobstering with John; and had shared the profits. They were very fond of each other; for, until the last year, they had never thought of playing with anyone else. It was a long way to the schoolhouse, and most of the scholars lived at some distance beyond. Neither Johnny nor Jess were very fond of going to school; but they were very good scholars in another way; for they were quick to learn a great many useful things that were not written in their books. The only teacher they had ever cared much about was a Sunday-school teacher; and they had seen her only two or three times, when she had been boarding by the sea the Summer before, and had come to the plain little meeting-house, where they went to church, and had taken their class while Ann Donnell, who usually taught it, was away. Somehow she had taught them a great deal. They had felt ever since as if they knew a good deal more than they used; and they were looking forward eagerly to Miss Thomas’s coming back the next season. She had engaged a room in one of the houses, at any rate, and the children had had a note from her and some picture-papers, which had delighted them very much.

But nothing has been said yet about the Becket girls; and, since it was their Christmas tree which the story is written about, it must be told, they were the Parsons’ nearest neighbors, that they lived in a very nice, two-story house, with a gambrel roof and three dormer windows in it, looking out to sea, and that they were not girls at all. In fact they were both over seventy; but they had lived alone by themselves since they were eighteen or twenty, and they had always been called the Becket girls; and there never had seemed to be any good reason for calling them anything else. They had a good farm, for that part of the country, and it had always been let out to a neighboring farmer on the halves; but, within the last few years, since the hotel was built and so many strangers had come to Eastpoint, they had sold a good many building lots, in a worthless pasture next the sea, and were growing rich without taking much trouble about it. They went away from home very little, and they didn’t even keep a cow nowadays, while the Parsons did; so Jess or John went every morning early to carry them a little pail of milk, and always, once a week, there was the money to bring back, wrapped in a bit of paper and counted exactly right. They were both very small women, with dark hair, which had scarcely grown gray at all. They were very good-natured and always had a kind word for their little neighbors, and yet John always felt that they did not like to have him come in with his muddy boots; though sometimes they were not muddy at all. They bought berries from Jess; and sometimes they went berrying themselves, and were as merry as crickets about it, in their two prim gingham sunbonnets. Jess always liked to find places for them where the blueberries were as thick as spatters; and they told each other more than once that she was an excellent little girl, and they meant to do well by her one of those days. Jess had a very different feeling about them when she met them out in the pastures; for they always seemed to be making a holiday and to be glad of companionship; but when they came to the door, to take the milk, she always felt a little afraid of them; and as for going into the kitchen or the sitting-room, it was quite a ceremonious occasion.

It came at last to be the Monday before Christmas — only two days before the great delight (for Christmas that year fell on Wednesday); and our friends could hardly wait for it. It was snowing so fast that they were both in the house, which was a disappointment to begin with, as their father had promised to take them to the Port to spend their money and see the Christmas things in the shops. However, there was one day more; and the children whispered together and laughed a good deal, and John brought in two old hoops that belonged to lobster-traps, and a great ball of cord, and began to rig them. His father had gone away early to the fish-houses, and Mrs. Parsons was busy about her morning work. There was no use in trying to wash in that weather; so she had begun to make some mince-pies, which was very pleasant for John and Jess. The little girl was helping as well as she could, and had already whispered to her mother to ask if she might make two turnovers for herself and Johnny, with handsome top crusts, which question had been answered favorably. John was whistling as hard as he could, without much regard to time or tune; and sometimes Jessie whistled too, until Mrs. Parsons declared they were worse than catbirds in a quarrel. The snow clicked against the windows, and there was a crackling fire in the stove. Mrs. Parsons stepped quickly to and fro, and stirred and rolled and pounded by turns, while Jessie chopped some apples in a wooden tray.

Suddenly they heard somebody outside knocking the snow off his feet, and Mr. Parsons came in, looking much excited.

“John Sands brought over a letter from the post-office,” he told his wife. “They want you to come right over to Gloucester as quick as ever you can get there. They expect your brother’s wife won’t live any time at all, and she has set her mind on seeing you. Henry wrote the letter; and he seems all broke down; says it’s hard to get proper help and he is sore troubled and don’t know which way to look.”

“Dear! dear!” said Mrs. Parsons, wiping her floury hands and taking the letter; but her eyes were so full of tears she couldn’t read it. “To think of poor Sarah Ann dead this minute, for all we can tell! You read it; will you? You’ve sensed it already, and I’m sure I couldn’t. It’s come all of a sudden.”

But the good woman could not find patience to listen, and suddenly interrupted, to wonder who was looking after the children at that busy time of year. And within five minutes she went into the bedroom to dress, where she laid her husband’s clothes out on the bed, also, to be ready for him when he came back with the neighbor’s horse which was to carry them four miles that stormy day to the railway station.

Jessie’s mother was in a great hurry; but she found time to tell the little girl that she must keep house, and that she might mix the turnovers and bake them and put away the rest of the mincemeat into a stone jar.

“There’s all that nice pie crust. It does seem too bad!” the good woman groaned. “And I meant to have it extra nice. You can bake it up into shortcakes, Jess; or, I shouldn’t wonder if you could make the pies. You’ve got to learn sometime!” and after a few directions, given in the midst of packing her carpet bag and running upstairs and down while her husband dressed himself, she put a great shawl over her head to keep the snow from spoiling her bonnet, and went out to the sleigh, talking all the while, and stopping the horse to tell the children to be careful of fire when she was already some distance from the house. There was no knowing when they would return; and Johnny and Jess watched their father and mother, first from the door and afterward from the window, until they were out of sight. John had expected at first to go to the Port and drive the horse back; but his father had announced that the owner’s wife was at the Port herself, and expected to be sent for that day or the next; so the conveyance could be left at her brother’s.

It seemed, when our friends turned away from the window at last, as if a great deal had happened; and they found it hard to settle down again to their work; but there were the mince-pies to be baked at once, if they were ever going to be baked; and Jess finished chopping the apples and mixed the great concoction with a feeling of immense responsibility. Indeed, she would not make all that paste into shortcakes; not she! And she rolled it thin and covered the pie-plates and filled them, as she had watched her Mother do a great many times, and felt as if she were an experienced housekeeper. It was past dinner time before she finished; and she had forgotten the turnovers. But it must be confessed that three of the pies had been failures, and were either scorched to death all over, or one edge was ruined at any rate. So Jessie selected the worst-looking one and cut it in equal halves. Most of the pies looked, as she proudly heard John say, as handsome as her Mother’s, and when dinner time came, neither of the children could find fault with the taste. But after the dishes were cleared away it still snowed fast, and neither of our friends could look forward with any satisfaction to the lonely afternoon. They did not, in the least, mind staying by themselves; but after the excitement of their mother’s going was over, life seemed very dull. Their father had said that he should not return before Christmas night, at any rate, and perhaps not before Thursday. Even if their Aunt had not died, he had meant to go to Gloucester on business about that time, and he might possibly take the cars to Boston, to see a man there who carried on the fish business, and from whom he had lately received a letter.

Jess cleared away the dishes and John helped her wipe them and put them away, dancing a great deal as he did it; and then she sat down with her brother and helped him with the lobster traps. Suddenly John said, ruefully: “It’s all spoilt about our Christmas tree!”

Jess laid down the twine and looked at him in dismay; for they had not even thought to tell their Mother of the pleasure she had lost. Before the snow came the two young folks had hunted about a half wooded pasture in the neighborhood until they had found a little spruce tree of just the right size and shape, and, if they had gone to the Port with their father that day, they would have bought presents and candles and all sorts of things, as long as their money held out, to hang upon the spruce tree’s branches. You may imagine what a disappointment it all was. Jess had some presents already stowed away. She had crocheted a tidy for her mother and a comforter for her father, without their knowledge; but besides these, the brother and sister had planned other gifts far more to be admired, and had meant to make their father and mother say that they never had such a Christmas tree or spent such a Christmas since they could remember. To tell the truth there never had been but one Christmas tree in that part of the country; and that had been at the Sunday-school. But alas! the young minister who arranged the great occasion had gone away after preaching at Eastpoint only a few months.

“I’ll tell you what we might do,” said Jessie, doubtfully. “I don’t believe the Becket girls ever saw a tree in their lives. You know how they asked us about the one at the meeting-house, and said they wished they had been there, because they had always read about it in books.”

“Ki-yi!” said John, jumping up from his chair and upsetting all the clutter of the lobster traps. “We’ll have the Christmas tree for them, sure as you live! I know they would let us put it up in the kitchen, while they stay in the sitting-room till it’s ready; and we’ll light it all up before they come out. It’ll scare them about to death with all the candles and the shiny things. I mean to go over in the pasture right away and bring that spruce tree home. I don’t care anything about the snow; and tomorrow we’ll start after breakfast and go to the Port and get all the presents. The roads will get trodden. I don’t believe it’s going to snow much more, anyway. I believe the west is all clear!” and he sprang to the window; but the west was as full of snowflakes as all the rest of the sky.

It would take too long to tell the whole story of the next day, which was Tuesday. How John and Jess tramped through the soft snow four miles to the Port — no, it was only three miles; for they were offered a lift on a horse sled the last mile of the way — and were lucky enough to find Aaron Ellis just returning with his empty fish cart, or pung, as they called it, when they had spent all their money and were somewhat wearily starting toward home with both their pockets full and their arms laden with bundles. The shops had been filled with people, and the Christmas goods were all a bewildering glitter at first, and everything seemed to be made for smaller children than the Becket girls; but they had found a workbasket for one, and a little plaid shoulder shawl for the other, besides a big handkerchief with General Washington’s picture on it for each. They did not notice until too late that each handkerchief had “For a Good Boy” on it, in plain print letters; but they thought nobody would mind the mistake. The Misses Becket had a pitcher with Washington’s portrait on one side, of which they thought everything.

After these gifts were bought there was not a great deal of money left for the decorations out of Johnny’s dollar and forty cents; but Jess had had a dollar and five cents; and this went a long way. The shawl had cost most, for that was seventy-five cents; but, after all, they bought some gilt balls and shiny tin things, and a dozen little colored candles and their fixtures, and some candy, and then went home rejoicing. They did not know how they could wait until the next night; and indeed they were sure that Christmas eve was the proper time; but the spruce tree had to be brought, and it was growing on its sturdy stem at that very minute when our friends reached home; and it was four o’clock in the Winter afternoon.

So they ate another of the mince-pies with a scorched top, and spent the evening making further plans. John had brought an armful of oat straw from the barn, and was tying up little sheaves of it for the birds’ Christmas dinner, at Jessie’s request; for she had been much pleased at an account of some Norwegian children who did the same thing. She was only afraid that the oats were too dry and old; for they had stayed in the barn a year or two, since one Summer when her Father had kept a horse while he was driving a fish wagon to the Port. She was busy herself stringing corn that had been popped into magnificent white kernels, and making long lines of it to twine about the Becket girls’ tree.

Christmas morning dawned bright and clear; and John had milked the cow and Jess had gone up the road with the little pail, keeping her secret gallantly and wishing Miss Lydia Becket a Merry Christmas, and saying good-bye as if she were not going to see her again for a day or two. John himself had hurried away to the pasture, armed with a hatchet. It was a hard walk he had through the loose snow; but at last he came proudly home, dragging the slain tree after him. Somehow it did not look so tall and fine as it had before it was cut. It was small and thin, to tell the truth; and they had to give it a good shaking and stand it in the corner of the kitchen before the branches would spread out again and look as they should. At last — though John and Jess thought the time never would come — they started out just as the darkness had settled down, the boy carrying the tree and Jess tugging with both hands at a great basket into which they had packed all the Christmas presents.

As they neared the gambrel-roofed house their hearts were beating with excitement; and they soon saw the light twinkling through the kitchen window, as if it were beckoning them to hurry. They gave a loud rap at the side door, and John stamped furiously to get the snow off, and was just going to knock again louder than before when the door was opened. Miss Lydia Becket stood within and looked at her two eager guests with great wonder.

“We came to bring you a Christmas tree,” said Jessie, after waiting for John to say something. “We were going to have it at our house, and then Father and Mother had to go away, you know; and — and — we thought perhaps you would like it.”

Such an emergency had never arisen before in Miss Lydia’s experience; and for a minute she looked dismayed; but she soon recovered herself and entered fully into the spirit of the occasion. “I’m sure we’re very much obliged,” she said. “Ann, here’s a surprise party, John and Jessie Parsons with a Christmas tree.” And while Miss Ann Becket (who was older and somewhat more to be feared) came toward the little group, her sister was taking the children’s part. “I’m sure they are very kind; aren’t they? We’ve never seen one; and it’ll be a great treat.”

Miss Ann looked at them through her spectacles, and seemed more pleased than the children had ever seen her, which was a great satisfaction. She closed the door, which nobody had thought of doing; and not even looking at John’s boots, led the way into the warm kitchen, where the supper table stood in the floor. The kitchen was a large room where there were houseplants, and a great fire in the fireplace, where Miss Ann and Miss Lydia still did their cooking in spite of stoves and other new inventions.

“Now I will tell you what is the best thing,” said Miss Lydia, looking as merry as a girl. “You sit right down with us and have some tea, and then you can have your play afterward, and do what you’ve a mind to.” And the children did not require much urging, though they had at least made believe to eat some supper at home before they came.

It really was a most delightful party; and the old ladies enjoyed it as much as John and Jessie. Miss Ann, herself, brought out a jar of preserved plums, and there was a Christmas cake, at any rate, which the sisters said they always made. It had been lonely at home; for the children could not remember that both their Father and Mother had ever been away so long before; and after supper was over and cleared away, with which Jess helped amazingly, the great delight of arranging the tree was begun.

At supper time Miss Lydia had said more than once that, if they had only known they were going to have company, tea should have been served in the sitting-room; and it was decided that the children should carry the tree there and the mysterious basket and do anything they chose, since they had promised not to hurt the carpet. They locked the door after them, with great solemnity, and began to work like beavers. The tree looked much smaller than they expected in the high walled sitting-room, and they had forgotten to make any arrangements for its standing up; but at last John pulled some strong cord from his pocket and fastened the little spruce into a heavy old three-cornered arm-chair, making it fast with repeated lashings and knots.

Before long they had twisted the last wire of the last candle to the topmost twig and had lighted them and hung all the presents to the branches, and then the expectant Becket girls were ushered in. They both said they had never seen anything prettier. They hovered over the Christmas tree, partly with delight and curiosity, and partly on account of their fear that the little candles would set the house on fire. The candy bags looked most inviting, and the balls, covered with gold and silver and red tinsel, glistened and shone like fireworks, and the pop corn looked like snow, while Jess had, with much toil, prepared four eggshells by first blowing out the yolks and then putting on curious shapes of colored paper with flour paste, and hanging them to the tree with ribbons. She had meant one for each of the party; but John had kindly said she might keep his for herself.

At last the candles burnt down so far that they had to be blown out; and then the gifts were offered. These were a great success; and even the Washington handkerchiefs were well received; and Miss Ann went upstairs to bring down two Lafayette handkerchiefs, which she and her sister had had ever since they were little girls; and she told the children how she had seen the great man himself; for she had been staying at her Aunt’s in Salem when he passed through during his last visit to America, and she had walked in procession and worn a badge with “Welcome Lafayette” on it; and the General had patted her cheek and shaken hands with her and said something in French to the gentleman who stood beside him. “I have always wished I knew what it was,” said the old lady, blushing a little.

The children had a great surprise. When they came to count the little packages of presents there were too many; and both John and Jess discovered some that were marked with their names. The Becket girls had used their time to good purpose while the sitting-room door was locked; for they had hunted among their treasures and found a famous pocketknife, with many blades which had once belonged to their brother; and this was for John, while Jess had a purse which was only a little worn, and inside it she found a silver thimble which Miss Lydia had outgrown, and which fitted her exactly. The purse had a bright half dollar in it, and there was also a half dollar for John; and two little round paper bundles were found to contain pound-cakes such as they knew the old ladies only offered their guests on high state occasions. How Miss Becket and Miss Lydia had managed to smuggle them in their young guests could not imagine; but were none the less grateful.

Such a blazing fire as there was in the Franklin stove; and the old ladies looked bright and young, and were even a great deal pleasanter than when they went blueberrying. They laughed and talked, and had dressed themselves in their very best afternoon dresses; and Miss Lydia had put on her watch. Both the children could sing; and they remembered almost all of the Christmas hymns Mr. Willis, the young minister, had taught the Sunday-school at the time of the great Christmas tree, from which this one was copied. The Misses Becket folded their hands in their laps and beat time with the ends of their fingers, as they listened to “While Shepherds Watched their flocks by Night,” and “God Rest you Merry Gentlemen!” and “Carol, Joyfully”; and, although Johnny did not wish to sing at first, he soon lost fear and tuned up amazingly. I dare say he would have whistled for the company if he had had the least encouragement. And afterward Miss Ann asked if they could not repeat some poetry; and both the children made their bows and spoke the pieces they had learned for the last day of school.

Then, to everybody’s astonishment, the tall clock in the corner struck nine, and it was time to go home; for there was some distance to walk. The tree was left where it was and everybody looked forward to seeing it next day. The old ladies insisted upon standing in the door in the cold to watch their guests go away; and when they shut the door one went into the kitchen and one into the sitting-room, and each held a light at a window unbeknownst to the other; and they wondered if the children were warm enough and if they were not afraid, while the hardy young creatures capered away in the starlight without a shiver or a look behind.

Miss Ann and Miss Lydia had to sit up some time later than usual to talk it all over. They hardly ever had anyone come in of an evening, and it was pleasant to see the children; for they had no young relations at all. “I thought I should give up when I saw that green and yellow shawl,” said the older sister. “I’ve got shawls enough now to put one on the back of every stone in the pasture. But there. It shows their good feeling, and it is a nice size, and I shall make all the use of it I can. I declare I don’t know when we have had such an evening. The little girl is going to be a good deal of company for us, as she grows up; and we must do what we can for them. The Parsons are good, kind neighbors. They must have gone a good ways after that tree. I don’t recall any spruce about here, unless it’s way over toward Lawton’s.”

“Didn’t they like it, though?” said John, triumphantly, throwing a crumbling ball of the light snow at the top of a barberry bush. “They said they never saw anything to match it. We’ll give ’em one next year that’ll touch the top of the room!”

