These squares she covered with gilt and silver paper alternately, covering the joinings with strips of very narrow gilt bordering. The edge of the board she covered with a strip of drab-colored cloth she found in the piece-trunk.
The board being finished,--and it was really very pretty,--she had next to make the chessmen. For these she used the china dolls, the tallest of which was three inches high. Half of the dolls were white and the other half black; the white to wear blue and white, the black ones scarlet and drab.
The dressing was a work of art, for she wished to make them look like the characters they represented. She looked through the picture-books in the house to see how kings and queens and knights and bishops were dressed. Pictures of kings and queens she found in a geography, knights in a volume of Shakespeare, and a bishop in an odd number of an old magazine.
Then she went to work. The p.a.w.ns were dressed as pages, the kings and queens in flowing robes, with crowns of gilt or silver paper, glued on, the knights in coats of mail,--strips of silver paper laid over one another like the shingles on a roof,--the bishops in long gowns, with mitre on the head,--all in the two colors of their respective sides. The four castles were made of pieces of gray sandpaper, glued into cylinder shape, with battlement-shaped strips around the top; when glued on their standards, they looked like little stone castles.
When they were all dressed,--and it took many days and much contriving,--Lottie found that few of them would stand up, and those which possessed the accomplishment were very tottlish, and fell down at the slightest provocation.
That would never do, so she set her wits to work to provide standards.
She took an old broom handle, and sawed it into thin slices.
When she had thirty-two of these slices, she covered them neatly with pieces of old black broadcloth, glued on, over top, edge, and all.
Then she dipped the feet of each china personage into the hot, stiff glue, and held it in place till the glue set.
They would stick nicely, and stand up as straight as any chessmen.
Then she drew the long robes into folds, just touched with glue, and festooned to the standard so as not to get out of place.
When the whole set was done, Lottie was delighted; and, indeed, they were extremely pretty.
Every night, when May and her father would get out the old set, made of b.u.t.ton moulds, with the name printed on with ink, Lottie would think what a surprise there would be.
But she was not done with plans.
May had a picture, a delicate pencil-sketch of her mother, the only likeness they had. It was the sick girl"s treasure. Too careful of it to allow it to hang on the wall and get soiled, she kept it in an old book under her pillow, and to take it out and look at it every day was her delight. Now Lottie planned to make a frame for this treasure.
On pretense of looking at it, she took its dimensions, and then went to work. Cutting a piece of cardboard of the right size, she proceeded to cover it with little bunches of gra.s.ses she had dried in the summer, standing up in vases so that they drooped gracefully. At the top, where the stems of the gra.s.ses met, she placed a bunch of bitter-sweet berries, the brilliant red and orange just the needed bit of color to perfect the whole.
It was laid away in a chest with the chessmen, ready to receive the picture.
And now she began to plan for the adornment of the tree.
Candles were the greatest anxiety, but with the help of Nancy, she made a few large ones into twenty as neat and pretty little "dips" as you ever saw.
Walnuts she ornamented with gilt bands and loops to be hung by; apples, the reddest and whitest, were similarly prepared; tiny cornucopias, made of white letter paper trimmed with bits of gilt, filled with popped corn and meats of b.u.t.ternuts nicely picked out; dainty baskets made of old match-boxes, covered with gay paper, and with festooned handles; gorgeous pink and white roses of paper; tiny cakes of maple sugar, delicious sticks and twists of mola.s.ses candy; dainty drop cakes and kisses smuggled into the oven on baking-day,--all were secreted in the wonderful chest in the attic.
At last came the day before Christmas, and Lottie took the axe and went into the woods, for this woods-girl could not only bake cakes, dress dolls, and saw broomsticks, but she could even chop down a tree, if it was small.
She found a beautiful spruce tree, which had evidently been growing all these years on purpose for a Christmas tree, so straight it stood, and so wide and strong were its branches.
Cutting it down, and dragging it home over the snow, Lottie presented herself at the kitchen door, to the astonished eyes of Nancy.
"Now, Nancy, don"t you say a word to May. I"m going to surprise her."
""Deed "n I should think you"d surprise her, could she see you dragging that big log into the house!"
"Well, you help me in with it, for I don"t want to break its branches."
"All on my clean floor!" cried Nancy, in dismay.
"Yes, quick!" said Lottie; "it won"t muss, you"ll see."
Nancy helped her, and the tree yielded to fate and four strong arms, and went in.
It did look big, and when Lottie stood it up in a tub, it nearly touched the wall. Around the trunk of the tree, to steady it, she packed sticks of wood till it stood firm. Then she covered the whole, tub, wood, and floor around, with great sheets of green moss, which she had pulled out from under the snow the day before.
She got the tree in early in the morning, and every moment she could steal from May through the day she spent in filling it, hanging on her treasures, fastening her candles by sticking large pins up through the small branches, and standing the candles on them.
The chessboard stood prominently on the moss at the foot of the tree, and the frame, with its picture, hung from one branch.
When her father came home, he found supper served, as a Christmas eve treat, Lottie said, in May"s room, and adroitly he was kept out of the mysterious room.
When he was finishing his last cup of tea, and was talking with May, Lottie slipped out, lighted a long taper, and in five minutes had the tree all ablaze with light.
"Father," she said, quietly opening the door, "will you bring May out to her Christmas eve?"
"What!" said father.
But mechanically he took in his arms the light form of his daughter, and followed Lottie. At the door he stood transfixed, and May could not speak or breathe for wonder.
That one moment paid Lottie for all her hard work, but Nancy"s "Do tell!" as she peeped over their shoulders and saw the illuminated tree, broke the spell.
Father broke out with tears in his eyes, "Why, Lottie!" and May cried ecstatically: "How wonderful! how lovely! is it a dream? is it fairies?"
"No, May," Lottie whispered, coming up softly behind her, "it"s only a Christmas tree, and it"s yours!"
"Mine! and you made it?" exclaimed May, understanding at once Lottie"s intense occupation of the last month.
"Who helped you, my daughter?"
"No one, father," said Lottie.
"Well, it"s wonderful, really wonderful. How could you do it all alone? I can"t understand it! What a little, smothered volcano you must have been all these weeks!"
"I could hardly keep from telling," said Lottie, with happy eyes.
But now May asked to be carried nearer, and each treasure was examined. The ingenious chessmen were praised, and the frame brought a shower of happy tears from May.
Then there was a surprise for father, for Lottie had found time to make him a nice, warm m.u.f.fler, and May had knit him a pair of mittens, which she now brought out. And Nancy was not forgotten, for Lottie had made her an ap.r.o.n, and May had made her a tatting collar. Neither was Lottie neglected, for May had netted her a beautiful new net.
And father now drew out of his pocket a letter which he had received from Aunt Laura that morning, on opening which, two new ten-dollar bills were found, presents from Aunt Laura to the girls, "to buy some keepsake with," the letter said.
"And I was so cross, thinking I should not have any Christmas," said May repentantly.
"And I was so sad, thinking how different would have been my daughters" Christmas if their dear mother had been with us," said father softly.