by A. A. Milne
While Lottie was gone, Mrs. Bannister and the girl added up items rapidly on the back of an old envelope. Sarah was economical with paper. Sarah added with zeal, and her hand was over the sum total, and she had time to shake her head with finger on lips when the door opened. The girl nodded. She was only a child, but she understood. The other lady was not to know what the things cost.
* * *
Lottie cast a sharp glance at the gleam of white paper in Sarah's cautious hand. "Whatever made you hang that bag up in the closet, when you always keep it in the top bureau-drawer?" said she. "I had an awful hunt. Thought I never would find it."
* * *
"I remember hanging it there when I hung up my coat when I came home yesterday," replied Sarah, calmly.
* * *
Sarah loosened the strings of the bag. Lottie watched like a cat. Sarah took out her nice black leather pocket-book. Lottie craned her neck. Sarah bent over the pocketbook, hiding her proceedings, counted out money, folded it in a nice little roll, and gave it to Joan.
* * *
"There," said she, kindly. "That is right. Now you had better run and give it to your mother."
* * *
"I shall not take this money to mother," said she. "She will not expect it. It is my money. Father and mother wish me to be independent. I have this money for Christmas presents and I shall have to see to them myself."
* * *
Joan rapidly slipped into her ragged coat. Sarah thought of the warm one up-stairs, but did not somehow feel like mentioning it.
* * *
"You mean to say you don't tell your mother about this?" said Lottie.
* * *
"Mother does not wish me to tell her everything," said Joan. "Father does not, either. They say I should lose my individuality."
* * *
"No danger, seems to me," said Lottie. When the girl had gone and was disappearing down the road, a red rag from the silken lining of her coat blowing back stiffly in the icy wind like an anarchist flag, the women stood at the window, watching her.
* * *
"She is a darling little girl," remarked Sarah, with an absent air.
* * *
Lottie looked at her. Directly there came before her mental vision the freckled face, the long nose, the retreating chin, the weak eyes and stiff, sandy hair of Sarah's departed daughter, long in her little green grave.
* * *
"She thinks this beautiful girl looks like her," Lottie reflected.
* * *
Directly Sarah spoke in a breaking voice, and tears rolled down her cheeks. "She is the living image of my Ida."
* * *
Lottie lied for the sake of her own heart. "Yes, so she is," said she.
* * *
"Then you saw the likeness?"
* * *
"How could I help it?"
* * *
"Want me to take these things into the parlor and put them with the others?" ffered Lottie . "You mustn't go in there with such a cold as you've got."
* * *
"I'll put them in the secretary, here," said Sarah. "There's one drawer without a thing in it. I want to look them over again, and everything will have to be done up and addressed out here, anyway. Remind me to send to the store for some more Christmas ribbon to-morrow morning."
* * *
Sarah folded the dainty things she had bought and laid them carefully away in the secretary drawer, then she seated herself in her rocking-chair and took her pocketbook out of her black silk bag. She looked up and saw Lottie's sharp eyes turn away. She laughed and the laugh had a tang in it.
* * *
"Well, Lottie," said she, "if you want so much to know what I paid for the things, I am perfectly willing to tell you, although I cannot imagine why you want to know. I am not in the least curious, myself."
* * *
Lottie flushed suddenly. She tried to smile. "I ain't curious," she replied. "I never was. What makes you talk so, Sarah? It sounds sort of hateful."
* * *
Sarah paid no attention. "The things cost just twenty-three dollars and seventy-nine cents," said she, coolly.
* * *
"My goodness!"
* * *
"Yes, just twenty-three dollars and seventy-nine cents."
* * *
Very swiftly Lottie sped her own little shaft.
* * *
"Why, Sarah Bannister, I never knew, you spent as much on Christmas presents in your whole life. You have never had the name of being as free as all that."
* * *
"I didn't deserve it," said Sarah. "All those things made up in the parlor there didn't cost fifteen dollars. I told you they didn't cost so much, and they didn't."
* * *
"And you laid out all that money on these things?"
* * *
"I didn't have to do the work on these, and the work means a good deal when you are tired out and coming down with the grippe. And, besides"—Sarah hesitated; then she finished with defiant accent—"when I saw that darling little girl, the exact image of my dear lost Ida, I felt almost ready to mortgage the place to buy her out."
