"It"s early yet," said Hinpoha, "we ought to have time. Come on."
So they all went with Gladys to deliver a Christmas parcel to a poor family whom Gladys" mother had taken under her wing. Along the big avenues through which they walked candles were already glimmering in windows in friendly invitation to the coming singers. But there were no candles in the windows on Division Street. The houses were all poor little one-story ones, with never a wreath or a bit of decoration anywhere to show that it was Christmas. The very lamp-posts burned dimly with a discouraged air. The girls delivered their bundle and hastened back up the dark street.
"Let"s stop a minute and sing the songs through once more so Migwan will be sure of them," suggested Hinpoha. "We wanted to before we left the house, you know, and then we forgot it."
So they stood still before a bleak, empty looking house, and sang through all the songs they were to sing with the group that night on Garfield Avenue.
In a bare little room in the shabbiest house on Division Street a young girl lay in bed day after day, staring wistfully through the flawed window pane at the dingy row of houses opposite. She suffered from hip disease and could not walk, and a frail little mother cleaned offices to support them both. Living was cruelly high and there was no thought of spending anything for Christmas. Martha dreaded its coming, for she could remember other days when Christmas had been very different. Besides, Martha was very lonely. She and her mother were strangers in town, having come only six months before, and in all that time not a soul had come to see them. And because Martha felt so lonely and so left out of the busy, happy world, the treatment for which she had come to the city was doing her no good, and she was not improving at all. And her mother saw the trouble and sorrowed, but did not know how to mend the matter. Martha read in books about the good times girls had together and longed with all her soul to be part of such frolics, until it seemed that she could not bear her loneliness any longer.
Her mother often brought home newspapers from the offices and in them Martha read about the groups of boys and girls who were going through the streets on Christmas Eve singing carols before the houses where the candles shone in the windows.
"How I wish I could hear those carols sung!" she sighed enviously. "How wonderful it must be to be rich and live in a fine house and put a candle in the window to make the singers stop outside! And I must always stay in the darkness, and miss all the fun! Oh, Mother, it isn"t fair!"
The sad-eyed little mother cast about in her mind for some way to amuse her lonely daughter this dreary Christmas Eve. "Let us pretend that we are rich and great," she said soothingly, "and play that we are putting a lighted candle in our window and listening to the fine songs of the singers below and giving them large sums of money for their good cause."
"What good would it do to play it?" asked Martha. "We would have to imagine it all. We haven"t even a candle!"
"Let"s play it, anyway," coaxed her mother. "What color candle shall we use tonight?"
"A red one, with gold designs on it, and a cut gla.s.s candlestick," said Martha, playing the game to please her mother.
So they pretended to set a shining gla.s.s candlestick holding a red and gold candle on the window sill. "Now we must wait awhile in our elegant parlor for the singers to come," said her mother, playing the game with spirit.
Then a wonderful thing happened. There was a sound of footsteps in the creaking snow outside, footsteps that came to a halt beneath the window, and then the air was filled with joyous, ringing melody:
"G.o.d rest you, merry gentlemen, Let nothing you may dismay, For Jesus Christ our Savior Was born this happy day!"
Martha and her mother looked at each other with faces suddenly grown pale, and listened with unbelieving ears. The song changed as the singers swung into the measures of a new carol. Surely these were human voices and not a band of fairies! The mother crept silently to the window and looked out.
When the last note of the songs had died away the door of the dark house opened and a woman came out on the steps. "Thank you a thousand times for the singing," she said. "Won"t you come in where my daughter can see you?
She won"t believe you are real. She is so sick and lonesome. Please do."
The Winnebagos started in surprise and looked at each other somewhat doubtfully. They had not been aware that they were singing to an audience. It was getting near the time when they should be meeting the rest of the group. But this was Christmas Eve and here was a girl sick and lonesome--
"Let"s go in for a minute," said Gladys and Hinpoha together. They went in, singing as they went, and swinging their little lighted lanterns.
Martha"s mother lit the one pale little gas flame, for they had been sitting in the dark before, and by its light the girls saw the shabby room and the wan girl lying on the bed. So amazed was Martha at the sudden appearance of the carolers out of the night that she forgot to be shy, and before she knew it she had told them all about the Christmas Eve game she and her mother had been playing and how they had set the imaginary candle in the window. And all of the six months" loneliness was in that little tale, and the girls as they listened became afflicted with a queer weakness of the eyes that made them turn their faces away from the light. Over on the lighted avenue the twinkling candles beckoned in the gleaming windows of the most beautiful homes in the city; still farther on the revellers at the singers" party stretched out gay hands to them; but over it all each one seemed to see the words of the Fire Law written in letters made of Christmas stars:
--"Whose house is bare and dark and cold--"
Mysterious communications and hand signs flew back and forth between the Winnebagos. Like magic Gladys and Hinpoha slid out of the door and like magic they returned a few minutes later, loaded down with bundles. As the enchanted forests rise in the fairy tales, so the room was swiftly transformed and began to blossom in green and red. Garlands and wreaths hung from the head and the foot of the bed, and from the gas-jet. Riotous little bells swung from the doorways; sprigs of holly and gorgeous poinsettias framed the cheap pictures; bright candles in cheerful red shades burned on the table.