“Why, I do believe there’s mother!” exclaimed Jess; for suddenly, as they came near the house, they heard the sound of sleigh-bells close at hand; and presently, the sleigh itself appeared around the turn of the road. Mrs. Parsons was much astonished to see the children abroad at that time of the night; and while their father made the borrowed horse comfortable in the barn, and John hurried to make a fire in the kitchen stove, she explained that their Aunt was so much better, she was sitting up when they got to Gloucester, and they came home as soon as possible; only the train had been late, and their Father would stop at the Port to buy some presents for his girl and boy, since he did not have time in Boston. Besides a sled for John, and a hood and pair of best gloves for Jessie and some peppermint candy, a book had come for each of them through the post-office, from Miss Thomas. They thought they never should wish to go to bed, and that there never had been such a Christmas. The only regret was that their father and mother had not reached home in season to see the Becket girls’ tree. “Oh! they were so pleased!” Jess said over and over again. “And it was the best Christmas I ever saw!”

“Yes,” said her Mother. “You will find out better the older you grow that the way to have a good time yourself is to make somebody else have one.”

But I had almost forgotten to tell what the children gave each other. John’s gift was a foot-rule, which he had long been wishing for and had spoken of more and more as Christmas approached; but he was greatly surprised for all that, when he found it in a piece of newspaper, hidden among the branches of the little tree. He had kindly bestowed a paintbox upon Jess, which she enjoyed all the rest of the Winter, and deeply deplored after all the colors had been mixed at once, when she left it out in the rain one pleasant day in the Spring.

First publication:
The Independent magazine, 03 Jan. 1884.

A CHRISTMAS GUEST

This story belongs to a Christmas night a good many years ago, for it happened when Rebecca was a little girl and now she is grown up.

She really was twelve years old, but so very small for her age that most people thought she could be nothing but a child, though I don’t know what her grandmother and her uncle would have done without her, she was so useful in helping with the work, and gave them so much pleasure beside.

These three persons lived on a farm and had found life go very smoothly for some years before my story begins, indeed, ever since Rebecca’s father and mother had died and she had been brought home to the old house only a few months old, a very cross and crying and dismal little bundle. Mrs. Norris, the grandmother, was a strong and cheerful woman, and while some of the neighbors pitied her for having to bring up an ailing baby at her time of life, she did not pity herself. She was only too glad to have this second Rebecca to love and take care of; and when the little granddaughter proved herself a warm-hearted, thankful, dear child, she thought herself the most fortunate grandmother in the world. She only laughed when the baby in a clean frock would creep out over the kitchen doorstep and roll about among the grass and dandelions in the yard and try to fill her lap with handfuls of chips or clover or whatever came first. She did not mind any trouble the child made; she was only too glad to have her in the world, and so Rebecca grew up, slowly enough, as if she meant to be a child as long as she could, and as if she was always remembering that we can be grown up a great while longer than we can be children.

But though she was short in stature and did not look so old as she really ought, she became, as years went on, a very wise Rebecca. She had a brown face and blue eyes that were quick as a squirrel’s. She had a great deal to do every day and soon discovered that this is a busy world though she had been planted in a quiet corner of it. Her uncle Eben was always ready to make her his companion in his out-of-door work; indeed the only trouble in the family came from the differences of opinion between the grandmother and uncle. Old Mrs. Norris would wish sometimes to keep Rebecca in the house, while her son would plead that the child needed the fresh air, and that she never would thrive and grow if she were kept close to the fire. So when he won, and captured Rebecca for the afternoon, Or most likely for the whole day, he would wrap her well in buffalo skins and take her to mill and to market or even into the woods chopping; or if it were summer, he was not willing to carry on the farm-work without her, and so Rebecca dropped corn and turned hay and salted the sheep, and, as her uncle proudly said, from the time she could walk alone was as much help as a man.

In the winter weather, however, she stayed mostly with her grandmother, and as she grew older she learned little by little how to keep house. Without being taught much, only by helping and watching the brisk old lady, and by keeping her eyes and ears open, she found out how a great many things should be done. Her grandmother taught her to read and write, for they lived a good way from the district schoolhouse, and many of the neighbors gossiped about the way Rebecca was being brought up without any mates, and thought no good would come of it because those who had charge of her let her run wild and indulged her so much.

But there was not a wiser or happier child in that town or the next; and so she came to this Christmas eve when she was twelve years old.

For the first time since she could remember, her grandmother was sick. She had waked in the morning very hoarse, and though she undertook the morning work her cheeks soon grew strangely flushed and it hurt her so much to breathe that she had to sit down at last and tell Rebecca that she must get the breakfast alone. Eben Norris and the little girl looked at each other and then at the old lady in wondering dismay.

“You’ve got a real hoast cold, seems to me,” said Eben anxiously, “but there, don’t give up, mother!” for the poor old lady had dropped into a chair as if she really could not manage to stand up any longer, and two or three great tears chased each other down her cheeks.

“I’m afraid I may be going to have a lung-fever,” she said in a shaking voice. “I don’t know what’s come across me, I feel worse and worse and I don’t know but I’d better get to bed whilst I can.”

Nobody knew what to say; it seemed as if a great danger and sorrow had suddenly fallen on the household. Rebecca helped her grandmother to the bedroom and Eben stood helplessly at the window with his hands in his pockets, and presently went hurrying out of doors to return triumphantly in a few minutes with the news that he had seen the doctor going by to make an early visit, and had called to him to come in. Mrs. Norris gave a little groan and said that she had not called the doctor for thirty years before — to think how well and strong she had been and that she knew what to do for almost any case of sickness, and now she was useless!

The doctor looked somewhat grave, but was comforting nevertheless. He hoped the old lady would not be very sick, but it was impossible to tell, and he told Eben that he had better get somebody to come to stay for a few days; so Mrs. Norris hoarsely suggested her niece, a strong young woman who lived in a village a dozen miles away. Rebecca was shown how to make a rye plaster and told how and when to give the medicines which were left in two cups and a tumbler, and she was then kindly patted on the head and called a good girl and the doctor pulled on his great fur coat again and said good-bye promising to come again before night if he possibly could, but it was already beginning to snow and he had some long rides to take before dark. “You had better be off as quick as you can, Eben,” he said, “for I think it looks like a bad storm.”

Rebecca and her uncle were very much frightened; they sat down and tried to eat some breakfast but it was a cold and sorrowful little feast, and after a few minutes Eben went out to the barn and harnessed the horse and started out on his long cold ride.

It had been hardly light when the doctor was seen coming up the road and all the morning the sky was dark and the air grew thicker and thicker with the falling snow. Rebecca stepped softly as she hurried about the kitchen washing the dishes and putting things in order. She cried a little as she gave the cat a saucerful of milk, and the pussy rubbed against her as she stooped down, and looked up into the child’s face with a plaintive little mew. There was a good deal of work to be done, and the little girl and her grandmother had planned much more, it being the day before Christmas. Rebecca had stoned a good many raisins the afternoon before and she gave a little sigh as she saw them in a plate on the pantry shelf. From time to time she went into the bedroom, and she thought her grandmother looked very sick — it was so strange and sad that she should be sick at all! Mrs. Norris croaked out some directions once in awhile and told the child not to fret herself, for she should be all right in a day or two; but she grew hoarser and hoarser and more and more drowsy, and soon after noon she fell into a heavy sleep.

Poor little Rebecca began to be very lonely; she sat in the cushioned rocking-chair and tried to read her Sunday-school book, but it seemed very dull, and she kept the cat in her lap and took great comfort in stroking her. There was nothing to do but to keep the fire burning and to watch the snowflakes fall. There was a great deal of snow on the ground already and this storm seemed likely to drift, the wind blew more and more and Rebecca could only see a little way down the road; she never had been so lonely in her life. She thought for almost the first time how nice it would have been to have brothers and sisters, though, to tell the truth, she had always felt much more at home with grown people than with children.

The old clock in the corner of the kitchen went on slowly with its tick-tock, and it seemed to our friend that it had never sounded so loud before and as if everything had stopped but the old timekeeper. She had heard it sound almost as loud once in awhile when she had been left at home alone on Sundays, but there was something strange about it now, and the day dragged slowly away — it seemed as if the hours would never end. Early in the afternoon Rebecca ate a piece of bread and butter and drank some milk. She looked longingly at a piece of pie and was sure that she might eat that also but perhaps it would not be exactly right to indulge in any luxuries, and so she pushed the plate away from her, farther back on the pantry shelf.

The nearest barn door was only a little way from the house, and after taking a look at her grandmother she put on her mittens and a big pair of stockings over her boots and her hood and cloak, and made her way through the drifts, which were already quite deep for a person of her height. She knew well enough how to pitch down some hay and how much she ought to give the oxen and the old horse and the two cows; and she stroked all the good creatures kindly. The horse put his nose over Rebecca’s shoulder, and seemed glad of companionship and as if he wondered where his mate was gone so long on that stormy day.

It was almost dark in the barn; the window that was high up over the great doors was thick with cobwebs and the wisps of hay that were caught in them, and through some long cracks the snow was sifting steadily, making little rifts along the haymow that looked like strange white beams of light. The hens were encamped in one corner and gave an anxious cluck now and then as if they were a good deal alarmed at their besieged condition; Rebecca scattered for them a generous measure of corn and then was going back to the house, contented with the certainty that she had made all these creatures comfortable, when she remembered that they must be thirsty — they had had nothing to drink since morning, and after her uncle’s cold drive he would not be pleased at having to water the inmates of the barn. Usually they went down into the field a little way and drank from the spring, but in such a storm as this it must be drifted full; there was nothing to be done but to carry pailsful of water from the well to the barn and luckily it was no great distance, though it seemed a good deal of an undertaking and Rebecca was tired at the thought.

She was anxious and worried as she went back to the house where her grandmother still lay sleeping soundly. The old kitchen was already full of shadows — it would be dark early, and the little girl warmed her cold fingers and put more wood in the stove, and then tucked the blankets closer around her grandmother’s shoulders, hoping that the old lady would wake up and say that she felt better.

Then she went out again into the storm, while the old clock tick-tocked louder than ever at her as she shut the door. It was cold work drawing the water, and hard work stumbling through the snow with the heavy pail; but the creatures in the barn drank eagerly and Rebecca felt that she should be better friends with them all forever after. One cow had to be milked, and by the time this was thought of, it had grown dark enough for the lantern to be brought with the milking pail.

It was not much after half-past four, but it seemed already late in the evening, and when Rebecca came back to the warm kitchen she was so cold and tired that she cried — very softly because her grandmother might hear her and be troubled — but the great tears followed each other faster and faster and spattered the hands she held out to the fire as she crouched beside it. Often and often she had thought it great fun to help her uncle do all this work in bad weather, but she was made sorrowful now by many things.

It seemed a very sad Christmas eve; and after Rebecca had brought in some wood from the shed, into which one of the kitchen doors opened, and had laid it down carefully stick by stick, she put a light in the window which could be best seen from the road and the long lane; and the only thought that comforted her was that her uncle would find the barn work done when he came home later in the winter night.

For it never occurred to Rebecca that he might not come at all.

She looked at the two cups and the tumbler with their neglected medicines and wondered if it were because her grandmother was so ill and might be going to die, that she slept so heavily — it could not be possible that a little brownish powder the doctor himself had given her from a teaspoon could have had such a strange effect. The wind that crept in around the window sash made the light flicker and send long rays out into the darkness. The great elm tree creaked, and the wind seemed to rise instead of growing quieter, and it howled in the great kitchen chimney in a way that Rebecca did not like to hear. She thought of her uncle and wondered what had delayed him; if the horse had walked all the way, there was time for him to have returned. Perhaps Susan Johnson had been at her sister’s house three miles farther away; perhaps — “I must have some supper for grandmother when she wakes up — she is asleep a — I wish she would wake up” — and Rebecca’s head grew so heavy that she rested it on her arms on the kitchen table and went fast asleep herself.

The book she had tried to read lay open before her — it was her grandmother’s old red morocco covered Bible — and was open at the story of the first Christmas Day. The child had read the story of the great star in the east and had thought it must be a pleasant country where the shepherds could watch their flocks by night on the hillsides at this time of the year — she had taken care of her flock, she thought with a smile; and after she went to sleep she dreamed about Jerusalem and that she was on her way to Bethlehem with the shepherds to find the little King Christ.

II

In the midst of this great snow storm, and against the advice of the hotel-keeper at Southfield, a tall fine-looking man had started to drive to Hartland where Rebecca lived. It was ten miles from one village to the other, but the Norris farm was only seven miles from Southfield.

The stranger had been willing to pay any price for the horse and he seemed impatient of delay. He had come by the stage and he had hastily eaten some dinner, and the faster the snow fell, the more eager he was to be off. The tavern keeper said that he hated to let a horse go out in such a storm, to say nothing of a good customer — they were going to keep Christmas Eve, he and a few of his friends, and they meant to have a good jolly evening; it would be first-rate if the stranger would join them and put off his ride until next day when the storm would be over and the roads well broken.

But the stranger said no, and buttoned his great-coat all fast and close and tucked himself into the old sleigh with some well-worn buffalo skins, and pulled his cap down over his forehead and ears and drove away. The horse was young and strong, and the traveler was soon out of sight of the tavern windows. He had not told his name, but several thought his face a familiar one, and all that afternoon the idle men who clustered about the stove wondered what errand had led him out from that desirable shelter on such a stormy afternoon.

It was already toward four o’clock and a little late for a start. The road to Hartland was an uneven one across the hills, and when the traveler had passed the last houses of the village and was fairly out into the country on the unsheltered highway, he understood better than he had before, the disapproval of the Southfield men. The road for a mile or two was blown bare, but the wind swept it terribly, and farther on the drifts were deep and unbroken. The snow was light and the horse easily breasted it; the driver jumped out of the sleigh now and then, and waded for himself, and felt a great satisfaction, and a sense of companionship with the young creature in harness. “Good fellow!” he said once as he patted him. “I wonder at your patience. Why do you consent to slavery? You could break these straps and be free of me in a moment. Why should I be your master! but tonight I promise you a good supper and tomorrow a Christmas holiday.”

The whirling snowflakes were almost blinding, and in the woods the trees thrashed with their branches and dry twigs came down to the ground. The snow that had fallen and the flakes that were new seemed all in the air together. By and by the horse was tired and discouraged and could go ahead but slowly; at last the driver led him by his head, and cheered him with kind words and strokes of his hand.

It grew dark suddenly and night was almost at hand, it became harder and harder to keep to the road; indeed there was no road to be seen. It was a swampy bit of country and it seemed unsafe to go beyond the fences — it was also certain that they could not be seen much longer; at last the horse stopped before a great mound of snow that was heaped high before him, and shook with cold and fear.

The traveler looked at him and pushed the portmanteau that lay in the bottom of the sleigh, with his foot. He felt a great chill and sense of tiredness creep over him and wondered what he should do. He tried to remember if some houses were not near, for he had once been familiar with the country, but he felt more and more puzzled and bewildered, and called himself hard names for attempting to carry out such a foolish project on such a day as that. The shadows grew thicker and thicker, the poor horse looked round at him wonderingly. They could not freeze there, and once more the man plunged forward into the snow and unbuckled the harness and stamped and pushed his way through the drift while the unfettered horse plucking up the last of his courage floundered after him. Just beyond, the snow was not so deep and they stopped for breath, and after a long blast of wind had blown past them, a light shone out faintly not far away on the hillside beyond. It seemed as if the horse saw it too; for he lifted his head and neighed and pushed on bravely. It was not long before the last of the battle with the weather was fought and won, as they went up the drifted lane that led toward the light from the main road. The horse was familiar with his surroundings and went to a part of the yard that was somewhat sheltered from the wind, while the traveler gave one knock at the door and opened it at once himself for he could not be kept away from the warmth and the light that showed through the farmhouse windows.

Rebecca did not hear the knock; she was dreaming about her little garden as if it were summer; only a great stalk of London pride suddenly grew and grew and made itself into a Christmas tree. But she lifted her head and looked around with surprise; she felt stiff and sleepy, and as if she were dreaming still. In those days country people had hardly begun to be afraid of tramps, but still the little girl had heard tales of robbers, and at first she was much frightened at the sight of the tall dark-faced man who had come into the kitchen.

“Is there anybody here who can look after my horse?” the stranger asked. “We’ve been almost lost in the snow; your lamp in the window was as welcome as a lighthouse to a ship at sea.”

“My uncle is away,” said honest little Rebecca; “he went to Denbigh to get my cousin to come and help take care of my grandmother. She was taken sick this morning. I thought they would be here long ago.” And the sudden fear that they might be still out in the storm made the child feel like crying.

The man held his hands out over the stove, for they looked very cold.

“If he went to Denbigh,” he said pleasantly, as if he wished to comfort Rebecca, “he would have the storm in his face coming home. I don’t believe it would be possible for him to travel against it; he must have got under shelter somewhere as I have, thank Heaven!”

“You can put the horse into the barn,” said Rebecca, feeling more cheerful, and she re-lit the old lantern and put on her wrappings again to show the way, making no answer to the gentleman’s objections, and they went out together. It only took a few minutes to hang up the frozen harness and put the tired horse into a spare stall with plenty of good oat straw. Rebecca had hastily rubbed off the snow on one side, while the man brushed and dried the other as well as he could, and they found a blanket and strapped it on and the poor creature gave a long sigh of relief. The crib was filled with hay so he could have his supper when he was rested, and they broke the ice in the pail which Rebecca had left half full of water, but the horse would only drink a mouthful or two. The other inmates of the comfortable barn nestled about sleepily, and blinked as the lantern shone in their eyes, and one of the old hens gave a quawk as if she thought it were expected of her — which made Rebecca laugh a little though she was so much troubled at heart.

When they went back to the kitchen while the little girl was shaking off the snow, and pulling off her great stockings, the Christmas Guest had thrown his coat and hat upon the woodbox and seated himself close to the fire. He looked about the kitchen for the first time and leaned back in his chair as if he were very tired. He seemed impatient and restless and Rebecca wondered what she ought to do for him since he was so disappointed about reaching his journey’s end, but at last she asked him timidly if he would like some supper, after she had brought some plates from the closet, as if it were the proper time instead of two hours later. “I kept thinking my uncle would come home,” she said, “so I waited, but it is past seven o’clock.”