* * *
"Well, all I can say is, I am beat," remarked Lottie. "If anybody had told me that you would spend twenty-three dollars and seventy-nine cents buying Christmas presents from a peddler, I should say if you did you had gone plumb mad."
* * *
"She wasn't a peddler, Lottie. That girl is the daughter of a minister of the Gospel."
* * *
"Minister of the Gospel! He ain't preaching. He's peddling books."
* * *
Sarah began to speak, but the door-bell cut her short.
* * *
"Who in the world is coming now?" she murmured, and smoothed her hair and straightened her apron-strings.
* * *
"Another nice peddler, maybe," said Lottie. "Don't put your pocketbook away, Sarah."
* * *
Sarah looked at her reproachfully, and coughed. "Will you go to the door?" Lottie went, her head erect. Directly the door was opened Sarah beard a loud, very sweet, very rapid voice, and knew the caller was Mrs. Lee Wilson. Mrs. Wilson danced in ahead of Lottie, who followed her sulkily. She did not like Mrs. Wilson, who was so much prettier than she ought to have been, considering her years, and so much gayer and livelier, that it seemed to give grounds for distrust. Mrs. Wilson slipped back her handsome fur neck-piece, disclosing a deep V of handsome white neck, which Lottie glanced at, then openly sniffed. Then she spoke in a voice which seemed drawn out like thin wire. The voice had hissing sibilations.
* * *
"Don't you feel cold, Mrs. Wilson?" said Lottie.
* * *
Mrs. Wilson laughed. She understood. "Oh no," said she, sweetly. "I never catch cold with my neck exposed. Don't you think I am lucky to have a neck good enough to keep up with the styles? A woman does look so old-fashioned now, with a high collar."
* * *
Lottie flushed. "I care more about decency than I do about style," she snapped. Her animosity was no longer disguised.
* * *
Mrs. Wilson laughed again. "Well, it is nice to have a neck long and thin like yours in case the styles changed, and they are bound to, and I look like a freak with a high collar," she said, good-naturedly. "But, Sarah Bannister, and you, too, Lottie, I didn't come here to discuss low necks and high collars. I came here about that Brett family. You remember the talk when the father ran away and left those six children, after the mother died of quick consumption?"
* * *
"I thought an aunt came, or something," said Sarah.
* * *
"So she did, and stayed quite awhile, and then there was a report that she had gone away and had taken the children. You know at first we thought the town would have to do something about it."
* * *
"Didn't the aunt take them away?" asked Lottie.
* * *
"Why, no, it seems she did
n't. The minister's wife saw the oldest girl—she's a pretty little thing, you know—dragging a small one on a sled yesterday. She said both the children looked well dressed and well nourished, but the eldest girl wouldn't tell her who was looking after them."
* * *
"Guess the aunt came back," said Lottie, rather indifferently. Lottie was always indifferent when it came to large families of the poor. It had always vaguely seemed to her like something immoral.
* * *
Sarah looked interested. "Why, it seems as if the aunt must have come back," said she, "if they looked as well as you say. How old is the eldest girl?"
* * *
"Oh, they are all young. She can't be more than eight, a very pretty child with red-gold hair. They are all shy; won't talk. What I came about—"
* * *
Mrs. Wilson hesitated a moment. She colored a little and laughed confusedly. "Well," she said, finally, "I suppose we have all been rather lax about those children. I had a letter from Mrs. S. Walsingham to-day, and how she had heard of the case I don't know, but she had, and—she reminded me very politely, but she reminded me all the same, that she was making an annual donation to the Ladies' Aid Society for just such cases. She said she presumed her letter was useless, for doubtless we had already looked into the case. She knew we hadn't. Somebody in this town has told her."
* * *
Lottie nodded her head in a sidewise direction. Mrs. Wilson laughed. "I dare say you are right," she agreed. "Emmeline Jay and her mother are always on the watch ever since they stopped going to church because they thought the minister before this one preached at them all. Well, anyway, Clara Walsingham wants to know, and, of course, she has a right."
* * *
"Just like Clara to write that sort of a letter," said Lottie. "Why can't folks come right out? I hate beating round the bush."
* * *
Mrs. Wilson giggled. "As for me, there never was a bush handy to beat around. I had to come right out and say my say. Well, the fact is not a woman of the society knows a thing about these Brett children, and who is going to begin? I would, but my little boy is sick, and I suspect measles. I can't carry measles into a poor and deserving family. The minister's wife says she would right away, but her sister with her four children has come to spend Christmas with her, and she has her own three and no help. She says after Christmas she can do anything."
