"No, indeed!" cried Kristy. "You have told me lovely stories, and mamma owes me two to pay for them!"
"That"s a curious way of calculating," said Mrs. Wilson, laughing; "do you expect to be paid twice for everything?"
"Yes; when it"s stories," said Kristy.
"Kristy"ll soon have to write stories for herself, I think," said her mother, smiling, "when she has exhausted the stock of all her friends."
Kristy blushed, but did not confess that that was her pet ambition.
"Now, mamma," said Kristy that evening after supper was over, "some more rainy day stories, please!"
"Will you have them all at once?" asked mamma, taking up some fancy knitting she kept for evenings, "or one at a time?"
"One at a time, please," answered Kristy.
"Well; get your work. How much did you do this afternoon?"
Kristy looked guilty. "You know I just _can"t_ remember to knit when I"m listening to a story. I--I--believe I did not knit once across."
Her mother laughed. "The poor Barton baby"ll go cold, I"m afraid, if he waits for his carriage robe till you finish it. How would you like to knit him a pair of stockings? Shall I set them up and give you a daily stint?"
"Ugh!" said Kristy. "Please don"t talk of anything so dreadful! You told me yourself how you hated it."
"It"s a very good plan, nevertheless," said Mrs. Crawford. "Perhaps it would have been wiser not to tell you about that."
"Now, mamma!" said Kristy reproachfully.
"I think," mamma went on, "that I shall have to make up for that story of a girl who didn"t like to work,--at least that kind of work,"--she corrected herself, "by telling you about a girl who worked enough for two."
"Oh, oh!" cried Kristy, "I"m afraid that"ll not be very interesting."
"Well, you shall see," said mamma, "for I"m going to tell you how she got up a whole Christmas tree alone, and made everything on it herself."
"Oh!" said Kristy relieved, "that"ll be good, I know; begin."
"Well, I"ll begin where the story begins, as I have heard May tell it, with a talk between her sister and herself. One morning a little before Christmas the two girls got to talking about that happy time and the way it is celebrated, and May listened eagerly to Lottie"s description of a tree she had at her aunt"s the year before."
CHAPTER XII
LOTTIE"S CHRISTMAS TREE
"There"s no use wishing for anything away out here in the woods," said Lottie fretfully, rocking violently back and forth by the side of the bed.
"No, of course we couldn"t have one, but I should like to see a Christmas tree before I die. It must be splendid!"
And poor, sick May turned wearily on her pillow.
"You"re not going to die, May," said Lottie impatiently, "and I hope you"ll see lots of Christmas trees--if you don"t this year. It"s your turn to go to Aunt Laura"s next."
May sighed.
"I"m too tired, Lottie. I never shall go."
"Of course you"re tired," said Lottie in the same fretful tone; "nothing to do, nothing to see, nothing to read--just lying on your back, week after week, in this old log house. It"s enough to make anybody sick. I s"pose it"s awful wicked, but I think it"s just too bad that we two girls have to live in this mean old shanty, with n.o.body but stupid old Nancy!"
"Oh, Lottie," said the sick girl anxiously, "don"t forget father, and what a comfort we are to him."
"You are, you mean," interrupted Lottie.
"No, I mean you. I"m an expense and care to him; but what could he do without you? And remember," she went on softly, "how he hated to bring us to this lonely little place, and wanted to put us in school, and leave us, but we begged him"--
"Yes, I remember," said Lottie regretfully, "and I am wicked as I can be to talk so; but thinking about Aunt Laura"s tree, it did seem too bad you couldn"t have one, too. You have so few pleasures."
"Oh, I have lots of pleasures!" cried May eagerly. "I love to lie here and look out into the woods,--the dear, sweet, quiet woods,--and remember the nice times we used to have before I was sick; and I like"--
"You like some dinner by this time, I guess," said Nancy, coming in with her dinner nicely served on a tray.
Lottie got up, went into the next room, threw an old shawl over her head, and stepped out of the side door into the woods, for the house had not been built long, and all the clearing was on the other side.
Though it was winter, it was not very cold, and the woods were almost as attractive as in summer.
Walking a few rods, Lottie sat down on her favorite seat, a fallen tree trunk covered with moss.
"I declare, it"s too bad!" she began to herself. "I believe May is dying because it"s so stupid here. I could "most die myself. I wonder if I couldn"t do something to amuse her. Couldn"t I buy something, or make something," she went on, slowly turning over in her mind all her resources. "Let me see,--I have two dollars left. I wish I could buy her a set of chessmen! She and father play so much. Wait! wait!" she cried excitedly, jumping up and dancing around; "I have it! I can make her a set like Kate Selden"s, or something like it, I know! Oh, dear!
won"t that be splendid! How delighted she will be! But where"ll I get the figures?"
She sat down again more soberly, and fell into a brown study.
"My two dollars will buy enough china dolls, I guess, and I"ll get Aunt Laura to send them to me by mail."
This was a bright thought, and the more she thought of it, the greater grew her plan. She remembered several things she could make, and before she went into the house, she even ventured to dream of a tree.
That night a mysterious letter was written, the two dollars slipped in, sealed, and directed, ready to give to the postman, an old man who pa.s.sed every day with mail for the village.
Never did ten days seem so long to Lottie as that particular ten days which pa.s.sed before she got her answer. Every day, at the postman"s hour, she ran up to the road and waited for him, all the time planning the wonderful things she would do. At last, one day, the old man stopped his horse, fumbled in his saddlebags, and brought out a package directed to her.
She seized it, and ran off to open her treasure. What did the package contain? Nothing but twenty-eight china dolls, some silver and gilt paper, and some bits of bright silk.
"Auntie has got everything!" she exclaimed joyfully; "and now I can go right to work."
Now the log house had but four rooms,--the living-room, where they ate, and where old Nancy cooked at a big cave of a fireplace, in which logs were burning from fall to spring; the girls" room, where May lay, which was also warmed by a big fireplace; father"s room, and a room in the attic for Nancy.
Lottie could not work in the cold, nor in May"s room, so she established herself in a warm corner of the living-room, far enough from Nancy"s dull eyes, and near a window. Day after day she worked, making excuses to May for leaving her so much alone, and hiding her work before her father came in at night.
I will tell you how she made the set of chessmen. First she hunted up a smooth, thin board, from which she cut, with her father"s saw, a square piece about twenty inches square. The middle of this board she laid out in blocks with a pencil and ruler, careful to make them exactly perfect. The blocks were two inches square and there were eight each way; in fact, it was a copy of the chessboard her father had made.