“You must be hungry yourself,” said the stranger kindly, and looking at her almost curiously, though before this he had hardly noticed her.

The child shook her head sorrowfully and went into the pantry to bring out the piece of mince pie which she would not eat at noon, not to speak of some cold meat and bread and butter which she placed on the table in careful order. To tell the truth, she was glad to have company after her first fright was over; it was much better than keeping her lonely watch in the silent house. There seemed to be no cause for being afraid of this unlucky wayfarer; he was very quiet, but he was very good-natured, and after Rebecca had eaten her little yellow bowlful of bread and milk, and he had hungrily eaten almost everything she had put on the table, he drew closer to the fire again and began to talk to his good little hostess.

She cleared away the plates and looked quite careworn and old for such a small person; she had crossed a little old shawl about herself and tied its ends behind, and one hand held the other in her lap after she had seated herself on the opposite side of the fire to keep her guest company. He was as conscious as the child of the person who lay asleep in the next room; the wind howled louder than ever in the great kitchen chimney, and some branches kept striking the outside of the house angrily as if something were wrong within. The man and the little girl kept watch together, but whether she helped him most to keep the strange vigil or it was he who helped her nobody can tell.

“What are you going to do tomorrow? it will be Christmas day,” the Guest said at last, and the very thought of it made Rebecca feel like crying.

“Nothing,” she said, “because grandmother is so sick. Perhaps I shall have some presents, but I don’t know. Grandma was going to the corners this afternoon if it had been a good day. She wasn’t brought up to keep Christmas, though,” and Rebecca left all the rest unsaid.

She had amused her uncle and grandmother by making a quantity of little sheaves of oats and rye carefully tied with yarn, and she now pointed to a long row of these which adorned the high kitchen mantel-shelf. “Flocks and flocks of snowbirds come to fly about the house,” she explained, not without confusion, “and sometimes the cedar birds and blue jays. I was going to tie their Christmas dinners to the lilac bushes, and the cherry trees tonight, so they would find them in the morning, but it snows and snows.”

“So you have to take the birds for playmates?” said the Guest; and suddenly Rebecca saw his eyes fill with tears. She wondered whom he could be, and when he reached out his hand to her she hesitated for a minute and then went over and stood close by his chair while he put his arm round her, and held her. Rebecca did not know why she felt so sorry for him; she did not know what to say, so she wisely said nothing and looked down at the floor, or over at the window or anywhere but into his tired face.

“You are a good little girl,” he whispered presently. “I wish I could do something for your grandmother. I am afraid I have only made your hard day a harder one. I am a sorry Christmas Guest. Do you remember something in the Bible about ‘I was a stranger and ye took me in’?” and Rebecca nodded gravely.

“When you read it again — all that verse,” said the stranger, “you must remember this stormy night”; and at this the child felt very solemn indeed, and wondered what he meant, and it seemed more and more as if everything in the world were going wrong, and as if she had grown older and had “seen trouble,” as the neighbors often said of one another.

Rebecca remembered her housekeeping cares again presently, and left the stranger’s side as she suddenly made up her mind what must be done for the night. It was too cold to invite a guest to sleep in the unused best chamber, and neither did she feel certain that her uncle’s winter quarters in the low kitchen chamber overhead would be very comfortable. But her own little bedroom which opened into the kitchen was very snug and warm. She went in to take a look at it; the short little feather bed was fluffing itself under the heavy blue counterpane, so that it looked like a most delightful nest. Rebecca would have liked to snuggle down into it herself, but no, she must keep watch, and she gave a tired little sigh, and straightened the pillow and put the flickering candle down upon the small corner table; then she went back to the kitchen and timidly asked the stranger if he would like to go to bed. He hesitated, smiling faintly, for it was still so early, but he noticed the child’s white and weary little face, and answered yes, and she held open the narrow door and turned to leave him.

“If you need me in the night, you must come and speak to me,” he told her gently, “but perhaps you had better not say that I am here, for it may worry your grandmother. I must go away as early as I can in the morning, so you must not be frightened if you hear me stirring.”

They both stood still for a minute listening to the storm and the great elm branches overhead. There was one which struck the house with its lowest twigs every time it swept to and fro, making a dismal sound as if it were the claws of some wild creature which was trying to get in.

“I wish I knew where uncle Eben was,” said Rebecca, almost crying; and the Christmas Guest stooped and kissed her as if he had been her own father, and he looked at her as he kept his hand on her shoulder for a minute, and then whispered, “Good-night, dear child,” and went into the little room and shut the door. As for Rebecca she brought some of the longest candles and lighted one and put it where it would shine out of the window and pulled the curtain back on its rod, and then she crept to the door of her grandmother’s room, for she thought that she would lie down on the bed and listen there and keep watch.

But a voice said sleepily, “’Becca child, where are you? how long have I been asleep?” and in hurried the little nurse.

“Oh! do you feel better, grandma?” she asked in a breathless whisper, and climbed up on the high bedstead to lay her head upon the old lady’s shoulder and be comforted a little.

“Dear me!” said Mrs. Norris, “why, what in the world’s the matter, ’Becca? I should like to know how long I’ve been asleep — eight o’clock?” as the old clock in the kitchen finished striking. “I’m going to be as well as ever I was in my life provided I haven’t slept all my strength away. Hasn’t Eben got back? I suppose he waited for Susan and the storm kept him. I declare, I didn’t know but I was going to have a fit o’ sickness that morning, but to think I should have slept here going on five or six hours! I never shall doubt Dr. Gerry’s judgment again, though I suppose I shall have to be careful for a day or two. I don’t see what could have kept Eben so late, but they may be here now before nine o’clock — Susan’s always visiting about — ’twas all nonsense,” repeated Mrs. Norris who still seemed not very wide awake. She was a little deaf — she could not hear the storm; she only asked if it were snowing much, and said something more about the medicine and told Rebecca it was the right-hand cup and that she had better fasten up the doors and come to bed — Eben must be going to stay over at Denbigh all night, it was getting to be late.

And little Rebecca waited until her grandmother, after much restlessness and tossing about, had fallen asleep again, and then she slid down from the bed and went out to put more wood on the fire. She was tired and frightened; she was more and more sure that her uncle would never have stayed all day at Denbigh and all night. If she had only known where to go to look for him! but the window pane felt icy cold as she pressed her forehead against it, for it was a cold world of storm outside; and she went back to the bedroom full of fear and sorrow, and the cat stirred in the rocking chair and stretched her claws out as Rebecca passed her, and old Mrs. Norris said drowsily, “Go to sleep now, there’s a good girl, ’Becca,” and the child covered herself a little with the blankets, and opened her eyes wide and told herself it would only take a minute to get the lantern ready and that she would keep watch. And the wind blew until it was out of breath, and the snowflakes fell silently and grew less and less, and at last the night grew still, and the stars came out, and the candle burnt down and down, and shone through the farmhouse window and down the drifted lane as far as it could and gave one great flare and went out, and the branches were still and the fire was out like the candle, and the cat stretched her paws again and cuddled herself in her warm fur, and Mrs. Norris slept on, and tired little Rebecca who had nestled further under the clothes, and who still wore the little brown shawl crossed and tied behind, was asleep too; fast asleep by her grandmother’s side.

III

But the Christmas Guest is wide awake; he has grave matters to think of, and he is impatient because his plan for sooner reaching his journey’s end has only brought him this delay. He was sure that by making this short cut across the country he could gain several hours; but after all if he had taken the roundabout way by the railroads, he must have been stopped somewhere by such a storm as this. He thinks about his errand, and the bad news from Washington, and he hears the voices in the next room — and at last it seems a good while since they ceased — the night seems to him interminably long, and he grows more and more anxious, and then remembers other nights when he has kept watch. He thinks that he will go back to the warm kitchen, for he cannot go to sleep, but he does not wish to frighten the child who has been so kind to him. He sits in the low chair at first, but it is cold by the window; he changes his place and sits on the bed awhile. He is wretchedly tired and he fairly aches with the chill and with the long distance he has hurried in the cold that day. It can do no harm to sleep an hour or two; he will rest a little longer and then go out and try to find his way; he can catch the early train on the railway and he can leave the horse, and push forward afoot, if the roads are too much drifted. The wind seems to be going down, and he remembers that the waning moon will give some light toward morning. He is an old soldier; he remembers many a winter night that he has spent out of doors, but he says to himself that he is an old fellow now, and it is a good thing to be under shelter.

Rebecca’s little bed looks very short for such a tall soldier as himself, and he laughs softly as he looks at it, and then something very much like tears might be seen shining in his eyes as he remembers the dear womanly little girl who has tried so hard to make him comfortable. The children he knows best have a much more gay and careless life — he wonders if they are any happier; but he thinks that someday he must give his little hostess some pleasure or other in return for her hospitality. And in a few minutes after he has blown out the candle he is sound asleep — he has learned to go to sleep quickly and make the most of the time he has for rest. And at last the long Christmas eve is over and Christmas morning has come, dark and dismal as yet.

After a while the stranger wakes suddenly and hears the old timekeeper in the kitchen strike five o’clock, and he gets up quickly and makes himself ready to go on. He strikes a match and lights the candle again, and he sees the small window glistening with thick frost, and rubs off a bit of it so he can look out at the weather. A low red moon is shining in the east, the wind is still and the stars are shining. He remembers that it is Christmas, and thinks of the little girl and that she is pretty sure to be lonely and sad and disappointed. He wishes that he could know how the poor old grandmother is, and has a sudden fear that the missing uncle may be somewhere covered by a smooth drift of snow, and that Rebecca may wake to know a great sorrow. He thinks of the dear friends with whom he had hoped to spend his holidays and whom he has had to leave hurriedly to go back to his duty. Altogether he is not cheerful, but he is a brave man.

In a few minutes he has gathered his possessions and has stepped softly to and fro in the kitchen and found his stiff boots and his coat which had been hung by the stove to dry. He has put the light where it will not shine into the bedroom and he tries hard not to wake the sick woman and her little granddaughter. Rebecca’s red Bible is still lying on the table, and with a quick smile he takes some money from his pocket and puts it inside the cover — and he writes on the back of his card:

“For a good little girl, with many thanks from an old soldier.”

He finds that there are some live coals left in the stove and puts some more wood in, and then opens the kitchen door and blows out the light and goes away.

The door shuts with a loud creak and old Mrs. Norris hears it, and says, “Who’s that?” but nobody answers, and everything seems quiet; she sees the flickering light from a bit of birch bark in the stove, and thinks it is not late, for the fire is not out, so she goes to sleep again.

The Guest has found his horse, though he has had hard work to get the stable door open, and he puts on the bridle only and slings the strap of his portmanteau over his shoulder, mounts and rides away hoping to catch the half-past six o’clock train which Rebecca had told him of the night before.

IV

Just after daylight the farmers are out with their teams, and presently two sleighs covered with loose snow and drawn by steaming horses who look as if they had had a hard pull of it, meet in the farmhouse yard. Eben Norris is in one, but his arm is bandaged and he looks pale. He says he was thrown out of his sleigh late the afternoon before and had to wait a good while for the doctor, and then they insisted he mustn’t think of going home in the storm for he might be laid up all the rest of the winter. He had only put his shoulder out of place — he will be all right in a few days, the doctor says.

But he is frightened to see that Susan Johnson is just making her appearance — he had a long chase after her the day before in the deep snow, for she was not in her own home. His horse was tired, and he had told her to go with a neighbor who was just starting for Hartland, and would reach there much quicker than he could. Then one of the Jarvis boys would take her to the farm, and he would let his horse rest and be home an hour or two later. But the storm grew worse and worse, and by the time she reached the village the Jarvis boys would not hear of driving to the farm and everybody said that she must wait until morning. She was chilled already, so there was nothing to do but to yield, but she had hardly slept all night for worrying about her aunt. And if she had not been sure that Eben was at home she believed that she should have gone the rest of the way afoot. And Eben said that the only comfort he had was in thinking she was at home with the folks, or he believed nothing would have prevailed upon him to stay at the doctor’s, and they hurried anxiously toward the house.

Rebecca appears smiling at the smaller barn door; she found it easy to follow the tracks in the snow and she has been wondering about the strange Christmas Guest all the time she threw down some hay from the mow — indeed since she waked up, for she went out to the kitchen to find the good fire, which was a great comfort, and to knock on the door to find her bedroom empty.

She is frightened when she sees that her uncle is hurt, but they all go to the house and there is Mrs. Norris looking not quite so vigorous as usual, but going about the kitchen and frying sausages for breakfast. She is just putting some more into the pan, for she has seen the new comers.

“I declare, I was beginning to be uneasy,” she said. “And here’s ’Becca says a strange man slept here last night. Dr. Gerry gave me a sleeping powder, and I never knew a word about it. I feel shaky, but it’s broke up my cold. The first think I thought of when ’Becca told me, was the teaspoons and the porringer, and there was my knitted purse on the shelf by the clock. He might have taken anything he’d a mind to, but ’Becca said she knew he wouldn’t do us any wrong. ’Twas kind of lonesome for her though; she’s been crying good this morning — she said she got so scared about me and Eben too — she was afraid he’d got buried in the snow.”

And just then Eben appeared from the little back entry where ’Becca had been helping him to take off his coat and there was a great excitement when his mother found out about the lame shoulder.

A little later when Susan Johnson had taken the reins of government from both the invalids, ’Becca took up the red Bible to put it away and she happened to see that something lay inside the cover, and with great astonishment she found the money and the card. She carried it at once to her uncle who sat by the fire very lame and dismal, now that the excitement of getting home was over with.

“Look here, mother,” he shouted, for the old lady had gone into the bedroom, “who do you suppose ’Becca had for company? ’Twas General —. I should think you’d known him, ’Becca; his picture’s been in all the papers — and he’s left her a present of ten dollars!”

So ’Becca was the heroine of all that neighborhood, and when people came after the storm to ask for Eben Norris’s damaged shoulder, they were just as anxious to hear the story of the Christmas Guest. And by and by there came a letter from down in Virginia from the General himself — to say that he had thought of his little hostess a great many times, and wished that he could know what sort of a Christmas Day it was at the Farm, and all about her grandmother and her uncle. He hoped that he should see her again someday, and he wished to thank her for her kindness to him. He sent her an illustrated newspaper, beside the letter, with a leaf folded down at the picture of his headquarters; and there were some bright little flowers in the letter which he had picked out-of-doors that day. There were still a good many snowdrifts in Hartland, so Rebecca thought the flowers very wonderful. You may be sure that she was very pleased, and wrote a letter to send back, with great care.

And after the war was over and Rebecca was almost grown up, one day a carriage was driven into the farmhouse yard, and who should the visitors be but the General and his wife and daughter, who had come a good way to see the young girl who was so kind and thoughtful a hostess that stormy night. Rebecca was quite shy at first, but she soon felt at ease again with her friend who seemed to like it very much when old Mrs. Norris said that ’Becca always had tried to find his name in every newspaper she could get.

You may be sure that Rebecca gave her guests the best early supper she knew how to put upon a table, and that everybody laughed when the General insisted upon seeing the little bedroom and the short bed where he had spent the stormy Christmas night, though Rebecca had outgrown her childish quarters long before. They walked about the farm and saw the bees and the garden and the General said that he should like to spend a month in that quiet pleasant country place, and that he should always feel better contented about his young hostess now, because he never before had been able to think of anything but the loneliness and cold weather of her home.

And the General’s daughter, who was a bright, kind girl, a little older than Rebecca, brought a new picture of her father in a pretty frame, which may be seen in the best front room at the farmhouse to this day. The two girls quickly made friends with each other. And so this was another pleasant thing for Rebecca to remember. But indeed she always will be glad that she could give shelter to so kind and so famous a Christmas Guest on the night of the great storm.

First publication:
Wide Awake children’s magazine, Jan. 1887.

BETTY LEICESTER’S CHRISTMAS

I

There was once a storybook girl named Betty Leicester, who lived in a small square book bound in scarlet and white. I, who know her better than anyone else does, and who know my way about Tideshead, the storybook town, as well as she did, and who have not only made many a visit to her aunt Barbara and aunt Mary in their charming old country-house, but have even seen the house in London where she spent the winter: I, who confess to loving Betty a good deal, wish to write a little more about her in this Christmas story. The truth is, that ever since I wrote the first story I have been seeing girls who remind me of Betty Leicester of Tideshead. Either they were about the same age or the same height, or they skipped gaily by me in a little gown like hers, or I saw a pleased look or a puzzled look in their eyes which seemed to bring Betty, my own storybook girl, right before me.

Now, if anybody has read the book, this preface will be much more interesting than if anybody has not. Yet, if I say to all new acquaintances that Betty was just in the middle of her sixteenth year, and quite in the middle of girlhood; that she hated some things as much as she could, and liked other things with all her heart, and did not feel pleased when older people kept saying don’t! perhaps these new acquaintances will take the risk of being friends. Certain things had become easy just as Betty was leaving Tideshead in New England, where she had been spending the summer with her old aunts, so that, having got used to all the Tideshead liberties and restrictions, she thought she was leaving the easiest place in the world; but when she got back to London with her father, somehow or other life was very difficult indeed.

She used to wish for London and for her cronies, the Duncans, when she was first in Tideshead; but when she was in England again she found that, being a little nearer to the awful responsibilities of a grown person, she was not only a new Betty, but London — great, busy, roaring delightful London — was a new London altogether. To say that she felt lonely, and cried one night because she wished to go back to Tideshead and be a village person again, and was homesick for her four-posted bed with the mandarins parading on the curtains, is only to tell the honest truth.

In Tideshead that summer Betty Leicester learned two things which she could not understand quite well enough to believe at first, but which always seem more and more sensible to one as time goes on. The first is that you must be careful what you wish for, because if you wish hard enough you are pretty sure to get it; and the second is, that no two persons can be placed anywhere where one will not be host and the other guest. One will be in a position to give and to help and to show; the other must be the one who depends and receives.

Now, this subject may not seem any clearer to you at first than it did to Betty; but life suddenly became a great deal more interesting, and she felt herself a great deal more important to the rest of the world when she got a little light from these rules. For everybody knows that two of the hardest things in the world are to know what to do and how to behave; to know what one’s own duty is in the world and how to get on with other people. What to be and how to behave — these are the questions every girl has to face; and if somebody answers, “Be good and be polite,” it is such a general kind of answer that one throws it away and feels uncomfortable.

