Ho! Ho! Ho! Santa Claus' Reading List
Page 321
* * *
"Don't you cry and get all worked up. It will make your fever higher."
* * *
"I haven't told you," moaned Sarah, weakly.
* * *
"What 'ain't you told me?"
* * *
"I haven't told you that the table-cloth I put in the secretary drawer, that I bought from that dear girl, who looks so much like my own daughter who passed away, is the table-cloth I made."
* * *
"You sure?"
* * *
"Yes, I found the place in the horn-of-plenty where I made a mistake and had to rip out something and work a leaf to hide it."
* * *
"Sarah Bannister!"
* * *
"I made all the other things I bought, too," said Sarah. "I had ways of telling."
* * *
"Are you sure?"
* * *
"I wish I wasn't."
* * *
"What are you going to do?"
* * *
"I don't know anything I can do."
* * *
Lottie, who had not received anything except a high-school education, but was usually rather punctilious about her English, forgot all caution. She sprang into a morass of bad grammar.
* * *
"She had ought to be took up!" she said, with decision.
* * *
"Lottie, that darling little girl!"
* * *
"Darling little limb of Satan!"
* * *
"She looked so—"
* * *
"If you say another word about her looking like your Ida I shall begin to wonder what your Ida really was. Likening your own flesh and blood to a thief and a liar!"
* * *
"Come to think of it, she didn't lie. She wouldn't tell the name of the lady who made the things."
* * *
"Oh, well, if she only stole, she ain't quite so bad. I shouldn't wonder," returned Lottie, sarcastically, "if there wan' goin' to be no question of brimstun' for jest plain stealin'."
* * *
"Why, Lottie, how you do talk! What has got into you?" Sarah said, weakly. Then she began to weep again.
* * *
The door-bell clanged. Lottie ran to the window and peeked.
* * *
"It's a man," she whispered. "Wipe your eyes, Sarah. It's the minister. I know him by his pants. He's the only man that don't go to the city to work that wears creased pants in the morning in this town. Wipe your eyes, Sarah. You don't want him to see you've been cryin'."
* * *
"I don't care," wept Sarah. "I'm going to tell him the whole story and ask for his advice. What's a minister for? He can offer up the question to the Lord in prayer."
* * *
"If he don't offer it up to his wife, it's all right," Lottie said in a loud whisper, on her way to the door. When she returned, the minister, Silas Whitman, followed her. He had removed his top-coat and appeared clad in clerical black, shabby, but tidy and beautifully kept. Silas Whitman's salary forced careful keeping and nearly prohibited expenditure. He was a very small man, fair, with high, light eyebrows, and light hair growing stiffly from his forehead. As a result, he had a gentle, surprised expression. He took a chair near Sarah Bannister, and she went on at once with her story. Silas listened, and his expression of surprise deepened to one of positive pain.
* * *
The minister was not exactly a success in this particular parish. He realized it forlornly, but saw no way out. He was a man whose genuine worth and attainments were dimmed by his personality. He was like a rather splendid piece of trained mechanism doomed to one track, which did not allow him to even use many of his abilities. He was over-educated for the little New England village, he was over-informed; mentally he towered among them like a giant among Lilliputians. There was not among them a man or a woman to whom he could betray his every-day thoughts of the great present of the world. Not one could have understood. During the war he had done his best to discharge his duty to his God and his country among a people whom the war, in spite of their Red Cross work and their contributions to the Expeditionary Forces, never reached. It came the nearest to reaching them when the profiteers hid the sugar and the scarcity began in the stores, when Mrs. A couldn't make currant "jell" and Mrs. B couldn't make peach preserve, and Mrs. C and all the rest of the alphabet could not bring sweet cake to the Ladies' Aid parties, when the men missed the sugar from their coffee; then it seemed to the minister as if through the fruit and pickle season his good New England people peered out and up, almost enough to smell powder and hear the roar of the cannon. At that time the minister preached two war sermons to full congregations, and had hopes. However, after the fruit season, the people settled back in their ruts of the centuries.
* * *
Silas, sitting there listening to Sarah's strange story, considered how she was shocked out of her tracks now, but how soon she would regain her step. It seemed a pity. Just now she was dramatic and interesting, and at the crucial moment of the tale, when Sarah had missed the four treasures, the door-bell rang, and Lottie, peering out of the window, announced, "It's her."
* * *
"I am so glad you are here," Sarah said to the minister; then, in the next breath, she plucked at his sleeve as the door opened, and begged in a whisper:
* * *
"Better let me speak to her first. She's only a child."