Other bundles when opened revealed the "makings" of the grandest spread the Winnebagos had ever had. The Lonesome House was turned into the Home of Joyous Spirits. Gladys poked up the fire and made her most tempting Shrimp Wiggle; Sahwah made the best pan of fudge she had ever made; Katherine made cocoa, and the rest spread sandwiches with delicious "Wohelo Special" chicken salad, and cut up cake and dished ice cream.
Then there followed such a joyous feast as Martha had never conceived in her rosiest dreams. Healths were drunk in cocoa, side-splitting toasts proposed by the witty toastmistress, Migwan, and songs sung that made the roof ring. Gladys did her prettiest dances; Sahwah and Hinpoha did their famous stunt of the goat that ate the two red shirts right off the line, and Katherine gave her very funniest speech-the one about Wimmen"s Rights-three times; once voluntarily and twice more by special request.
Martha laughed until she could laugh no more, and applauded every number enthusiastically, her usually pale cheeks glowing red with excitement and her eyes shining like stars. It was late when they left her, promising to come again soon, and slipping into her hands various packages containing gifts of things every girl loves, which Gladys had hastily bought when she had slipped out to get the supplies. Among them was a beautifully intricate puzzle which would keep her interested for months to come.
Thus it was that the candle which was never lit guided the feet of the Song Friends to the Dark House, and gave into their tending yet another fire. Reports of the gay party at the Music League Club House came to the Winnebagos from all sides, and loud expressions of regret that they had missed it. And the group they were to have sung with brought in by far the most money, carrying off the prize and getting its picture in the Sunday paper-and the Winnebagos were not in it.
But over on Division Street a wonderful new look had come into the face of a sad-eyed girl-a look of happiness and ambition, and the Winnebagos, having seen that look, were content.
CHAPTER X A TEMPEST IN A TEAPOT
January closed with its immemorial thaw and February drew near in a mist of speculation as to whether it would come in like a lion or a lamb. But whatever may have been the state of the weather outside when the new month arrived, the Winnebago barometer registered a tempest in a teapot.
It was Katherine who was responsible for that particular barometric activity. That is, it was she who attached the fuse to the bomb and set the match to it. All the bomb did was blow up.
The Winnebagos were all over at Katherine"s one Friday afternoon after school, painting a buffalo robe that was to hang on the wall in the Open Door Lodge and cover an unsightly board. Veronica was in one of her rare cheerful moods and played gay tunes on her violin while the other girls worked. She was gradually thawing toward the girls, although she was still very conservative in her friendships. She was most friendly toward Gladys and Hinpoha, the two girls who came from the best family. She was not particularly drawn to merry, tomboyish Sahwah, because she was not musical, although they got along. Thus also it was with Medmangi and Nakwisi. But from the first Katherine Adams had seemed to rub her the wrong way. Big, clumsy, awkward Katherine, uncultured and hopelessly plebeian! She always managed to step on Veronica"s dainty shoes or sit on her cherished violin or spill cocoa on her dress. And her flyaway appearance constantly jarred on Veronica"s artistic nature. And that ridiculous, unmusical voice!
Looking only at these defects, Veronica failed to appreciate the wonderful magnetism of Katherine"s personality and the unfailing good nature which made her a boon companion any hour out of the twenty-four whatever the weather might be. Not being American-born, Veronica believed firmly in cla.s.s distinctions, and to her Katherine was a peasant and thus an inferior.
However, to the others it seemed that the strangeness between them and Veronica was wearing away, and this afternoon they felt closer to her than they ever had before. She even asked, actually _asked_, to be shown how to make "slumgullion"-she who a few months before had scornfully maintained that cooking was for servants and not for ladies. "She"s getting there!" whispered Gladys to Hinpoha, with a delighted squeeze.
Spirits ran high and before long everybody felt they must dance or burst.
"It"s too bad we haven"t Nyoda"s old banjo over here," said Sahwah. "Then some of the rest of us could play and Veronica could dance."
"I"ll go over and get it," said Katherine obligingly. So she went over to Nyoda"s house and got the banjo, and it was on this errand that her feet became entangled in the fuse that led to the bomb. On the doorstep of the house next to Nyoda"s, the house where Veronica dwelt, there sat a snowy white poodle, fresh from a bath and rivalling in purity a field of virgin snow. This was Fifi, Veronica"s French poodle, who had come to her as a Christmas gift, and whose pedigree was considerably longer than he was.