I do not remember that I happened to say anywhere in the story that there was a pretty fashion in Tideshead, as summer went on, of calling our friend “Sister Betty.” Whether it came from her lamenting that she had no sister, and being kindly adopted by certain friends, or whether there was something in her friendly, affectionate way of treating people, one cannot tell.

II

Betty Leicester, in a new winter gown which had just been sent home from Liberty’s, with all desirable qualities of color, and a fine expanse of smocking at the yoke, and some sprigs of embroidery for ornament in proper places, was yet an unhappy Betty. In spite of being not only fine, but snug and warm as one always feels when cold weather first comes and one gets into a winter dress, everything seemed disappointing. The weather was shivery and dark, the street into which she was looking was narrow and gloomy, and there was a moment when Betty thought wistfully of Tideshead as if there were no December there, and only the high, clear September sky that she had left. Somehow, all out-of-door life appeared to have come to an end, and she felt as if she were shut into a dark and wintry prison. Not long before this she had come from Whitby, the charming red-roofed Yorkshire fishing-town that forever climbs the hill to its grey abbey. There were flocks of young people at Whitby that autumn, and Betty had lived out of doors in pleasant company to her heart’s content, and tramped about the moors and along the cliffs with gay parties, and played golf and cricket, and helped to plan some great excitement or lively excursion for almost every day. There is a funny, dancing-step sort of walk, set to the tune of “Humpty-Dumpty,” which seems to belong with the Whitby walking-sticks which everybody carries; you lock arms in lines across the road, and keep step to the gay chant of the dismal nursery lines, and the faster you go, especially when you are tired, the more it seems to rest you (or that’s what some people think) in the long walks home. Whitby was almost as good as Tideshead, to which lovely town Betty now compared every other, even London itself.

Betty and her father had not yet gone to housekeeping by themselves (which made them very happy later on), but they were living in some familiar old Clarges Street lodgings convenient to the Green Park, where Betty could go for a consoling scamper with a new dog called “Toby” because he looked so exactly like the beloved Toby on the cover of “Punch.” Betty had spent a whole morning’s work upon a proper belled ruff for Toby, who gravely sat up and wore it as if he were conscious of literary responsibilities.

Papa had gone to the British Museum that rainy morning, and was not likely to reappear before the close of day. For a wonder, he was going to dine at home that night. Something very interesting to the scientific world had happened to him during his summer visit to Alaska, and it seemed as if every one of his scientific friends had also made some discovery, or something had happened to each one, which made many talks and dinners and club meetings delightfully important. But most of the London people were in the country; for in England they stay in the hot town until July or August, while all Americans scatter among green fields or seashore places; and then spend the gloomy months of the year in their country houses, when we fly back to the shelter and music and pictures and companionship of town life. This all depends upon the meeting of parliament and other great reasons; but even Betty Leicester felt quite left out and lonely in town that dark day. Her best friends, the Duncans, were at their great house in Warwickshire. She was going to stay with them for a month, but not just yet; while her father was soon going to pay a short visit to a very great lady indeed and Danesly Castle, just this side of the Border.

This “very great lady indeed” was perfectly charming to our friend; a smile or a bow from her was just then more than anything else to Betty. We all know how perfectly delightful it is to love someone so much that we keep dreaming of her a little all the time, and what happiness it gives when the least thing one has to do with her is a perfectly golden joy. Betty Loved Mrs. Duncan fondly and constantly, and she loved Aunt Barbara with a spark of true enchantment and eager desire to please; but for this new friend, for Mary Danesly (who was Mrs. Duncan’s cousin), there was something quite different in her heart. As she stood by the window in Clarges Street she was thinking of this lovely friend, and wishing for once that she herself was older, so that perhaps she might have been asked to come with papa for a week’s visit at Christmas. But Lady Mary would be busy enough with her great house party of distinguished people. Once she had been so delightful as to say that Betty must some day come to Danesly with her father, but of course this could not be the time. Miss Day, Betty’s old governess, who now lived with her mother in one of the suburbs of London, was always ready to come to spend a week or two if Betty were to be left alone, and it was pleasanter every year to try to make Miss Day have a good time as well as to have one one’s self; but, somehow, a feeling of having outgrown Miss Day was hard to bear. They had not much to talk about except the past, and what they used to do; and when friendship comes to this alone, it may be dear, but is never the best sort.

The fog was blowing out of the street, and the window against which Betty leaned was suddenly flecked with raindrops. A telegraph boy came round the corner as if the gust of wind had brought him, and ran toward the steps; presently the maid brought in a telegram to Betty, who hastened to open it, as she was always commissioned to do in her father’s absence. To her surprise it was meant for herself. She looked at the envelope to make sure. It was from Lady Mary.

Can you come to me with your father next week, dear? I wish for you very much.

“There’s no answer — at least there’s no answer now,” said Betty, quite trembling with excitement and pleasure; “I must see papa first, but I can’t think that he will say no. He meant to come home for Christmas day with me, and now we can both stay on.” She hopped about, dancing and skipping, after the door was shut. What a thing it is to have one’s wishes come true before one’s eyes! And then she asked to have a hansom cab called and for the company of Pagot, who was her maid now; a very nice woman whom Mrs. Duncan had recommended, inasmuch as Betty was older and had thoughts of going to housekeeping. Pagot’s sister also was engaged as housemaid, and, strange as it may appear, our Tideshead Betty was to become the mistress of a cook and butler. Pagot herself looked sedate and responsible, but she dearly liked a little change and was finding the day dull. So they started off together toward the British Museum in all the rain, with the shutter of the cab put down and the horse trotting along the shining streets as if he liked it.

III

Mr. Leicester was in the Department of North American Prehistoric Remains, and had a jar of earth before him which he was examining with closest interest. “Here’s a bit of charred bone,” he was saying eagerly to a wise-looking old gentleman, “and here’s a funeral bead — just as I expected. This proves my theory of the sacrificial — Why, Betty, what’s the matter?” and he looked startled for a moment. “A telegram?”

“It was so very important, you see, papa,” said Betty.

“I thought it was bad news from Tideshead,” said Mr. Leicester, looking up at her with a smile after he had read it. “Well, my dear, that’s very nice, and very important too,” he added, with a fine twinkle in his eyes. “I shall be going out for a bit of luncheon presently, and I’ll send the answer with great pleasure.”

Betty’s cheeks were brighter than ever, as if a rosy cloud of joy were shining through. “Now that I’m here, I’ll look at the arrow-heads; mayn’t I, papa?” she asked, with great self-possession. “I should like to see if I can find one like mine — I mean my best white one that I found on the river-bank last summer.”

Papa nodded, and turned to his jar again. “You may let Pagot go home at one o’clock,” he said, “and come back to find me here, and we’ll go and have luncheon together. I was thinking of coming home early to get you. We’ve a house to look at, and it’s dull weather for what I wish to do here at the museum. Clear sunshine is the only possible light for this sort of work,” he added, turning to the old gentleman, who nodded; and Betty nodded sagely, and skipped away with Pagot, to search among the arrowheads.

She found many white quartz arrowpoints and spearheads like her own treasure. Pagot thought them very dull, and was made rather uncomfortable by the Indian medicine-masks and war-bonnets and evil-looking war-clubs, and openly called it a waste of time for anyone to have taken trouble to get all that heathen rubbish together. Such savages and their horrid ways were best forgotten by decent folks, if Pagot might be so bold as to say so. But presently it was luncheon time; and the good soul cheerfully departed, while Betty joined her father, and waited for him as still as mouse for half an hour, while he and the scientific old gentleman reluctantly said their last words and separated. She had listened to a good deal of their talk about altar fires, and the ceremonies that could be certainly traced in a handful of earth from the site of a temple in the mounds of a buried city; but all her thoughts were of Lady Mary and the pleasures of the next week. She looked again at the telegram, which was much nicer than most telegrams. It was so nice of Lady Mary to have said dear in it — just as if she were talking; people did not often say dear in a message. “Perhaps some of her guests can’t come; but then, everybody likes to be asked to Danesly,” Betty thought. “And I wonder if I shall dine at table with the guests; I never have. At any rate, I shall see LadyMary often and be with papa. It is perfectly lovely! I can give her the Indian basket I brought her, now, before the sweet grass is all dry.”

It was a great delight to be asked to the holiday party; many a grown person would be thankful to take Betty’s place. For was not Lady Mary a very great lady indeed, and one of the most charming women in England? — a famous hostess and assembler of really delightful people?

“I am going to Danesly on the seventeenth,” said Betty to herself, with satisfaction.

IV

Betty and her father had taken a long journey from London. They had been nearly all day in the train, after a breakfast by candle-light; and it was quite dark, except for the light of the full moon in a misty sky, as they drove up the long avenue at Danesly. Pagot was in great spirits; she was to go everywhere with Betty now, being used to the care of young ladies, and more being expected of this young lady than in the past. Pagot had been at Danesly before with the Duncans, and had many friends in the household.

Mr. Leicester was walking across the fields by a path he well knew from the little station, with a friend and fellow guest whom they had met at Durham. This path was much shorter than the road, so that papa was sure of reaching the house first; but Betty felt a little lonely, being tired, and shy of meeting a great bright houseful of people quite by herself, in case papa should loiter. But suddenly the carriage stopped, and the footman jumped down and opened the door. “My lady is walking down to meet you, miss,” he said; “she’s just ahead of us, coming down the avenue.” And Betty flew like a pigeon to meet her dear friend. The carriage drove on and left them together under the great trees, walking along together over the beautiful tracery of shadows. Suddenly Lady Mary felt the warmth of Betty’s love for her and her speechless happiness as she had not felt it before, and she stopped, looking so tall and charming, and put her two arms around Betty, and hugged her to her heart.

“My dear little girl!” she said for the second time; and then they walked on, and still Betty could not say anything for sheer joy. “Now I’m going to tell you something quite in confidence,” said the hostess of the great house, which showed its dim towers and scattered lights beyond the leafless trees. “I had been wishing to have you come to me, but I should not have thought this the best time for a visit; later on, when the days will be longer, I shall be able to have much more time to myself. But an American friend of mine, Mr. Banfield, who is a friend of your papa’s, I believe, wrote to ask if he might bring his young daughter, whom he had taken from school in New York for a holiday. It seemed a difficult problem for the first moment,” and Lady Mary gave a funny little laugh. “I did not know quite what to do with her just now, as I should with a grown person. And then I remembered that I might ask you to help me, Betty dear. You know that the Duncans always go for a Christmas visit to their grandmother in Devon.”

“I was so glad to come,” said Betty warmly; “it was nicer that anything else.”

“I am a little afraid of young American girls, you understand,” said Lady Mary gaily; and then, taking a solemn tone: “Yes, you needn’t laugh, Miss Betty! But you know all about what they like, don’t you? and so I am sure we can make a bit of pleasure together, and we’ll be fellow hostesses, won’t we? We must find some time every day for a little talking over of things quite by ourselves. I’ve put you next to your father’s rooms, and tomorrow Miss Banfield will be near by, and you’re to dine in my little morning-room tonight. I’m so glad good old Pagot is with you; she knows the house perfectly well. I hope you will soon feel at home. Why, this is almost like having a girl of my very own,” said Lady Mary wistfully, as they began to go up the great steps and into the hall where the butler and other splendid personages of the household stood waiting. Lady Mary was a tall, slender figure in black, with a beautiful head; and she carried herself with great spirit and grace. She had wrapped some black lace about her head and shoulders, and held it gathered with one hand at her throat.

“I must fly to the drawing-room now, and then go to dress for dinner; so good-night, darling,” said this dear lady, whom Betty had always longed to be nearer to and to know better. “Tomorrow you must tell me all about your summer in New England,” she said, looking over her shoulder as she went one way and Betty another, with Pagot and a footman who carried the small luggage from the carriage. How good and kind she had been to come to meet a young stranger who might feel lonely, and as if there were no place for her in the great strange house in the first minute of her arrival. And Betty Leicester quite longed to see Miss Banfield and to help her to a thousand pleasures at once for Lady Mary’s sake.

V

Somebody has said that there are only a very few kinds of people in the world, but that they are put into all sorts of places and conditions. The minute Betty Leicester looked at Edith Banfield next day she saw that she was a little like Mary Beck, her own friend and Tideshead neighbor. The first thought was one of pleasure, and the second was a fear that the new “Becky” would not have a good time at Danesly. It was the morning after Betty’s own arrival. The first evening she had her dinner alone, and afterward was reading and resting after her journey in Lady Mary’s own little sitting-room. When Pagot came up from her own hasty supper and “crack” with her friends to look after Betty, and to unpack, she had great tales to tell of the large and noble company assembled at Danesly House. “They’re dining in the great banquet-hall itself,” she said with pride. “Lady Mary looks a queen at the head of the table, with the French prince beside her and the great Earl of Seacliff at the other side,” said Pagot proudly. “I took a look from the old musicians’ gallery, miss, as I came along, and it was a fine sight, indeed. Lady Mary’s own maid, as I have known well these may years, was telling me the names of the strangers.” Pagot was very proud of her own knowledge of fine people.

Betty asked if it was far to the gallery; and, finding that was quite near the part of the house where they were, she went out with Pagot along the corridors with their long rows of doors, and into the musician’s gallery, were they found themselves at a delightful point of view. Danesly Castle had been built at different times; the banquet-hall itself was very old and stately, with a high, carved roof. There were beautiful old hangings and banners where the walls and roof met, and lower down were spread great tapestries. There was a huge fire blazing in the deep fireplace at the end, and screens before it; the long table twinkled with candle-light, and the gay company sat about it. Betty looked first for papa, and saw him sitting beside Lady Dimdale, who was a great friend of his; then she looked for Lady Mary, who was at the head between the two gentlemen of whom Pagot had spoken. She was still dressed in black lace, but with many diamonds sparkling at her throat, and she looked as sweet and quiet and self-possessed as if there were no great entertainment at all. The menservants in their handsome livery moved quickly to and fro, as if they were actors in a play. The people at the table were talking and laughing, and the whole scene was so pleasant, so gay and friendly, that Betty wished, for almost the first time, that she were grown up and dining late, to hear all the delightful talk. She and Pagot were like swallows high under the eaves of the great room. Papa looked really boyish, so many of the men were older than he. There were twenty at table; and Pagot said, as Betty counted them, that many others were expected the next day. You could imagine the great festivals of an older time as you looked down from the gallery. In the gallery itself there were quaint little heavy wooden stools for the musicians: the harpers and fiddlers and pipers who had played for so many generations of gay dancers, for whom the same lights had flickered, and over whose heads the old hangings had waved. You felt as if you were looking down at the past. Betty and Pagot closed the narrow door of the gallery softly behind them, and our friend went back to her own bedroom, where there were was a nice fire, and nearly fell asleep before it, while Pagot was getting the last things unpacked and ready for the night.

VI

The next day at about nine o’clock Lady Mary came through her morning-room and tapped at the door. Betty was just ready and very glad to say good-morning. The sun was shining, and she had been leaning out upon the great windowsill looking down the long slopes of the country into the wintry mists. Lady Mary looked out too, and took a long breath of the fresh, keen air. “It’s a good day for hunting,” she said, “and for walking. I’m going down to breakfast, because I have planned for an idle day. I thought we might go down together if you were ready.”

Betty’s heart was filled with gratitude; it was so very kind of her hostess to remember that it would be difficult for the only girl in the house party to come alone to breakfast for the first time. They went along the corridor and down the great staircase, past the portraits and the marble busts and figures on the landings. There were two or three ladies in the great hall at the foot, with an air of being very early, and some gentlemen who were going fox hunting; and after Betty had spoken with Lady Dimdale, whom she knew, they sauntered into the breakfast-room, where they found some other people; and papa and Betty had a word together and then sat down side by side to their muffins and their eggs and toast and marmalade. It was not a bit like a Tideshead company breakfast. Everybody jumped up if he wished for a plate, or for more jam, or some cold game, which was on the sideboard with many other things. The company of servants had disappeared, and it was all as unceremonious as if the breakfasters were lunching out of doors. There was not a long tableful like that of the night before; many of the guests were taking their tea and coffee in their own rooms.

By the time breakfast was done, Betty had begun to forget herself as if she were quite at home. She stole an affectionate glance now and then at Lady Mary, and had fine bits of talk with her father, who had spent a charming evening and now told Betty something about it, and how glad he was to have her see their fellow guests. When he went hurrying away to join the hunt, Betty was sure that she knew exactly what to do with herself. It would take her a long time to see the huge old house and the picture gallery, where there were some famous paintings, and the library about which papa was always so enthusiastic. Lady Mary was to her more interesting than anybody else, and she wished especially to do something for Lady Mary. Aunt Barbara had helped her niece very much one day in Tideshead when she talked about her own experience in making visits and going much into company. “The best thing you can do,” she said, “is to do everything you can to help your hostess. Don’t wait to see what is going to be done for you, but try to help entertain your fellow guests and to make the moment pleasant, and you will be sure to enjoy yourself and to find your hostess wishing you to come again. Always do the things that will help your hostess.” Our friend thought of this sage advice now, but it was at a moment when everyone else was busy talking, and they were all going on to the great library except two or three late breakfasters who were still at the table. Aunt Barbara had also said that when there was nothing else to do, your plain duty was to entertain yourself; and, having a natural gift for this, Betty wandered off into a corner and found a new “Punch” and some of the American magazines on a little table close by the window-seat. After a while she happened to hear someone ask: “What time is Mr. Banfield coming?”

“By the eleven o’clock train,” said Lady Mary. “I am just watching for the carriage that is to fetch him. Look; you can see it first between the two oaks there to the left. It is an awkward time to get to a strange house, poor man; but they were in the South and took a night train that is very slow. Mr. Banfield’s daughter is with him, and my dear friend Betty, who knows what American girls like best, is kindly going to help me entertain her.”

“Oh, really!” said one of the ladies, looking up and smiling as if she had been wondering just what Betty was for, all alone in the grown-up house party. “Really, that’s very nice. But I might have seen that you are Mr. Leicester’s daughter. It was very stupid of me, my dear; you’re quite like him — oh, quite!”

“I have seen you with the Duncans, have I not?” asked someone else, with great interest. “Why, fancy!” said this friendly person, who was named the Honorable Miss Northumberland, a small, eager little lady in spite of her solemn great name, — “fancy! You must be American too. I should have thought you quite an English girl.”