* * *
"I'd go to-morrow," said Sarah, reflectively, "but I think I have taken cold, and—it seems selfish, but I must get my presents off. I got rid of working on more, for I bought a lot, but I have a quantity to do up."
* * *
The two women looked at Lottie. She sat with her chin high, gazing out of the window.
* * *
"Christmas is right here, next week Thursday," remarked Mrs. Wilson, helplessly.
* * *
"If my cold is better I will go and see these children to-morrow, presents or no presents," said Sarah, firmly.
* * *
Lottie looked over her shoulder at her. "'Twon't be any better. You've got fever now. Look at your cheeks."
* * *
As Sarah could not very well look at her own cheeks, and there was no mirror in the room, she gazed at Mrs. Wilson for confirmation.
* * *
She nodded. "Your cheeks do look pretty red," said she.
* * *
"I'll wait and see how I feel in the morning," she said as Mrs. Wilson rose to go.
* * *
In the morning Sarah was no worse and no better. The weather was severe. The wind was very high. Sarah decided to have Lottie bring the presents out from the icy parlor and see if she could not get them ready for mailing during the day.
* * *
"By doing that," said she, "I can have to-morrow to go and see those Brett children. Of course, something can be hung on the Sunday-school tree for them, anyway, and it can be seen to that they come, but I don't feel right to wait till after Christmas to do more than that. They may be suffering."
* * *
"Guess they're all right," said Lottie. "When there's such a tribe as they, somebody bobs up and looks after them."
* * *
Lottie deposited with care her first load of dainty things from the parlor. Sarah, muffled in a white wool shawl, sat out of the draught from the open door. Lottie went back and forth. She laid things on the table, the sofa, on chairs.
* * *
"Well, this is all," she said, finally.
* * *
"All?"
* * *
"Yes, I've brought out everything. You haven't things put away in other places?"
* * *
"No, only those I bought from the little girl yesterday. They are in the secretary drawer."
* * *
"Sarah Bannister, where is that beautiful embroidered table-cloth that we said was so much like the one you bought?" said Lottie, suddenly. "I don't remember bringing it out. No, don't you go to handling all these cold things. I'll look myself."
* * *
Lottie examined everything. Sarah watched. She was rather pale. Finally Lottie came forward and stood before Sarah with a determined air. "That table-cloth ain't here," said she.
* * *
"It must be."
* * *
"It ain't. When I look I look. It ain't.
* * *
Sarah stared at her.
* * *
"Some other things ain't here, too," said Lottie.
* * *
"What?"
* * *
"A lot of doilies, a lot of other things."
* * *
Sarah gasped. "Where do you think?"
* * *
"Sure you ain't put them away in other places?"
* * *
Sarah shook her head.
* * *
"Which drawer in the secretary did you put those things you bought from that girl?"
* * *
"Lottie!"
* * *
"Which drawer?"
* * *
"I don't see what you think that has got to do with it."
* * *
"Which drawer?"
* * *
"Next to the top one," Sarah whispered, feebly.
* * *
Lottie crossed the room, her skirts swishing. She returned after two trips and laid the soft piles of dainty handiwork in two chairs before Sarah.
* * *
"These ain't cold," said she. "Now let's look over these things. Here's the table-cloth you bought."
* * *
"I don't see what you mean."
* * *
"Look at it; look real careful."
* * *
Sarah took the square of glistening linen, with its graceful embroidery, and examined it. She lingered long over one corner. Her lips tightened. She folded it carefully. "Lay it over on that other chair," said she.
* * *
Lottie obeyed. She looked a little frightened.
* * *
Sarah went on, examining one article after another. Lottie laid one after another on other chairs.
* * *
"There are still four more things missing," said Sarah.
* * *
"What?"
* * *
"That large centerpiece, really the best thing I had. I meant that for Clara Walsingham. She always sends me such beautiful presents. Then I don't see that blue sweater I knit for the Langham girl—Sally, you know—and I don't see the white Shetland shawl I crocheted for Grandma Langham. That was large and I couldn't fail to see it. And—I don't see the pink bedroom-slippers I made for Cousin Emma's daughter Ruth."
* * *
Sarah's voice broke. She passed her handkerchief across her eyes.
