CHAPTER VIII
A MYSTERIOUS SANTA CLAUS
"Merry Christmas, Gail, Faith, Hope, Charity, Allee! Merry Christmas, everyone! My stocking has _something_ in it, I can see from here. Wake up! Wake up! I want to look at my presents!"
A drop of something hot struck the tip of Gail"s nose, and she opened her sleepy eyes to find a white-robed, shivering figure shaking her vigorously with one hand, while in the other was a tiny, flickering candle, which dribbled hot wax prodigally as it was tipped about with reckless abandon by the excited pleader.
"What are you doing with that lighted candle?" demanded Gail, digging the wax off her nose and dodging another drop. "Put it out before you set the house on fire. It isn"t morning yet. It can"t be! I have hardly slept at all."
"The clock struck a long time ago," insisted Peace with chattering teeth, "and I counted much as five."
"Five o"clock!" protested Gail. "Oh, surely not! Well, if it is that time, I suppose you can get up. Seems awfully quiet for that hour, though." The older sister began the process of dressing, and in a few moments all six girls were gathered around the roaring fire in the kitchen, excitedly examining the contents of their stockings, which Gail had painstakingly filled with homemade gifts and a little cheap candy from the village store,--her one Christmas extravagance.
"Mittens!" cried Peace, investigating the first package her excited hand drew forth. "You knit them, didn"t you, Gail? I saw Mrs. Grinnell teaching you how. Mine are red. Have you got some, Cherry?"
"Yes, blue; and Allee"s are pink. Aren"t they pretty?"
"Just see my lovely knit slippers," cried Hope, throwing her arms about Gail"s neck and hugging her with a vim. "Where did you get all the yarn, sister?"
"I found a lot in the attic," replied the oldest girl, smiling happily at the children"s appreciation of her labor; but she did not explain that a gorgeous, moth-eaten, old afghan had been raveled to provide all those pretty things.
"What is in your stocking, Faith?"
The girl held up a dainty white waist, but said never a word, for she recognized that Gail"s patient fingers had re-fashioned for her one of the dear mother"s h.o.a.rded treasures, and her heart was too full for utterance.
"I"ve got some handkerchiefs," called Peace again, "and a ribbon--if I only had some hair to tie with it! It"s too wide for a band, and that"s all I can wear--here"s an apple, a penwiper and some candy. You"ve got pretty nearly the same c"lection, haven"t you, Cherry, and so have Hope and Allee. I wonder how Mrs. Grinnell happened to give me a hair-ribbon when she knows that my hair ain"t long enough to tie back."
"How do you know Mrs. Grinnell gave it to you?" demanded Gail, too astonished to reprove her.
"I was in there one day when she had been to Martindale, and the ribbons happened to be on the table all unwrapped. This was one of them. Now, Gail, see what Santa Claus has brought you. There"s at least one thing, "cause--"
Cherry clapped her hand over her younger sister"s mouth, and began to giggle. So did Gail, when she drew forth from her stocking a bulky potato pig with toothpicks for legs, match-heads for eyes and a dry woodbine tendril for a tail.
"Who in the world made that?" she laughed, tears close to the surface, for she had expected nothing this Christmas day.
"Mr. Strong," gulped Peace, dancing with delight at her sister"s evident surprise. "Look at his back! We put a saddle on the old porker. Isn"t that cute? It"s a spandy new dollar with this year"s date on it. See?"
Gail turned the curious animal over, and sure enough, there was a bright, shining G.o.ddess of Liberty, skilfully sunk in the pig"s potato back.
Swallowing back the lump in her throat, which threatened to choke her, Gail whispered, "Where did you get it, dear? The money, I mean."
"We took up a c"lection," was the startling answer.
"A collection!" echoed Gail.
"Yes. You know last Sunday was Home Mission day, and the money was to be sent to poor ministers" families on the pioneer--"
"You mean frontier," corrected Hope.
"Well, whatever ear it was," continued Peace, serenely; "and that made me wonder why folks never took up c"lections for poor ministers"
families right here among them. I asked Mr. Strong about it, and he said we would take up another c"lection straight away, and buy a Christmas present for a "hero minister"s hero mother-daughter." He made me learn those words; and we got a dollar in ten cent pieces without half trying.
I "spect we could have raised a fortune if we"d had more time, but this was on our way home from school yesterday. We couldn"t find anything pretty enough to buy here at the village, and it was too late to go to Martindale for it, so we changed the dimes into a dollar and put it in the potato pig. He said it ought to be a shining white angel, but I told him right away that we had angels enough in this family already, and he better make a horse. That is what he tried to do, but it looked so much like a pig when he got done that I pulled off the string tail and mane and put on a pig"s tail, and he said it did look better. You are to use the money for your very own self and--"
The clock began to strike. One--two--That was all.