“Oh, no, indeed,” said Betty. “Indeed, I’m quite American, except for living in England a very great deal.” She was ready to go on and say much more, but she had been taught to say as little about herself as she possibly could, since general society cares little for knowledge that is given it too easily, especially about strangers and one’s self!

“There’s the carriage now,” said Lady Mary, as she went away to welcome the guests. “Poor souls! they will like to get to their rooms as soon as possible,” she said hospitably; but although the elder ladies did not stir, Betty deeply considered the situation, and then, with a happy impulse, hurried after her hostess. It was a long way about, through two or three rooms and the great hall to the entrance; but Betty overtook Lady Mary just as she reached the great door, going forward in the most hospitable, charming way to meet the newcomers. She did not seem to have seen Betty at all.

The famous lawyer, Mr. Banfield, came quickly up the steps, and after him, more slowly, came his daughter, whom he seemed quite to forget.

A footman was trying to take her wraps and traveling-bag, but she clung fast to them, and looked up apprehensively toward Lady Mary.

Betty was very sympathetic, and was sure that it was a trying moment, and she ran down to meet Miss Banfield, and happened to be so fortunate as to catch her just as she was tripping over her dress upon the high stone step. Mr. Banfield himself was well known in London, and was a great favorite in society; but at first sight his daughter’s self-conscious manners struck one as being less interesting. She was a pretty girl, but she wore a pretentious look, which was further borne out by very noticeable clothes — not at all the right things to travel in at that hour; but, as has long ago been said, Betty saw at once the likeness to her Tideshead friend and comrade, Mary Beck, and opened her heart to take the stranger in. It was impossible not to be reminded of the day when Mary Beck came to call in Tideshead, with her best hat and Bird-of-Paradise feather, and they both felt so awkward and miserable.

“Did you have a very tiresome journey?” Betty was asking as they reached the top of the steps at last; but Edith Banfield’s reply was indistinct, and the next moment Lady Mary turned to greet her young guest cordially. Betty felt that she was a little dismayed, and was all the more eager to have the young compatriot’s way made easy.

“Did you have a tiresome journey?” asked Lady Mary, in her turn; but the reply was quite audible now.

“Oh, yes,” said Edith. “It was awfully cold — oh, awfully! — and so smoky and horrid and dirty! I thought we never should get here, with changing cars in horrid stations, and everything,” she said, telling all about it.

“Oh, that was too bad,” said Betty, rushing to the rescue, while Lady Mary walked on with Mr. Banfield. Edith Banfield talked on in an excited, persistent way to Betty, after having finally yielded up her bag to the footman, and looking after him somewhat anxiously. “It’s a splendid big house, isn’t it?” she whispered; “but awfully solemn looking. I suppose there’s another part where they live, isn’t there? Have you been here before? Are you English?”

“I’m Betty Leicester,” said Betty, in an undertone. “No, I haven’t been here before; but I have known Lady Mary for a long time in London. I’m an American, too.”

“You aren’t, really!” exclaimed Edith. “Why, you must have been over here a good many times, or something” — She cast a glance at Betty’s plain woolen gear, and recognized the general comfortable appearance of the English schoolgirl. Edith herself was very fine in silk attire, with much fur trimming and a very expensive hat. “Well, I’m awfully glad you’re here,” she said, with a satisfied sigh; “you know all about it better than I do, and can tell me what to put on.”

“Oh, yes, indeed,” said Betty cheerfully; “and there are lots of nice things to do. We can see the people, and then there are all the pictures and the great conservatories, and the stables and dogs and everything. I’ve been waiting to see them with you; and we can ride every day, if you like; and papa says it’s a perfectly delightful country for walking.”

“I hate to walk,” said Edith frankly.

“Oh, what a pity,” lamented Betty, a good deal dashed. She was striving against a very present disappointment, but still the fact could not be overlooked that Edith Banfield looked like Mary Beck. Now, Mary also was apt to distrust all strangers and to take suspicious views of life, and she had little enthusiasm; but Betty knew and loved her loyalty and really good heart. She felt sometimes as if she tried to walk in tight shoes when “Becky’s” opinions had to be considered; but Becky’s world had grown wider month by month, and she loved her very much. Edith Banfield was very pretty; that was a comfort, and though Betty might never like her as she did Mary Beck, she meant more than ever to help her to have a good visit.

Lady Mary appeared again, having given Mr. Banfield into the young footman’s charge. She looked at Sister Betty for an instant with an affectionate, amused little smile, and kept one hand on her shoulder as she talked for a minute pleasantly with the new guest.

A maid appeared to take Edith to her room, and Lady Mary patted Betty’s shoulder as they parted. They did not happen to have time for a word together again all day.

By luncheon time the two girls were very good friends, and Betty knew all about the newcomer; and in spite of a succession of minor disappointments, the acquaintance promised to be very pleasant. Poor Edith Banfield, like poor Betty, had no mother, but Edith had spent several years already at a large boarding-school. She was taking this journey by way of vacation, and was going back after the Christmas holidays. She was a New-Yorker, and she hated the country, and loved to stay in foreign hotels. This was the first time she had ever paid a visit in England, except to some American friends who had a villa on the Thames, which Edith had found quite dull. She had not been taught either to admire or to enjoy very much, which seemed to make her schooling count for but little so far; but she adored her father and his brilliant wit in a most lovely way, and with this affection and pride Betty could warmly sympathize. Edith longed to please her father in every possible fashion, and secretly confessed that she did not always succeed, in a way that touched Betty’s heart. It was hard to know exactly how to please the busy man; he was apt to show only a mild interest in the new clothes which at present were her chief joy; perhaps she was always making the mistake of not so much trying to please him as to make him pleased with herself, which was quite a different thing.

VII

There was an anxious moment on Betty’s part when Edith Banfield summoned her to decide upon what dress should be worn for the evening. Pagot, whom Betty had asked to go and help her new friend was wearing a disapproving look, and two or three fine French dresses were spread out for inspection.

“Why, aren’t you going to dress?” asked Edith. “I was afraid you were all ready to go down, but I couldn’t think what to put on.”

“I’m all dressed,” said Betty, with surprise. “Oh, what lovely gowns! But we” — she suddenly foresaw a great disappointment — “we needn’t go down yet, you know, Edith; we are not out, and dinner isn’t like luncheon here in England. We can go down afterward, if we like, and hear the songs, but we girls never go to dinner when it’s a great dinner like this. I think it is much better fun to stay away; at least, I always have thought so until last night, and then it did really look very pleasant,” she frankly added. “Why, I’m not sixteen, and you’re only a little past, you know.” But there lay a grown-up young lady’s evening gowns as if to confute all Betty’s arguments.

“How awfully stupid!” said Edith, with great scorn. “Nursery tea for anybody like us!” and she turned to look at Betty’s dress, which was charming enough in its way, and made in very pretty girlish fashion. “I should think they’d make you wear a white pinafore,” said Edith ungraciously; but Betty, who had been getting a little angry, thought this so funny that she laughed and felt much better.

“I wear muslins for very best,” she said serenely. “Why, of course we’ll go down after dinner and stay a while before we say good-night; they’ll be out before half-past nine — I mean the ladies — and we’ll be in the drawing-room. Oh, isn’t that blue gown a beauty! I wish I had put on my best muslins, Pagot.”

“You look very suitable, Miss Betty,” said Pagot stiffly. Pagot was very old-fashioned, and Edith made a funny little face at Betty behind her back.

The two girls had a delightful dinner together in the morning-room next to Betty’s own, and Edith’s good humor was quite restored. She had had a good day, on the whole, and the picture galleries and conservatories had not failed to please by their splendors and delights. After they had finished their dessert, Betty, as a great surprise, offered the hospitalities of the musicians’ gallery, and they sped along the corridors and up the stairs in great spirits, Betty leading the way. “Now, don’t upset the little benches,” she whispered, as she opened the narrow door out of the dark passage, and presently their two heads were over the edge of the gallery. They leaned boldly out, for nobody would think of looking up.

The great hall was even gaier and brighter than it had looked the night before. The lights and colors shown, there were new people at table, and much talk was going on. The butler and his men were more military that ever; it was altogether a famous, much-diamonded dinner company, and Lady Mary looked quite magnificent at the head.

“It looks pretty,” whispered Edith; “but how dull it sounds! I don’t believe that they are having a bit of a good time. At home, you know, there’s such a noise at a party. What a splendid big room!”

“People never talk loud when they get together in England,” said Betty. “They never make that awful chatter that we do at home. Just four or five people who come to tea in Tideshead can make one another’s ears ache. I couldn’t get used to it last summer; Aunt Barbara was almost the only tea-party person in Tideshead who didn’t get screaming.”

“Oh, I do think it’s splendid!” said Edith wistfully. “I wish we were down there. I wish there was a little gallery lower down. There’s Lord Dunwater, who sat next to me at luncheon. Who’s that next your father?”

There was a little noise behind the eager girls, and they turned quickly. A tall boy had joined them, who seemed much disturbed at finding anyone in the gallery, which seldom had a visitor. Edith stood up, and seemed an alarmingly tall and elegant young lady in the dim light. Betty, who was as tall, was nothing like so imposing to behold at that moment; but the newcomer turned to make his escape.

“Don’t go away,” Betty begged, seeing his alarm, and wondering who he could be. “There’s plenty of room to look. Don’t go.” And thereupon the stranger came foreword.

He was a handsome fellow, dressed in Eton clothes. He was much confused, and said nothing; and, after a look at the company below, during which the situation became more embarrassing to all three, he turned to go away.

“Are you staying at the house, too?” asked Betty timidly; it was so very awkward.

“I just came,” said the boy, who now appeared to be a very nice fellow indeed. They had left the musician’s gallery — nobody knew why — and now stood outside in the corridor.

“I just came,” he repeated. “I walked over from the station across the fields. I’m Lady Mary’s nephew, you know. She’s not expecting me. I had my supper in the housekeeper’s room. I was going on a week’s tramp in France with my old tutor, just to get rid of Christmas parties and things; but he strained a knee at football, and we had to give it up, and so I came here for the holidays. There was nothing else to do,” he explained ruefully. “What a lot of people my aunt’s got this year!”

“It’s very nice,” said Betty cordially.

“It’s beastly slow, I think,” said the boy. “I like it much better when my aunt and I have the place to ourselves. Oh, no; that’s not what I mean!” he said, blushing crimson as both the girls laughed. “Only we have jolly good times by ourselves, you know; no end of walks and rides; and we fish if the water’s right. You ought to see my aunt cast a fly.”

“She’s perfectly lovely, isn’t she?” said Betty, in a tone which made them firm friends at once. “We’re going down to the drawing-room soon; wouldn’t you like to come?”

“Yes,” said the boy slowly. “It’ll be fun to surprise her. And I saw Lady Dimdale at dinner. I like Lady Dimdale awfully.”

“So does papa,” said Betty; “oh, so very much! — next to Lady Mary and Mrs. Duncan.”

“You’re Betty Leicester, aren’t you? Oh, I know you now,” said the boy, turning toward her with real friendliness. “I danced with you at the Duncans’, at a party, just before I first went to Eton — oh, ever so long ago! — you won’t remember it; and I’ve seen you once besides, at their place in Warwickshire, you know. I’m Warford, you know.”

“Why, of course,” said Betty, with great pleasure. “It puzzled me; I couldn’t think at first, but you’ve quite grown up since then. How we used to dance when we were little things! Do you like it now?”

“No, I hate it,” said Warford coldly, and they all three laughed. Edith was walking alongside, feeling much left out of the conversation, though Warford had been stealing glances at her.

“Oh, I am so sorry — I didn’t think,” Betty exclaimed in her politest manner. “Miss Banfield, this is Lord Warford. I didn’t mean to be rude, but you were a great surprise, weren’t you?” and they all laughed again, as young people will. Just then they reached the door of Lady Mary’s morning room; the girls’ dessert was still on the table, and, being properly invited, Warford began to eat the rest of the fruit. “One never gets quite enough grapes,” said Warford, who was evidently suffering the constant hunger of a rapidly growing person.

Edith Banfield certainly looked very pretty, both her companions thought so; but they felt much more at home with each other. It seemed as if she were a great deal older than they, in her fine evening gown. Warford was very admiring and very polite, but Betty and he were already plunged into the deep intimacy of true fellowship. Edith got impatient before they were ready to go down-stairs, but at last they all started down the great staircase, and had just settled themselves in the drawing-room when the ladies began to come in.

“Why, Warford, my dear!” said Lady Mary, with great delight, as he met her and kissed her twice, as if they were quite by themselves; then he turned and spoke to Lady Dimdale, who was just behind, still keeping Lady Mary’s left hand in his own. Warford looked taller and more manly than ever in the bright light, and he was recognized warmly by nearly all the ladies, being not only a fine fellow, but the heir of Danesly and great possessions besides, so that he stood for much that was interesting, even if he had not been interesting himself. Betty and Edith looked on with pleasure, and presently Lady Mary came toward them.

“I am so glad that you came down,” she said; “and how nice of you to bring Warford! He usually objects so much that I believe you have found some new way to make it easy. I suppose it is dull when he is by himself. Mr. Frame is here, and has promised to sing by and by. He and Lady Dimdale have practiced some duets — their voices are charming together. I hope that you will not go up until afterward, no matter how late.”

Betty, who had been sitting when Lady Mary came toward her, had risen at once to meet her, without thinking about it; but Edith Banfield still sat in her low chair, feeling stiff and uncomfortable, while Lady Mary did not find it easy to talk down at her or to think of anything to say. All at once it came to Edith’s mind to follow Betty’s example, and they all three stood together talking cheerfully until Lady Mary had to go to her other guests.

“Isn’t she lovely!” said Edith, with all the ardor Betty could wish. “I don’t feel a bit afraid of her as I thought I should.”

“She takes such dear trouble,” said Betty, warmly. “She never forgets anybody. Some grown persons behave as if you ought to be ashamed of not being older, and as if you were going to bore them if they didn’t look out.” At this moment Warford came back most loyally from the other side of the room, and presently some gentlemen made their appearance, and the delightful singing began. Betty, who loved music, sat and listened like a quiet young robin in her red dress, and her father who looked at her happy, dreaming face, was sure that there never had been a dearer girl in the world. Lady Mary looked at her too, and was really full of wonder, because in some way Betty had managed with simple friendliness to make her shy nephew quite forget himself, and to give some feeling of belongingness to Edith Banfield, who would have felt astray by herself in a strange English house.

VIII

The days flew by until Christmas, and the weather kept clear and bright, without a bit of rain or gloom, which was quite delightful and wonderful in that northern country. The older guests hunted or drove or went walking. There were excursions of every sort for those who liked them, and sometimes the young people joined in what was going on, and sometimes Betty and Edith and Warford made fine plans of their own. It proved that Edith had spent much time with the family of her uncle, who was an army officer; and at the Western army posts she had learned to ride with her cousins, who were excellent riders and insisted upon her joining them. So Edith could share many pleasures of this sort at Danesly, and she was so pretty and gay that people liked her a good deal; and presently some of the house party had gone, and some new guests came, and the two girls and Warford were unexpected helpers in their entertainment. Sometimes they dined down-stairs now, when no one was asked from outside; and every day it seemed pleasanter and more homelike at Danesly. There were one or two other great houses in the neighborhood where there were also house parties in the gay holiday season, and so Betty and Edith saw a great deal of the world in one way and another; and Lady Mary remembered that girls were sometimes lonely, as they grew up, and was very good to them, teaching them, in quiet ways, many a thing belonging to manners and getting on with other people, that they would be glad to know all their life long.

“Don’t talk about yourself,” she said once, “and you won’t half so often think of yourself, and then you are sure to be happy.” And again: “My old friend, Mrs. Procter, used to say, ‘Never explain, my dear. People don’t care a bit.’”

Warford was more at home in the hunting field than in the house; but the young people saw much of each other. He took a great deal of trouble, considering his usual fashion, to be nice to the two girls; and so one day, when Betty went to find him, he looked up eagerly to see what she wanted. Warford was busy in the gun room, with the parts of a gun which he had taken to pieces. There was nobody else there at that moment, and the winter sun was shining in along the floor.

“Warford,” Betty began, with an air of great confidence, “what can we do for a bit of fun at Christmas?”

Warford looked up at her over his shoulder a little bewildered. He was just this side of sixteen, like Betty herself; sometimes he seemed manly, and sometimes very boyish, as happened that day. “I’m in for anything you like,” he said, after a moment’s reflection. “What’s on?”

“If we give up dining with the rest, I can think of a great plan,” said Betty, shining with enthusiasm. “There’s the old gallery, you know. Couldn’t we have some music there, as they used in old times?”

“My aunt would like it awfully,” exclaimed Warford, letting his gunstock drop with a thump. “I’d rather do anything than sit all through the dinner. Somebody’d be sure to make a row about me, and I should feel like getting into a burrow. I’ll play the fiddle: what did you mean? — singing, or what? If we had it Christmas Eve, we might have the Christmas waits, you know.”

“Fancy!” said Betty, in true English fashion; and then they both laughed.

“The waits are pretty silly,” said Warford. “They were better than usual last year, though. Mr. Macalister, the schoolmaster, is a good musician, and he trained them well. He plays the flute and the cornet. Why not see what we can do ourselves first, and perhaps let them sing last? They’d be disappointed not to come at midnight under the windows, you know,” said Warford considerately. “We’ll go down and ask the schoolmaster after hours, and we’ll think what we can do ourselves. One of the grooms has a lovely tenor voice. I heard him singing ‘The Bonny Ivy Tree’ like a flute only yesterday, so he must know more of those other old things that Aunt Mary likes.”

“We needn’t have much music,” said Betty. “The people at dinner will not listen long — they’ll want to talk. But if we sing a Christmas song all together, and have the flute and fiddle, you know, Warford, it would be very pretty — like an old-fashioned choir, such as there used to be in Tideshead. We’ll sing things that everybody knows, because everybody likes old songs best. I wish Mary Beck was here; but Edith sings — she told me so; and don’t you know how we sang some nice things together, the other day upon the moor, when we were coming home from the hermit’s-cell ruins?”

Warford nodded, and picked up his gunstock.

“I’m your man,” he said soberly. “Let’s dress up whoever sings, with wigs and ruffles and things. And then there are queer trumpets and viols in that collection of musical instruments in the music-room. Some of us can make believe play them.”