Fifi did not share his young mistress"s ideas as to the unfitness of the peasantry for a.s.sociation with the high born, and took a decided fancy to Katherine at first sight. Just how much he was influenced by half a sugar cookie, which she held out to him over the fence, it is impossible to say, but when Katherine turned out of Nyoda"s yard and went up the street, Fifi was at her heels and refused to be shooed home.
"Well, come along, then, if you want to," she said good-naturedly. "I suppose you"re lonesome with all your folks gone and want some improvin"
company, like us. A great hostess I"d be, if I turned down a dog that wanted to come to my At Home Day."
The January thaw was still in progress, although it was the first of February, and the streets were lakes of slush and mud. Katherine did not mind mud in the least and stepped cheerfully into the puddles. Fifi did likewise. By the time they arrived at the house the comparison of the field of virgin snow no longer held good. Even Katherine hesitated about admitting him.
Veronica shrieked when she saw him and did not share his delight at the unexpected meeting. "Oh-oh-oh!" she exclaimed in dismay. "He is to go to the Dog Show tonight. Katie spent all morning washing and combing him.
How did he ever get out? She must have left the door open. And then you had to coax him over here, and now look at him!" After a hasty glance the rest decided they would rather not look at him.
"Well," said Katherine, much taken aback, but still mistress of the situation, "I"ll just give him a nice bath and carry him home and everything will be all right. Go on dancing, girls, there"s the banjo; Fifi and I will entertain ourselves in the bas.e.m.e.nt."
She set the squirming lump of mud into one of the wash tubs and let warm water run over him from a faucet for a few minutes to remove the clods.
Then she set to work in earnest. She hesitated for some time about what kind of soap to use and finally decided that dog"s hair was the same as camel"s hair; camel"s hair was wool; and therefore, according to the most familiar problem in the whole geometry, Fifi was all wool and needed Wool Soap. Now the mud through which Fifi and Katherine had come was the yellow clayey kind that sticketh closer than a brother, and Wool Soap was not designed especially to dissolve it. After three scrubbings and rinsings Fifi was still a muddy, yellowish gray, and there was no hope that he would dry into a field of virgin white as a yellow popcorn kernel bursts into snowy blossom.
Katherine was discouraged. Then she suddenly remembered something.
"Clothes always come out yellow if you wash them in just soap," she said triumphantly to herself. "It"s the bluing that makes them white. Fifi needs bluing!"
But a thorough search of the laundry room failed to reveal any bluing.
"Shucks!" exclaimed Katherine in vexation. "We"re out of it. I heard Aunt Anna mention it this morning. And the stores are closed this afternoon.
What will I do? I don"t dare produce Fifi unless he"s all white and nice." Then it was that Katherine"s mighty genius set to work. A less resourceful person would have been at a standstill when confronted with such a difficulty; a genius makes a way when there is none. In one respect Katherine was an equal of the G.o.ds-what she wished and did not have she created. She wished bluing; she must have it; so she calmly set about making it. Katherine took chemistry and knew that iodine, applied to starch, will turn it blue. There was iodine in the house and there was starch. The pucker vanished from her brow. A far-sighted person would have foreseen other results from the mixture beside the chemical action of the iodine on the starch. But Katherine was not a far-sighted person.
She was a genius. It is said that geniuses, entirely absorbed in one idea, often forget the most commonplace fact altogether. Thus it was that Katherine, filled with the idea that starch turns blue when mixed with iodine, forgot the original purpose for which starch was invented. And Katherine had used flat-iron starch, the kind that gets stiff without boiling. It turned blue-a beautiful bright purple blue-and she immersed Fifi again and again. Katherine had to admit that he looked dreadfully blue when he emerged from the final dip, but serene in the belief that he would dry pure white like the clothes did, she rolled him up in a piece of carpet and set him in a wash basket beside the furnace to dry. Then she went upstairs and joined the dancers, announcing with a sigh of relief that Fifi was clean once more and could come up as soon as he was dry.
Having been told that Fifi was clean, they naturally looked for a white dog, and it was not their fault that they did not recognize the creature that slunk into their midst in the middle of the revels. As an Animal from Nowhere he would have taken the prize over the head of the famous Salmonkey. His hair was pasted flat to his sides in long, stringy waves, giving him a queer, corrugated effect. His head was a dirty, yellowish white, for, in keeping his eyes out of the blue bath, Katherine had held his whole head out; and the rest of him was a bright purplish blue. With his excited red tongue hanging out in front he looked like a dilapidated remnant of the American flag. The girls shrieked and fled before him.
Katherine sank weakly down on the couch and viewed him in consternation.