"Mercy me!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Peace, staring at the accusing faces of her sisters. "I truly did hear that clock strike as much as five a long time ago."
"No doubt you did," laughed sunny Hope. "It struck midnight and you woke up in the middle of the count."
"Let"s go back to bed," suggested Gail, anxious to be alone with her tumultuous thoughts; and to her surprise no dissenting voice was raised, although as she crept once more beneath the covers of her cot, she heard Peace say decidedly, "I sha"n"t take off _my_ clothes again. Once a day is enough for any _huming_ being to dress. Do you s"pose Santa will come again while we sleep?"
It was daylight before they woke from their second nap, and as Peace flew out of bed once more, she cried in delight, "Oh, it"s snowing again! Now it will seem like Christmas sure! Let"s clean off the walks before breakfast. Gail won"t let us eat our candy yet."
She made short work of her toilette, threw on her wraps and was out of doors almost before Cherry had opened her eyes; but the next moment she came stumbling back into the house with the wild yell "Girls, girls, Santa Claus did come again, and left a tre-men-jus big mince pie on the porch--I picked a teenty hole in the top to see for sure if "twas mincemeat--and a bundle of something else. Hurry up, I can"t wait to open it! Oh, the paper fell off, and it"s shoes--tennis slippers in the winter! Think of it! That is worse than Mrs. Grinnell"s hair-ribbon, ain"t it?"
"Peace!" cried Gail in shocked tones, entering the kitchen with the rest of the family at her heels. "You should be _grateful_ for the presents people give you and not poke fun at them."
"I am grateful, Gail, truly. I ain"t poking fun at them, honest, though they _are_ funny presents for this time of the year. I s"pose, maybe, my hair will get long enough for a ribbon sometime, though Mrs. Strong says it is too curly to grow fast. And when summer comes, we can wear these slippers, if they aren"t too small. They look awful little already.
These are marked for Allee, and here are mine, and those are Cherry"s.
There aren"t any for the rest of you. I s"pose the pie is for you.
You"re lucky. I would rather have the pie than the shoes."
"Oh, Peace!"
"Well, wouldn"t you? There is someone at the front door."
Gail disappeared through the hall to answer the knock, and Peace, with her new shoes in her hand, slipped out of the kitchen door. "Just as I thought," she muttered to herself. "Mr. Hardman brought them over. He thinks they will make up for that money he never paid us last summer, but they won"t. He can just have his old shoes right back again!"
Out to the barn she marched, hunted up a sc.r.a.p of paper and a pencil left there for just such emergencies, laboriously scribbled a note, which she tied to the slippers, and deposited the bundle on the Hartman steps, where he found it when he came out to sweep paths. "Well, I swan," he exclaimed, half in anger, half amused, as he picked tip the rejected shoes, "if she hasn"t trotted them slippers back! Peace, of course. Let"s see what she says." Carefully he untied the little slip and read:
"Here are your shoes. Im greatful but this is the rong seesun for them. By summer they will be to small as they aint very big now. Ive got over wanting tenis shoes anyhow. The muny you owe us would have come in handier. Peace Greenfield."
He tucked the note in his pocket, dropped the shoes on the kitchen mantle, and went chuckling about his morning work. Hardly had he finished his numerous tasks, when he was surprised to see Peace coming slowly up the path, with eyes down-cast and face an uncomfortable red.
She knocked lightly, as if hoping no one would hear, and looked disappointed when he opened the door.
"Merry Christmas, Peace. Come in, come right in," he said cordially, his eyes gleaming with, amus.e.m.e.nt. "What can I do for you this morning?"
"Give me back the shoes I left on your porch," she answered, in tones so low he could hardly hear. "Gail said I must come over and get them and ipologize for being so rude. She says it is very rude to return Christmas presents like that. If you meant them for a present, why, that"s different; but I thought likely it was our pay for picking strawberries last summer. Now, which was it, a present or our pay?" The old, independent, confident spirit a.s.serted itself once more in the little breast, and Peace raised her eyes to his with disconcerting frankness.
"Well, well," stammered the man, hardly knowing what to say. "Suppose they are a Christmas present, will you accept and wear "em?"
"When it comes summer time, if I haven"t outgrown them. My feet are getting big fast."
"But if they are in pay for the strawberry picking, you won"t take them?
Is that it?"