“A procession! a procession!” exclaimed Betty. “What do you say to a company with masks to come right into the great hall, and walk round the table three times, singing and playing? Lady Dimdale knows everything about music; I mean to ask her. I’ll go and find her now.”

“I’ll come, too,” said Warford, with delightful sympathy. “I saw her a while ago writing in the little book-room off the library.”

IX

It was Christmas at last; and all the three young people had been missing since before luncheon in a most mysterious manner. But Betty Leicester, who came in late and flushed, managed to sit next to her father; and he saw at once, being well acquainted with Betty, that some great affair was going on. She was much excited, and her eyes were very bright, and there was such a great secret that Mr. Leicester could do no less than ask to be let in, and be gaily refused and hushed, lest somebody else should know there was a secret, too. Warford, who appeared a little later, looked preternaturally solemn, and Edith alone behaved as if nothing were going to happen. She was as grown-up as possible, and chattered away about the delights of New York with an old London barrister who was Lady Mary’s uncle, and Warford’s guardian, and chief adviser to the great Danesly estates. Edith was so pretty and talked so brightly that the old gentleman looked as amused and happy as possible.

“He may be thinking that she’s coming down to dinner, but he’ll look for her in vain,” said Betty, who grew gayer herself.

“Not coming to dinner?” asked papa, with surprise; at which Betty gave him so stern a glance that he was more careful to avoid even the appearance of secrets from that time on; and they talked together softly about dear old Tideshead, and Aunt Barbara, and all the household, and wondered if the great Christmas box from London had arrived safely and gone up the river by the packet, just as Betty herself had done six or seven months before. It made her a little homesick, even there in the breakfast-room at Danesly — even with papa at her side, and Lady Mary smiling back if she looked up — to think of the dear old house, and of Serena and Letty, and how they would all be thinking of her at Christmas time.

The great hall was gay with holly and Christmas greens. It was snowing outside for the first time that year, and the huge fireplace was full of logs blazing and snapping in a splendidly cheerful way. Dinner was to be earlier than usual. A great festivity was going on in the servants’ hall; and when Warford went out with Lady Mary to cut the great Christmas cake and have his health drunk, Betty and Edith went too; and everybody stood up and cheered and cried, “Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! and God bless you!” in the most hearty fashion. It seemed as if all the holly in the Danesly woods had been brought in — as if Christmas had never been so warm and friendly and generous in a great house before. Christmas eve had begun, and cast its lovely charm and enchantment over everybody’s heart. Old dislikes were forgotten between the guests; at Christmas time it is easy to say kind words that are hard to say all the rest of the year; at Christmas time one loves his neighbor and thinks better of him; Christmas love and good-will come and fill the heart whether one beckons them or no. Betty had spent some lonely Christmases in her short life, as all the rest of us have done; and perhaps for this reason the keeping of the great day at Danesly in such happy company, in such splendor and warm-heartedness of the old English fashion, seemed a kind of royal Christmas to her young heart. Everybody was so kind and charming.

Lady Dimdale, who had entered with great enthusiasm into the Christmas plans, caught her after luncheon and kissed her, and held her hand like an elder sister as they walked away. It would have been very hard to keep things from Lady Mary herself; but that dear lady had many ways to turn her eyes and her thoughts, and so many secret plots of her own to keep in hand at this season, that she did not suspect what was going on in a distant room of the old south wing (where Warford still preserved some of his boyish collections of birds’ eggs and other plunder), of which he kept the only key. There was a steep staircase that led down to a door in the courtyard; and by this Mr. Macalister, the schoolmaster, had come and gone, and the young groom of the tenor voice, and five or six others, men and girls, who could either sing or play. It was the opposite side of the house from Lady Mary’s own rooms, and nobody else would think anything strange of such comings and goings. Pagot and some friendly maids helped with the costumes. They had practiced their songs twice in the schoolmaster’s own house at nightfall, down at the edge of the village by the church; and so everything was ready, with the help of Lady Dimdale and of Mrs. Drum, the housekeeper, who would always do everything that Warford asked her, and be heartily pleased besides.

So Lady Mary did not know what was meant until after her Christmas guests were seated, and the old vicar had said grace, and all the great candelabra were lit, high on the walls between the banners and flags, and among the staghorns and armor lower down, and there were lights even in the old musicians’ gallery, which she could see as she sat with her back to the painted leather screen that hid the fireplace. Suddenly there was a sound of violins and bass-viol and a flute from the gallery, and a sound of voices singing — the fresh young voices of Warford and Betty and Edith and their helpers, who sang a beautiful old Christmas song, so unexpected, so lovely, that the butler stopped halfway from the sideboard with the wine, and the footmen stood listening where they were, with whatever they had in hand. The guests at dinner looked up in surprise, and Lady Dimdale nodded across at Mr. Leicester because they both knew it was Betty’s plan coming true in this delightful way. And fresh as the voices were, the look of the singers was even better, for you could see from below that all the musicians were in quaint costume. The old schoolmaster stood in the middle as leader, with a splendid powdered wig and gold-laced coat, and all the rest wore coats and gowns of velvet and brocade from the old house’s store of treasures. They made a charming picture against the wall with its dark tapestry, and Lady Dimdale felt proud of her own part in the work.

There was a cry of delight from below as the first song ended. Betty in the far corner of the gallery could see Lady Mary looking up so pleased and happy and holding her dear white hands high as she applauded with the rest. Nobody knew better than Lady Mary that dinners are sometimes dull, and that even a Christmas dinner is none the worse for a little brightening. So Betty had helped her in great as well as in little things, and she blessed the child from her heart. Then the dinner went on, and so did the music; it was a pretty programme, and before anybody had dreamed of being tired of it the sound ceased and the gallery was empty.

After a while, when dessert was soon coming in, and the Christmas pudding with its flaming fire might be expected at any moment, there was a pause and a longer delay than usual in the serving. People were talking busily about the long table, and hardly noticed this until with loud knocking and sound of music, old Bond, the butler, made his appearance, with an assistant on either hand, bearing the plum pudding aloft in solemn majesty, the flames rising merrily from the huge platter. Behind him came a splendid retinue of the musicians, singing and playing; everyone carried some picturesque horn or trumpet or stringed instrument from Lady Mary’s collection, and those who sang also made believe to play in the interludes. Behind these were all the men in livery, two and two; and so they went round and round the table until at last Warford slipped into his seat, and the pudding was put before him with great state, while the procession waited. The tall shy boy forgot himself and his shyness, and was full of the gaiety of his pleasure. The costumes were all somewhat fine for Christmas choristers, and the young heir wore a magnificent combination of garments that had belonged to noble peers his ancestors, and was pretty nearly too splendid to be well seen without smoked glass. For the first time in his life he felt a brave happiness in belonging to Danesly, and in the thought that Danesly would really belong to him; he looked down the long room at Lady Mary, and loved her as he never had before, and understood things all in a flash, and made a vow to be a good fellow and to stand by her so that she should never, never feel alone or overburdened again.

Betty and Edith and the good schoolmaster (who was splendid in his white wig, and a great addition to the already brilliant company) took their own places, which were quickly made, and dessert went on; the rest of the musicians had been summoned away by Mrs. Drum, the housekeeper — all these things having been planned beforehand. And then it was soon time for the ladies to go to the drawing-room, and Betty, feeling a little tired and out of breath with so much excitement, slipped away by herself and to her own thoughts; of Lady Mary, who would be busy with her guests, but still more of papa, who must be waited for until he came to join the ladies, when she could have a talk with him before they said good-night. It was perfectly delightful that everything had gone off so well. Lady Dimdale had known just what to do about everything, and Edith, who had grown nicer every day, had sung as well as Mary Beck (she had Becky’s voice as well as her look, and had told Betty it was the best time she ever had in her life); and Warford had been so nice and had looked so handsome, and Lady Mary was so pleased because he was not shy and had not tried to hide or be grumpy, as he usually did. Betty liked Warford better than any boy she had ever seen, except Harry Foster in Tideshead. They would be sure to like each other, and perhaps they might meet some day. Harry’s life of care and difficulty made him seem older than Warford, upon whom everybody had always showered all the good things he could be persuaded to take.

X

Betty was all by herself, walking up and down in the long picture gallery. There were lights here and there in the huge, shadowy room, but the snow had ceased falling out of doors, and the moon was out and shone brightly in at the big windows with their leaded panes. She felt very happy. It was so pleasant to see how everybody cared about papa, and thought him so delightful. She had never seen him in his place with such a company of people, or known so many of his friends together before. It was so good of Lady Mary to have let her come with papa. They would have so many things to talk over together when they got back to town.

The old pictures on the wall were watching Miss Betty Leicester of Tideshead as she walked past them through the squares of moonlight, and into the dim candle-light and out to the moonlight again. It was cooler in the gallery than in the great hall, but not too cold, and it was quiet and still. She was dressed in an ancient pink brocade, with fine old lace, that had come out of a camphor-wood chest in one of the storerooms, and she still held a little old-fashioned lute carefully under her arm. Suddenly one of the doors opened, and Lady Mary came in and crossed the moonlight square toward her.

“So here you are, darling,” she said. “I missed you, and everyone is wondering where you are. I asked Lady Dimdale, and she remembered that she saw you come this way.”

Lady Mary was holding Betty, lace and lute and all, in her arms, and then she kissed her in a way that meant a great deal. “Let us come over here and look out at the snow,” she said at last, and they stood together in the deep window recess and looked out. The new snow was sparkling under the moon; the park stretched away, dark woodland and open country, as far as one could see; off on the horizon were the twinkling lights of a large town. Lady Mary did not say anything more, but her arm was round Betty still, and presently Betty’s head found its way to Lady Mary’s shoulder as if it belonged there. The top of her young head was warm under Lady Mary’s cheek.

“Everybody is lonely sometimes, darling,” said Lady Mary at last; “and as for me, I am very lonely indeed, even with all my friends, and all my cares and pleasures. The only thing that really helps any of us is being loved, and doing things for love’s sake; it isn’t the things themselves, but the love that is in them. That’s what makes Christmas so much to all the world, dear child. But everybody misses somebody at Christmas time; and there’s nothing like finding a gift of new love and unlooked-for pleasure.”

“Lady Dimdale helped us splendidly. It wouldn’t have been half so nice if it hadn’t been for her,” said Betty softly — for her Christmas project had come to so much more than she had dreamed at first.

There was a stir in the drawing-room, and a louder sound of voices. The gentlemen were coming in. Lady Mary must go back; but when she kissed Betty again, there was a tear on her cheek, and so they stood waiting a minute longer, and loving to be together, and suddenly the sweet old bells in Danesly church, down the hill, rang out the Christmas chimes.

First publication:
Betty Leicester’s English Christmas
Dodd, Meade & Co. (1894)
Betty Leicester’s Christmas
Houghton Mifflin (1899)

MRS. PARKINS’S
CHRISTMAS EVE

I

One wintry-looking afternoon the sun was getting low, but still shone with cheerful radiance into Mrs. Lydia Parkins’ sitting-room. To point out a likeness between the bareness of the room and the appearance of the outside world on that twenty-first of December might seem ungracious; but there was a certain leaflessness and inhospitality common to both.

The cold, gray wallpaper, and dull thin furniture; the indescribable poverty and lack of comfort of the room were exactly like the leaflessness and sharpness and coldness of that early winter day — unless the sun shone out with a golden glow as it had done in the latter part of the afternoon; then both the room, and the long hillside and frozen road and distant western hills were quite transfigured.

Mrs. Parkins sat upright in one of the six decorous wooden chairs with cane seats; she was trimming a dismal gray-and-black winter bonnet and her workbasket was on the end of the table in front of her, between the windows, with a row of spools on the windowsill at her left. The only luxury she permitted herself was a cricket, a little bench such as one sees in a church pew, with a bit of carpet to cover its top. Mrs. Parkins was so short that she would have been quite off-roundings otherwise in her cane-seated chair; but she had a great horror of persons who put their feet on chair rungs and wore the paint off. She was always on the watch to break the young of this bad habit. She cast a suspicious glance now and then at little Lucy Deems, who sat in another cane-seated chair opposite. The child had called upon Mrs. Parkins before, and was now trying so hard to be good that both her feet had gone to sleep and had come the prickling stage of that misery. She wondered if her mother were not almost ready to go home.

Mrs. Deems sat in the rocking-chair, full in the sunlight and faced the sun itself, unflinchingly. She was a broad-faced, gay-hearted, little woman, and her face was almost as bright as the winter sun itself. One might fancy that they were having a match at trying to outshine one another, but so far it was not Mrs. Deems who blinked and withdrew from the contest. She was just now conscious of little Lucy’s depression and anxious looks, and bade her go out to run about a little while and see if there were some of Mrs. Parkins’ butternuts left under the big tree.

The door closed, and Mrs. Parkins snapped her thread and said that there was no butternuts out there; perhaps Lucy should have a few in a basket when she was going home.

“Oh, ’taint no matter,” said Mrs. Deems, easily. “She was kind of distressed sittin’ so quiet; they like to rove about, children does.”

“She won’t do no mischief?” asked the hostess, timidly.

“Lucy?” laughed the mother. “Why you ought to be better acquainted with Lucy than that, I’m sure. I catch myself wishing she wa’n’t quite so still; she takes after her father’s folks, all quiet and dutiful, and ain’t got the least idea how to enjoy themselves; we was all kind of noisy to our house when I was growin’ up, and I can’t seems to sense the Deems.”

“I often wish I had just such a little girl as your Lucy,” said Mrs. Parkins, with a sigh. She held her gray-and-black bonnet off with her left hand and looked at it without approval.

“I shall always continue to wear black for Mr. Parkins,” she said, “but I had this piece of dark-gray ribbon and I thought I had better use it on my black felt; the felt is sort of rusty, now, and black silk trimmings increase the rusty appearance.”

“They do so,” frankly acknowledged Mrs. Deems. “Why don’t you go an’ get you a new one for meetin’, Mrs. Parkins? Felts ain’t high this season, an’ you’ve got this for second wear.”

“I’ve got one that’s plenty good for best,” relied Mrs. Parkins, without any change of expression. “It seems best to make this do one more winter.” She began to re-arrange the gray ribbon, and Mrs. Deems watched her with a twinkle in her eyes; she had something to say, and did not know exactly how to begin, and Mrs. Parkins knew it as well as she did, and was holding her back which made the occasion more and more difficult.

“There!” she exclaimed at last, boldly, “I expect you know what I’ve come to see you for, an’ I can’t set here and make talk no longer. May ’s well ask if you can do anything about the minister’s present.”

Mrs. Parkins’ mouth was full of pins, and she removed them all, slowly, before she spoke. The sun went behind a low snow cloud along the horizon, and Mrs. Deems shone on alone. It was not very warm in the room, and she gathered her woolen shawl closer about her shoulders as if she were getting ready to go home.

“I don’t know ’s I feel to give you anything today, Mrs. Deems,” said Mrs. Parkins in a resolved tone. “I don’t feel much acquainted with the minister’s folks. I must say she takes a good deal upon herself; I don’t like so much of a ma’am.”

“She’s one of the pleasantest, best women we ever had in town, I think,” replied Mrs. Deems. “I was tellin’ ’em the other day that I always felt as if she brought a pleasant feelin’ wherever she came, so sisterly and own-folks-like. They’ve seen a sight o’ trouble and must feel pinched at times, but she finds ways to do plenty o’ kindnesses. I never see a mite of behavior in ’em as if we couldn’t do enough for ’em because they was ministers. Some minister’s folks has such expectin’ ways, and the more you do the more you may; but it ain’t so with the Lanes’. They are always a thinkin’ what they can do for other people, an’ they do it, too. You never liked ’em, but I can’t see why.”

“He ain’t the ablest preacher that ever was,” said Mrs. Parkins.

“I don’t care if he ain’t; words is words, but a man that lives as Mr. Lane does, is the best o’ ministers,” answered Mrs. Deems.

“Well, I don’t owe ’em nothin’ today,” said the hostess, looking up. “I haven’t got it in mind to do for the minister’s folks any more than I have; but I may send ’em some apples or somethin’, by’n-bye.”

“Jest as you feel,” said Mrs. Deems, rising quickly and looking provoked. “I didn’t know but what ’twould be a pleasure to you, same ’s ’tis to the rest of us.”

“They ain’t been here very long, and I pay my part to the salary, an’ ’taint no use to overdo in such cases.”

“They’ve been put to extra expense this fall, and have been very feeling and kind; really interested in all of us, and such a help to the parish as we ain’t had for a good while before. Havin’ to send their boy to the hospital, has made it hard for ’em.”

“Well, folks has to have their hard times, and minister’s families can’t escape. I am sorry about the boy, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Parkins, generously. “Don’t you go, Mrs. Deems; you ain’t been to see me for a good while. I want you to see my bonnet in jest a minute.”

“I’ve got to go way over to the Dilby’s, and it’s going to be dark early. I should be pleased to have you come an’ see me. I’ve got to find Lucy and trudge along.”

“I believe I won’t rise to see you out o’ the door, my lap’s so full,” said Mrs. Parkins politely, and so they parted. Lucy was hopping up and down by the front fence to keep herself warm and occupied.

“She didn’t say anything about the butternuts, did she, mother?” the child asked; and Mrs. Deems laughed and shook her head. Then they walked away down the road together, the big-mittened hand holding fast the little one, and the hooded heads bobbing toward each other now and then, as if they were holding a lively conversation. Mrs. Parkins looked after them two or three times, suspiciously at first, as if she thought they might be talking about her; then a little wistfully. She had come of a saving family and had married a saving man.

“Isn’t Mrs. Parkins real poor, mother?” little Lucy inquired in a compassionate voice.

Mrs. Deems smiled, and assured the child that there was nobody so well off in town except Colonel Drummond, so far as money went; but Mrs. Parkins took care neither to enjoy her means herself, nor to let anybody else. Lucy pondered this strange answer for awhile and then began to hop and skip along the rough road, still holding fast her mother’s warm hand.

•   •   •

This was the twenty-first of December, and the day of the week was Monday. On Tuesday Mrs. Parkins did her frugal ironing, and on Wednesday she meant to go over to Haybury to put some money into the bank and to do a little shopping. Goods were cheaper in Haybury in some of the large stores, than they were at the corner store at home, and she had the horse and could always get dinner at her cousin’s. To be sure, the cousin was always hinting for presents for herself or her children, but Mrs. Parkins could bear that, and always cleared her conscience by asking the boys over in haying-time, though their help cost more than it came to with their growing appetites and the wear and tear of the house. Their mother came for a day’s visit now and then, but everything at home depended upon her hard-working hands, as she had been early left a widow with little else to depend upon, until now, when the boys were out of school. One was doing well in the shoe factory and one in a store. Mrs. Parkins was really much attached to her cousin, but she thought if she once began to give, they would always be expecting something.

As has been said, Wednesday was the day set for the visit, but when Wednesday came it was a hard winter day, cold and windy, with an occasional flurry of snow, and Mrs. Parkins being neuralgic, gave up going until Thursday. She was pleased when she waked Thursday morning to find the weather warmer and the wind stilled. She was weather-wise enough to see snow in the clouds, but it was only eight miles to Haybury and she could start early and come home again as soon as she got her dinner. So the boy who came every morning to take care of her horse and bring in wood, was hurried and urged until he nearly lost his breath, and the horse was put into the wagon and, with rare forethought, a piece of salt-pork was wrapped up and put under the wagon-seat; then with a cloud over the re-trimmed bonnet, and a shawl over her Sunday cloak, and mittens over her woolen gloves Mrs. Parkins drove away. All her neighbors knew that she was going to Haybury to put eighty-seven dollars into the bank that the Dilby brothers had paid her for some rye planted and harvested on the halves. Very likely she had a good deal of money beside, that day; she had the best farm in that sterile neighborhood and was a famous manager.

The cousin was a hospitable, kindly soul, very loyal to her relations and always ready with a welcome. Beside, though the ears of Lydia Parkins were deaf to hints of present need and desire, it was more than likely that she would leave her farm and savings to the boys; she was not a person to speak roughly to, or one whom it was possible to disdain. More than this, no truly compassionate heart could fail to pity the thin, anxious, forbidding little woman, who behaved as if she must always be on the defensive against a plundering and begging world.

Cousin Mary Faber, as usual, begged Mrs. Parkins to spend the night; she seemed to take so little pleasure in life that the change might do her good. There would be no expense except for the horse’s stabling, Mrs. Faber urged openly, and nobody would be expecting her at home. But Mrs. Parkins as usual refused, and feared that the cellar would freeze. It had not been banked up as she liked to have it that autumn, but as for paying the Dilby’s a dollar and a quarter for doing it, she didn’t mean to please them so much.

“Land sakes! Why don’t you feel as rich as you be, an’ not mind them little expenses?” said cousin Faber, daringly. “I do declare I don’t see how you can make out to grow richer an’ poorer at the same time.” The good-natured soul could not help laughing as she spoke, and Mrs. Parkins herself really could not help smiling.

“I’m much obliged to you for the pleasure of your company,” said cousin Faber,“and it was very considerate of you to bring me that nice piece o’ pork.” If she had only known what an effort her guest had made to carry it into the house after she had brought it! Twice Mrs. Parkins had pushed it back under the wagon-seat with lingering indecision, and only taken it out at last because she feared that one of those prowling boys might discover it in the wagon and tell his mother. How often she had taken something into her hand to give away and then put it back and taken it again half a dozen times, irresolutely. There were still blind movements of the heart toward generosity, but she had grown more and more skillful at soothing her conscience and finding excuses for not giving.

The Christmas preparations in the busy little town made her uncomfortable, and cheerful cousin Faber’s happiness in her own pinched housekeeping was a rebuke. The boys’ salaries were very small indeed, this first year or two; but their mother was proud of their steadiness, and still sewed and let rooms to lodgers and did everything she could to earn money. She looked tired and old before her time, and acknowledged to Mrs. Parkins that she should like to have a good, long visit at the farm the next summer and let the boys take their meals with a neighbor. “I never spared myself one step until they were through with their schooling; but now it will be so I can take things a little easier,” said the good soul with a wistful tone that was unusual.

Mrs. Parkins felt impatient as she listened; she knew that a small present of money now and then would have been a great help, but she never could make up her mind to begin what promised to be the squandering of her carefully saved fortune. It would be the ruin of the boys, too, if they thought she could be appealed to in every emergency. She would make it up to them in the long run; she could not take her money with her to the next world, and she would make a virtue of necessity.

The afternoon was closing in cold and dark, and the snow came sifting down slowly before Mrs. Parkins was out of the street of Haybury. She had lived too long on a hill not to be weather-wise, and for a moment, as the wind buffeted her face and she saw the sky and the horizon line all dulled by the coming storm, she had a great mind to go back to cousin Faber’s. If it had been any other time in the year but Christmas eve! The old horse gathered his forces and hurried along as if he had sense enough to be anxious about the weather; but presently the road turned so that the wind was not so chilling and they were quickly out of sight of the town, crossing the level land which lay between Haybury and the hills of Holton. Mrs. Parkins was persuaded that she should get home by dark, and the old horse did his very best. The road was rough and frozen and the wagon rattled and pitched along; it was like a race between Mrs. Parkins and the storm, and for a time it seemed certain that she would be the winner.

The gathering forces of the wind did not assert themselves fully until nearly half the eight miles had been passed, and the snow which had only clung to Mrs. Parkins’ blanket-shawl like a white veil at first, and sifted white across the frozen grass of the lowlands, lay at last like a drift on the worn buffalo-robe, and was so deep in the road that it began to clog the wheels. It was a most surprising snow in the thickness of the flakes and the rapidity with which it gathered; it was no use to try to keep the white-knitted cloud over her face, for it became so thick with snow that it blinded and half-stifled her. The darkness began to fall, the snow came thicker and faster, and the horse climbing the drifted hills with the snow-clogged old wagon had to stop again and again. The awful though suddenly came to Mrs. Parkins’ mind that she could not reach home that night, and the next moment she had to acknowledge that she did not know exactly where she was. The thick flakes blinded her; she turned to look behind to see if anyone were coming; but she might have been in the middle of an Arctic waste. She felt benumbed and stupid, and again tried to urge the tired horse, and the good creature toiled on desperately. It seemed as if they must have left the lowland far enough behind to be near some houses, but it grew still darker and snowier as they dragged slowly for another mile until it was impossible to get any further, and the horse stopped still and then gave a shake to rid himself of the drift on his back, and turned his head to look inquiringly at his mistress.

Mrs. Parkins began to cry with cold, and fear and misery. She had read accounts of such terrible, sudden storms in the west, and here she was in the night, foodless, and shelterless, and helpless.

“Oh! I’d give a thousand dollars to be safe under cover!” groaned the poor soul. “Oh, how poor I be this minute, and I come right away from that warm house!”

A strange dazzle of light troubled her eyes, and a vision of the brightly-lighted Haybury shops, and the merry customers that were hurrying in and out, and the gaiety and contagious generosity of Christmas eve mocked at the stingy, little lost woman as she sat there half bewildered. The heavy flakes of snow caught her eyelashes and chilled her cheeks and melted inside the gray bonnet-strings; they heaped themselves on the top of the bonnet into a high crown that toppled into her lap as she moved. If she tried to brush the snow away, her clogged mitten only gathered more and grew more and more clumsy. It was a horrible, persistent storm; at this rate the horse and driver both would soon be covered and frozen in the road. The gathering flakes were malicious and mysterious; they were so large and flaked so fast down out of the sky.

“My goodness! How numb I be this minute,” whispered Mrs. Parkins. And then she remembered that the cashier of the bank had told her that morning when she made her deposit, that everybody else was taking out their money that day; she was the only one who had come to put any in.

“I’d pay every cent of it willin’ to anybody that would come along and help me get to shelter,” said the poor soul. “Oh, I don’t know as I’ve hoed so’ s to be worth savin’”; and a miserable sense of shame and defeat beat down whatever hope tried to rise in her heart. What had she tried to do for God and man that gave her a right to think of love and succor now?

Yet it seemed every moment as if help must come and as if this great emergency could not be so serious. Life had been so monotonous to Mrs. Parkins, so destitute of excitement and tragic situations that she could hardly understand, even now, that she was in such great danger. Again she called as loud as she could for help, and the horse whinnied louder still. The only hope was that two men who had passed her some miles back would remember that they had advised her to hurry, and would come back to look for her. The poor, old horse had dragged himself and the wagon to the side of the road under the shelter of some evergreens; Mrs. Parkins slipped down under the buffalo into the bottom of her cold, old wagon, and covered herself as well as she could. There was more than a chance that she might be found frozen under a snowdrift in the morning.

The morning! Christmas morning!

What did the advent of Christmas day hold out for her — buried in the snowdrifts of a December storm!

Anything? Yes, but she knew it not. Little did she dream what this Christmas eve was to bring into her life!

II

Lydia Parkins was a small woman of no great vigor, but as she grew a little warmer under her bed of blankets in the bottom of the old wagon, she came to her senses. She must get out and try to walk on through the snow as far as she could; it was no use to die there in this fearful storm like a rabbit. Yes, and she must unharness the horse and let him find his way; so she climbed boldly down into the knee-deep snow where a drift had blown already. She would not admit the thought that perhaps she might be lost in the snow and frozen to death that very night. It did not seem in character with Mrs. Nathan Parkins, who was the owner of plenty of money in Haybury Bank, and a good farm well divided into tillage and woodland, who had plenty of blankets and comforters at home, and firewood enough, and suitable winter clothes to protect her from the weather. The wind was rising more and more, it made the wet gray-and-black bonnet feel very limp and cold about her head, and her poor head itself felt duller and heavier than ever. She lost one glove and mitten in the snow as she tried to unharness the old horse, and her bare fingers were very clumsy, but she managed to get the good old creature clear, hoping that he would plod on and be known farther along the road and get help for her; but instead of that he only went round and round her and the wagon, floundering and whinnying, and refusing to be driven away. “What kind of a storm is this going to be?” groaned Mrs. Parkins, wading along the road and falling over her dress helplessly. The old horse meekly followed and when she gave a weak, shrill, womanish shout, old Major neighed and shook the snow off his back. Mrs. Parkins knew in her inmost heart, that with such a wind and through such drifts she could not get very far, and at last she lost her breath and sank down at the roadside and the horse went on alone. It was horribly dark and the cold pierced her through and through. In a few minutes she staggered to her feet and went on; she could have cried because the horse was out of sight, but she found it easier following in his tracks.

Suddenly there was a faint twinkle of light on the left, and what a welcome sight it was! The poor wayfarer hastened, but the wind behaved as if it were trying to blow her back. The horse had reached shelter first and somebody had heard him outside and came out and shut the house door with a loud bang that reached Mrs. Parkins’ ears. She tried to shout again but she could hardly make a sound. The light still looked a good way off, but presently she could hear voices and see another light moving. She was so tired that she must wait until they came to help her. Who lived in the first house on the left after you passed oak ridge? Why, it couldn’t be the Donnells, for they were all away in Haybury, and the house was shut up; this must be the parsonage, and she was off the straight road home. The bewildered horse had taken the left-hand road. “Well,” thought Mrs. Parkins, “I’d rather be most anywhere else, but I don’t care where ’tis so long as I get under cover. I’m all spent and wore out.”

The lantern came bobbing along quickly as if somebody were hurrying, and wavered from side to side as if it were in a fishing boat on a rough sea. Mrs. Parkins started to meet it, and made herself known to her rescuer.

“I declare, if ’taint the minister,” she exclaimed. “I’m Mrs. Parkins, or what’s left of her. I’ve come near bein’ froze to death along back here a-piece. I never saw such a storm in all my life.”

She sank down in the snow and could not get to her feet again. The minister was a strong man, he stooped and lifted her like a child and carried her along the road with the lantern hung on his arm. She was a little woman and she was not a person given to sentiment, but she had been dreadfully cold and frightened, and now at last she was safe. It was like the good shepherd in the Bible, and Lydia Parkins was past crying; but it seemed as if she could never speak again and as if her heart were going to break. It seemed inevitable that the minister should have come to find her and carry her to the fold; no, to the parsonage; but she felt dizzy and strange again and the second-best gray-and-black bonnet slipped its knot and tumbled off into the snow without her knowing it.

When Mrs. Parkins opened her eyes a bright light made them shut again directly; then she discovered, a moment afterward, that she was in the parsonage sitting-room and the minister’s wife was kneeling beside her with an anxious face; and there was a Christmas tree at the other side of the room, with all its pretty, shining things and gay little candles on the boughs. She was comfortably wrapped in warm blankets, but she felt very tired and weak. The minister’s wife smiled with delight: “Now you’ll feel all right in a few minutes,” she exclaimed. “Think of your being out in this awful storm! Don’t try to talk to us yet, dear,” she added kindly, “I’m going to bring you a cup of good hot tea. Are you all right? Don’t try to tell anything about the storm. Mr. Lane has seen to the horse. Here, I’ll put my little red shawl over you, it looks prettier than the blankets, and I’m drying your clothes in the kitchen.”

The minister’s wife had a sweet face, and she stood for a minute looking down at her unexpected guest; then something in the thin, appealing face on the sofa seemed to touch her heart, and she stooped over and kissed Mrs. Parkins. It happened that nobody had kissed Mrs. Parkins for years, and the tears stole down her cheeks as Mrs. Lane turned away.

As for the minister’s wife, she had often thought that Mrs. Parkins had a most disagreeable hard face; she liked her less than anyone in the parish, but now as she brightened the kitchen fire, she began to wonder what she could find to put on the Christmas tree for her, and wondered why she never had noticed a frightened, timid look in the poor woman’s eyes. “It is so forlorn for her to live all alone on that big farm,” said Mrs. Lane to herself, mindful of her own happy home and the children. All three of them came close about their mother at that moment, lame-footed John with his manly pale face, and smiling little Bell and Mary, the girls.

The minister came in from the barn and blew his lantern out and hung it away. The old horse was blanketed as warm as his mistress, and there was a good supper in his crib. It was a very happy household at the parsonage, and Mrs. Parkins could hear their whispers and smothered laughter in the kitchen. It was only eight o’clock after all, and it was evident that the children longed to begin their delayed festivities. The little girls came and stood in the doorway and looked first at the stranger guest and then at their Christmas tree, and after a while their mother came with them to ask whether Mrs. Parkins felt equal to looking on at the pleasuring or whether she would rather go to bed and rest, and sleep away her fatigue.

Mrs. Parkins wished to look on; she was beginning to feel well again, but she dreaded being alone, she could not tell exactly why.

“Come right into the bedroom with me then,” said Mrs. Lane, “and put on a nice warm, double gown of mine; ’twill be large enough for you, that’s certain, and then if you do wish to move about by-and-by, you will be better able than in the blankets.”

Mrs. Parkins felt dazed by this little excitement, yet she was strangely in the mood for it. The reaction of being in this safe and pleasant place, after the recent cold and danger, excited her, and gave her an unwonted power of enjoyment and sympathy. She felt pleased and young, and she wondered what was going to happen. She stood still and let Mrs. Lane brush her gray hair, all tangled with the snow damp, as if she were no older than the little girls themselves; then they went out again to the sitting-room. There was a great fire blazing in the Franklin stove; the minister had cleared a rough bit of the parsonage land the summer before and shown good spirit about it, and these, as Mrs. Parkins saw at once, were some of the pitch-pine roots. She had said when she heard of his hard work, that he had better put the time into his sermons, and she remembered that now with a pang at her heart, and confessed inwardly that she had been mean spirited sometimes toward the Lanes, and it was a good lesson to her to be put at their mercy now. As she sat in her corner by the old sofa in the warm double gown and watched their kindly faces, a new sense of friendliness and hopefulness stole into her heart. “I’m just as warm now as I was cold a while ago,” she assured the minister.

The children sat side by side, the lame boy and the two little sisters before the fire, and Mrs. Lane sat on the sofa by Mrs. Parkins, and the minister turned over the leaves of a Bible that lay on the table. It did not seem like a stiff and formal meeting held half from superstition and only half from reverence, but it was as if the good man were telling his household news of someone they all loved and held close to their hearts. He said a few words about the birth of Christ, and of there being no room that night in the inn. Room enough for the Roman soldier and the priest and the tax-gatherer, but no room for Christ; and how we all blame that innkeeper, and then are like him too often in the busy inn of our hearts. “Room for our friends and our pleasures and our gains, and no room for Christ,” said the minister sadly, as the children looked soberly into the fire and tried to understand. Then they heard again the story of the shepherds and the star, and it was a more beautiful story than ever, and seemed quite new and wonderful; and then the minister prayed, and gave special thanks for the friend who made one of their household that night, because she had come through such great danger. Afterward the Lanes sang their Christmas hymn, standing about a little old organ which the mother played:

“While shepherds watched their flocks by night—”

They sang it all together as if they loved the hymn, and when they stopped and the room was still again, Mrs. Parkins could hear the wind blow outside and the great elm branches sway and creak above the little house, and the snow clicked busily against the windows. There was a curious warmth at her heart; she did not feel frightened or lonely, or cold, or even selfish any more.

They lighted the candles on the Christmas tree, and the young people capered about and were brimming over with secrets and shouted with delight, and the tree shown and glistened brave in its gay trimming of walnuts covered with gold and silver paper, and little bags sewed with bright worsteds, and all sorts of pretty home-made trifles. But when the real presents were discovered, the presents that meant no end of thought and management and secret self-denial, the brightest part of the household love and happiness shone out. One after another they came to bring Mrs. Parkins her share of the little tree’s fruit until her lap was full as she sat on the sofa. One little girl brought a bag of candy, though there wasn’t much candy on the tree; and the other gave her a bookmark, and the lame boy had a pretty geranium, grown by himself, with a flower on it, and came limping to put it in her hands; and Mrs. Lane brought a pretty hood that her sister had made for her a few weeks before, but her old one was still good and she did not need two. The minister had found a little book of hymns which a friend had given him at the autumn conference, and as Mrs. Parkins opened it, she happened to see these words: “Room to deny ourselves.” She didn’t know why the tears rushed to her eyes: “I’ve got to learn to deny myself of being mean,” she thought, almost angrily. It was the least she could do, to do something friendly for these kind people; they had taken her in out of the storm with such loving warmth of sympathy; they did not show the least consciousness that she had never spoken a kind word about them since they came to town; that she alone had held aloof when this dear boy, their only son, had fought through an illness which might leave him a cripple for life. She had heard that there was a hope of his being cured if by-and-by his father could carry him to New York to a famous surgeon there. But all the expense of the long journey and many weeks of treatment, had seemed impossible. They were so thankful to have him still alive and with them that Christmas night. Mrs. Parkins could see the mother’s eyes shine with tears as she looked at him, and the father put out a loving hand to steady him as he limped across the room.

“I wish little Lucy Deems, that lives next neighbor to me, was here to help your girls keep Christmas,” said Mrs. Parkins, speaking half unconsciously. “Her mother has had it very hard; I mean to bring her over someday when the traveling gets good.”

“We know Lucy Deems,” said the children with satisfaction. Then Mrs. Parkins thought with regret of cousin Faber and her two boys, and was sorry that they were not all at the minister’s too. She seemed to have entered upon a new life; she even thought of her dreary home with disapproval, and of its comfortable provisioning in cellar and garret, and of her money in the Haybury bank, with secret shame. Here she was with Mrs. Lane’s double gown on, as poor a woman as there was in the world; she had come like a beggar to the Lane’s door that Christmas eve, and they were eagerly giving her house-room and gifts great and small; where were her independence and her riches now? She was a stranger and they had taken her in, and they did it for Christ’s sake, and he would bless them, but what was there to say for herself? “Lord, how poor I be!” faltered Lydia Parkins for the second time that night.

•   •   •

There had not been such a storm for years. It was days before people could hear from each other along the blockaded country roads. Men were frozen to death, and cattle; and the telegraph wires were down and the safe and comfortable country side felt as if it had been in the power of some merciless and furious force of nature from which it could never again feel secure. But the sun came out and the blue-jays came back, and the crows, and the white snow melted, and the farmers went to and fro again along the highways. A new peace and good-will showed itself between the neighbors after their separation, but Mrs. Parkins’s good-will outshone the rest. She went to Haybury as soon as the roads were well broken, and brought cousin Faber back with her for a visit, and sent her home again with a loaded wagon of supplies. She called in Lucy Deems and gave her a peck basketful of butternuts on New Year’s Day, and told her to come for more when these were gone; and more than all, one Sunday soon afterward, the minister told his people that he should be away for the next two Sundays. The kindness of a friend was going to put a great blessing within his reach, and he added simply, in a faltering voice, that he hoped all his friends would pray for the restoration to health of his dear boy.

Mrs. Parkins sat in her pew; she had not worn so grim an expression since before Christmas. Nobody could tell what secret pangs these gifts and others like them had cost her, yet she knew that only a right way of living would give her peace of mind. She could no longer live in a mean, narrow world of her own making; she must try to take the world as it is, and make the most of her life.

There were those who laughed and said that her stingy ways were frightened out of her on the night of the storm; but sometimes one is taught and led slowly to a higher level of existence unconsciously and irresistibly, and the decisive upward step once taken is seldom retraced. It was not long before Mrs. Deems said to a neighbor cheerfully: “Why, I always knew Mrs. Parkins meant well enough, but she didn’t know how to do for other folks; she seemed kind of scared to use her own money as if she didn’t have any right to it. Now she is kind of persuaded that she’s got the whole responsibility, and just you see how pleased she behaves. She’s just a beginnin’ to live; she never heard one word o’ the first prayer yesterday mornin’; I see her beamin’ an’ smilin’ at the minister’s boy from the minute she see him walk up the aisle straight an’ well as anybody.”

“She’s goin’ to have one of her cousin Faber’s sons come over and stop awhile, I hear. He got run down workin’ in the shoe factory to Haybury. Perhaps he may take hold and she’ll let him take the farm by-an’-by. There, we mustn’t expect too much of her,” said the other woman compassionately. “I’m sure ’tis a blessed change as far as she’s got a’ready. Habits’ll live sometimes after they’re dead. Folks don’t find it so easy to go free of ways they’ve settled into; life’s truly a warfare, ain’t it?”

“It is so,” answered Mrs. Deems, soberly. “There comes Mrs. Parkins this minute, in the old wagon, and my Lucy settin’ up ’long-side of her as pert as Nathan! Now ain’t Mrs. Parkins’s countenance got a pleasanter look than it used to wear? Well, the more she does for others, and the poorer she gets, the richer she seems to feel.”

“It’s a very unusual circumstance for a woman o’ her age to turn right about in her tracks. It makes us believe that Heaven takes hold and helps folks,” said the neighbor; and they watched the thin, little woman out of sight along the hilly road with a look of pleased wonder on their own faces. It was mid-spring, but Mrs. Parkins still wore her best winter bonnet; as for the old rusty one trimmed with gray, the minister’s little girls found it when the snowdrifts melted, and carefully hid it away to deck the parsonage scarecrow in the time of corn-planting.

First publication:
Ladies’ Home Journal, Dec. 1890, Jan. 1891.

AN EMPTY PURSE

I

Little Miss Debby Gaines was counting the days to Christmas; there were only three, and the weather was bright and warm for the time of year.

“I’ve got to step fast to carry out all my plans,” she said to herself. “It seems to me as if it were going to be a beautiful Christmas; it won’t be like any I’ve spent lately, either. I shouldn’t wonder if it turned out for the best, my losing that money I always call my Christmas money; anyway I’ll do the best I can to make up for it.”

Miss Debby was sitting by the window sewing as fast as she could, for the light of the short winter day was going, mending a warm old petticoat and humming a psalm-tune. Suddenly she heard a knock at the door; she lived in two upstairs rooms, and could not see the street.

“Come in!” she said cheerfully, and dropped her lapful of work. “Why, if it isn’t Mrs Rivers!” she exclaimed with much pleasure.

The guest was a large woman, fashionably dressed. You would have thought that a very elegant blue-jay had come to make a late afternoon call upon such a brown chippy-sparrow as Miss Debby Gaines. Miss Debby felt much honored, and brought forward her best rocking-chair; and Mrs. Rivers seated herself and began to rock. Her stiff silk gown creaked as if she were a ship at sea.

“What are you doing — something pretty for Christmas?” she asked.

“It may be for Christmas, but it isn’t very pretty,” answered Miss Debby with a little laugh and shake of the head. “Tell you the truth, I was mending up a nice warm petticoat that I don’t have much use for; I thought I’d give it to old Mrs. Bean, at the poorhouse. She’s a complaining, cold old creatur’, an’ she’s got poor eyesight an’ can’t sew, and I thought this would make her real comfortable. It’s rather more heavy than I need to wear.”

“I’ve been down town all the afternoon, and it’s so tiresome trying to get at anything in the stores,” complained Mrs. Rivers. “They push you right away from what you want time to look over. I like to consider what I buy. It’s a great burden to me trying to get ready for Christmas, and I thought I shouldn’t do anything this year on account of my health. I’ve had large expenses this autumn. I had to buy new carpets and a new outside garment. I do like to see the pretty things in the stores, but they were so full of people and so hot and disagreeable this afternoon.”

Miss Debby had picked up her petticoat and was holding it close to the window while she sewed on the button with firm linen stitches.

“I haven’t been down the street for two or three days,” she said. “You’ll excuse me for goin’ on with my work; it’s most dark, and I’ll be done in a moment; then we can sit an’ talk.”

“It does me good to come and see you once in a while,” said Mrs. Rivers plaintively. “I thought I’d stop on my way home. Last year you had so many pretty little things that you’d been making.”

“There aren’t any at all this year,” answered Miss Debby bravely. “It wasn’t convenient, so I thought I’d just try having another kind of a merry Christmas.”

“Sometimes I wish I had no more responsibilities than you have. My large house is such a care. Mr. Rivers is very particular about everything, and so am I.” She gave a great sigh and creaked louder than before, but Miss Debby did not find the right sort of consolation to offer, and kept silence. “You enjoy having your pretty house,” she ventured to say after a few moments; “you wouldn’t like to do with as little as some” — and Mrs. Rivers shook her head in the dusk, and went on rocking.

“Presents aren’t nothing unless the heart goes with them,” said Miss Debby boldly at last, “and I think we can show good feelin’ in other ways than by bestowing little pincushions. Anyway, I’ve got to find those ways for me this year. ’Tis a day when we New England folks can seem to speak right out to each other, and that does us some good. Somethin’ gets in the air. I expect now to enjoy this Christmas myself, though I felt dreadful bad last week, sayin’ to myself ’twas the first time I couldn’t buy Christmas presents. I didn’t know how interested I was goin’ to get; you see I’ve made my little plans.”

Then they talked about other things, and Mrs. Rivers grew more cheerful and at last went away. She always found Christmas a melancholy season. She did not like the trouble of giving presents then, or at any other time; but she had her good points, as Miss Debby Gaines always bravely insisted.

II

Early on Christmas morning Miss Debby waked up with a feeling of happy expectation, and could hardly wait to make her cup of tea and eat her little breakfast on the corner of the table before she got out her best bonnet and Sunday cloak to begin her Christmas errands. It was cloudy and dark, but the sunlight came at last, pale and radiant, into the little brown room; and Miss Debby’s face matched it with a quiet smile and happy look of eagerness.

“Take neither purse nor scrip,” she said to herself as she went downstairs to the street. There was nobody else stirring in the house, but she knew that the poorhouse would be open and its early breakfast past by the time she could get there. It was a mile or so out of town. She hugged a large package under her shawl, and shivered a little at the beginning of her walk. There was no snow, but the heavy hoar-frost glistened on the sidewalks, and the air was sharp.

Old Mrs. Bean was coming out of the great kitchen, and when her friend wished her a Merry Christmas she shook her head.

“There ain’t nobody to make it merry for me,” she said.

“I wish you a happy Christmas!” said Miss Debby again. “I’ve come on purpose to be your first caller, an’ I am goin’ to make you the only present I shall give this year. ’Tis somethin’ useful, Miss Bean; a warm petticoat I’ve fixed up nice, so’s you can put it right on an’ feel the comfort of it.”

The old woman’s face brightened. “Why, you are real kind,” she said eagerly. “It is the one thing I’ve been wantin’. Oh, yes, dear sakes! ain’t it a beautiful warm one — one o’ the real old-fashioned quilted kind. I always used to have ’em when I was better off. Well, that is a present!”

“Now I’m goin’, because I can come an’ set an’ talk with you any day, and today I’ve got Christmas work,” and off Miss Debby went to the heart of the town again.

Christmas was on Tuesday that year, and she opened the door of a little house where a tired-looking young woman stood by an ironing-table and looked at her with surprise. “Why, Miss Gaines!” she exclaimed; “where are you going so early?”

“I wish you a happy Christmas!” said Miss Debby. “I’ve come to spend the mornin’ with you. Just through breakfast? No; the little girls are eatin’ away yet. Why, you’re late!”

“I didn’t mean to be,” said the young mother; “but I felt so tired this morning, and pretty sad, too, thinking of last year an’ all. So I just let the children sleep. Nelly’s got cold and was coughing most all night, and I couldn’t bear to get up and begin the day. Mother sent for me to come over to spend Christmas, but I couldn’t get the courage to start. She said she’d have some little presents ready for the little girls, and now I’m most sorry I disappointed her.”

“That’s just why I’m here,” said Miss Debby gaily, and with double her usual decision. “No, Nelly’s not fit to go out, I can see; but you leave her here with me, an’ you just get ready and take Susy and go. Your mother’ll think everything of it, and I’ll see to things here. Ironin’? Why, ’twill do me good. I feel a little chilly, and Nelly and I can have a grand time. Now you go right off an’ get ready, and catch the quarter-to-nine train. I won’t hear no words about it.”

So presently the pale, hard-worked young mother put on her widow’s bonnet and started off down the street, leading bright-faced little Susy by the hand; and Miss Debby and her favorite, Nelly, watched them go, from the window. The breakfast dishes were washed and put away in such fashion that Nelly thought it quite as good as doll’s housekeeping; and then, while Miss Debby ironed, she sat in a warm corner by the stove and listened to stories and to Miss Debby’s old-fashioned ballads, which, though sung in a slightly cracked voice, were most delightful to childish ears. What a Christmas morning it was! And after the small ironing was done, what pleasant things there seemed to be to do! Miss Debby rummaged until she found some little aprons cut for the children; and first she basted one for Nelly to sew, and then she took the other herself, and they sat down together and sewed until dinnertime. The aprons were pink and added to the gaiety of the occasion; and they were ready at last to surprise Nelly’s mother by being put back in their place in the same roll — all done even to the buttons and buttonholes, for Miss Debby found time to finish Nelly’s as well as her own. And they had bread and milk for dinner, and Miss Debby told stories of when she was a little girl. Altogether there never was a happier Christmas Day, and the spirit of Christmas, of peace and good-will, shone bright in Miss Debby’s face. Her quick eyes saw many chances to lend a helping hand to the poor defenseless household. When Nelly’s mother came home at night, heartened and cheered by her visit, she found the ironing and mending done; and a day or two later the pink aprons turned up all ready to be put on. And Nelly’s tiresome cough, which sounded like the whooping-cough, was quite stilled by some good old-fashioned dose which Miss Debby mixed agreeably with molasses and put to simmer on the stove. There seemed to be no end to the kind and thoughtful things Miss Debby did that day in a neighbor’s house.

She had started for home at dusk, just before it was time for young Mrs. Prender to get back, and was walking along the street, a little tired, but very happy.

“Why, it’s only half past four o’clock now!” she exclaimed, as she passed the watch-maker’s window. “I mean to go and see Mrs. Wallis a little while,” and she quickened her steps.

Presently Miss Debby Gaines came to a fine large house, very different from the one she had just left, and took pains to straighten her little black bonnet as she went up the long flight of handsome stone steps. An elderly manservant opened the door.

“I wish you a happy Christmas!” said Miss Debby. “Can I see Mrs. Wallis, do you suppose, Mr. Johnson?”

“Oh, yes’m,” said Johnson with feeling. “I was wishing somebody’d come in, Miss Gaines, now it’s beginning to get dark. The young ladies was here this morning, and brought their presents, but they’d made a promise to go out into the country with some young friends, so they aren’t coming to dinner, and Mrs. Wallis has been alone all day. She was pleased to have ’em go, though.”

By this time Miss Debby had crossed the wide hall to the library, where the kind mistress of the house was sitting alone. She hesitated a moment before she could speak.

“I wish you a happy Christmas!” she said. “It’s only me, Mrs. Wallis — Debby Gaines.”

“Why, Miss Debby!” and there was something in the tone of this hostess which told at once that she was glad to see a friend. “Why, dear Miss Debby! Come and sit down in this chair by me! I don’t doubt you have been trotting about all day,” and Mrs. Wallis held out a warm, affectionate hand.

“No, I’ve been keepin’ house for Mis’ Prender, so she could go an’ see her mother,” explained Miss Debby quite simply. “I had a nice time with her little girl that’s just getting over a cold and couldn’t go with the others. I was just on my way home. I thought I’d stop and see if there was anything I could do for you.”

“Nothing, except to stay a little while and keep me company,” said Mrs. Wallis. “My granddaughters are usually here, but they had a very pleasant plan made for them, and I was very glad to have them go. A skating party and a dinner at the Ashtons’ country house, and a dance.”

“Young folks will be young folks,” said Miss Debby. “I should like to hear all about it when they come and tell. Everybody seemed to be goin’ somewhere today; ’twas the nice clear weather.”

“There are all my pretty presents on the table,” said Mrs. Wallis. “Somehow they haven’t been very good company; this is the first Christmas in all my life that I have happened to spend quite alone.”

Miss Debby might not have done so much without thinking, by daylight, but she drew a little nearer and took hold of Mrs. Wallis’s hand.

“You must have had a great many lovely things to remember,” she said softly. “But anybody can’t help feeling lonesome; I know how ’tis. Everybody misses somebody the world over. There was all of us together once at home, and now I’m a kind of sparrow on the housetop. But I’ve had a beautiful day so far. I own I was afraid you’d have a sight of company an’ I should have to miss askin’ to see you.”

“I’m glad somebody wanted to see me,” said Mrs. Wallis more cheerfully, “and one of the friends I’ve known longest;” then they went on with much pleasant talk of the old days, and Mrs. Wallis gave Miss Debby an excellent cup of tea, and they had a happy little feast together there in the library before the humble, loving-hearted guest went away, leaving peace and good-will once more in a lonely and troubled heart.

She stopped here and there at the houses of other friends, forgetting in her happiness that she was empty-handed on Christmas Day, and everywhere she left a new feeling of friendliness and pleasant kindness. At one house she comforted a crying child by mending his broken top, and at another she knew just how to help a pretty girl to get ready for her Christmas party, and sat down and took off her big woolen gloves to alter the refractory dress, which had seemed impossible to be worn. She was like a good angel as she sat there, sewing and smiling and putting everybody’s mind at ease.

It was late in the evening when this was finished, and she had had a long day; but she stopped, with great bravery, and asked to see the minister, just to tell him how thankful she was for his sermon on Sunday and wish him a happy Christmas. The minister had been a little discouraged for some reason, as ministers often are, and even Christmas kindnesses in the shape of welcome presents from his friends did not cheer him half so much as the sincerity and affection of Miss Debby’s visit. He watched the little figure go down the steps with tears in his eyes. So few persons could forget themselves to remember others as this dear parishioner could; it was worth living for, if one could sometimes help and refresh those who are the true helpers; and he went back to his work in the study feeling like a better and busier man than when he had left it.

So Miss Debby came back to her little home again. The fire was out and it was all dark, but she went straight to her small rocking-chair by the window and sat down to rest, and to thank the Lord for such a happy day. Though her purse was empty, her heart was full, and she had left pleasure and comfort behind her all along the way.

Presently she lighted her lamp, and then she saw on the table a great package with a note beside it; the note was from Mrs. Rivers.

“Something you said the other day,” Miss Debby read, “made me feel differently about Christmas from the way I have before, and I am going right to work to try to make as many people happy as I can. And you must feel that my heart goes with these presents that I send you first. They are some of my own things that I liked, and I send them with love.”

Miss Debby’s face shone with joy. She had always liked Mrs. Rivers, but she had often pitied her a little; and now the note made her feel as if she had found a new friend in an old one. This was the way that Miss Debby’s Christmas came to its happy end.

First publication:
Boston Evening Transcript 21 Dec. 1895.
Philadelphia Press, 21 Dec. 1895.