* * *
The minister nodded, and Lottie reentered, leading Joan, or, rather, pulling her, for the little girl seemed to resist.
* * *
"Come here, dear," said Sarah. "Don't be afraid. Nobody is going to hurt you."
* * *
The little girl, carrying her bag, which did not seem so full as yesterday, allowed Sarah to put her arm around her.
* * *
"Now, dear little girl," said Sarah, and her voice trembled, "I must talk to you, and—"
* * *
The child interrupted. "What is the matter?" she inquired, with the sweetest air of pity.
* * *
"The matter?" murmured Sarah.
* * *
"Yes, ma'am, the matter with you. You have been crying and look worried."
* * *
"So I am," said Sarah, stepping into the open emotional door. "I am worrying about you."
* * *
The child regarded her with great, blue, troubled eyes. "I am very well, thank you," said Joan. "Please don't cry any more about me. I haven't any stomachache, or toothache, and I said my prayers this morning, and there's nothing ails me, truly."
* * *
Sarah gasped. "Do you feel that you have done just right?"
* * *
"Yes, ma'am."
* * *
"Are you a little girl who loves God?"
* * *
"Yes, ma'am."
* * *
The minister's face twitched. He coughed quickly and drew out his handkerchief and blew his nose. Lottie eyed him sharply. Sarah looked bewildered. The minister looked from her face to the perfectly open, ready-to-answer one of the child, and he coughed again.
* * *
"What have you got in your bag to-day?" Sarah inquired, rather hopelessly.
* * *
"The other things to sell."
* * *
"What other things? Open the bag!"
* * *
The girl obeyed at once. She drew forth, one by one, the missing articles of Sarah's collection. She eyed them admiringly. "Pretty," she commented.
* * *
Sarah stared.
* * *
"Why don't you speak right up to her?" said Lottie.
* * *
The little girl stared at her and smiled sweetly. "If you please, ma'am," she said to Sarah Bannister, "I am very busy this morning."
* * *
The minister swallowed a chuckle. Lottie looked at him.
* * *
/> "Joan," said Sarah.
* * *
"Yes, ma'am," said the child, looking up brightly.
* * *
"I have found out that you had sto—taken all those things you sold to me yesterday from me. You sold me my own things."
* * *
The little girl gazed. "I am real glad you found out so soon," said she.
* * *
"My goodness!" said Lottie.
* * *
Sarah gasped. "Why?"
* * *
"Because I was afraid you wouldn't."
* * *
Sarah stared at her, quite pale.
* * *
"I would have told you this morning if you hadn't found out," said the little girl, calmly. She took up the centerpiece which she had brought and looked fondly at it. "This is real handsome and I think you must have worked real hard embroidering it," said she. She added, "This is five dollars."
* * *
"You aren't going right on selling me my own things?" gasped Sarah.
* * *
"I must sell them to you. I couldn't afford to give them to you, and I mustn't sell them to anybody else."
* * *
The minister spoke for the first time. "Why not?" he asked.
* * *
She looked wonderingly at him. "It wouldn't be right. Are you the minister?"
* * *
Silas replied that he was.
* * *
"Then I am surprised you didn't know it wouldn't be right, and had to ask me," remarked Joan.
* * *
"Why wouldn't it be just as right to sell to anybody else?" asked Sarah.
* * *
Joan looked as though she doubted her hearing correctly.
* * *
"Why, they are your own things!" she said, simply.
* * *
Lottie came forward with a jerk of decision. "Now you look right at me, little girl," said Lottie. "Do you mean to tell me you don't know it was wrong for you to come here and sell Mrs. Bannister all this stuff?"
* * *
"It is hers," said Joan. She looked puzzled.
* * *
"Then, if it was hers, why didn't you leave it alone?"
* * *
"I wanted to sell it. I wanted the money."
* * *
"What for?"
* * *
"All those poor little Brett children."
* * *
"The Brett children?"
* * *
"Yes, ma'am. Their mother died and their father thought he'd like to go and live with another lady, so he got married and the other lady didn't want six children so in a bunch, and so he didn't worry any more about them, and they were all starving to death and freezing, and there are two just little babies. And so I have them to take care of, and I can't earn money, for I am not old enough, and this is the only way, I decided, and I have just begun, and it works perfectly lovely."
* * *
"Goodness!" said Lottie.
* * *
Now the Rev. Silas Whitman realized that he must enter the field or be thought a quitter by two of his parishioners.
* * *
"Come here, little girl," he said, pleasantly.
* * *
Joan went smilingly and stood at his knee.
* * *
"Now, my child, listen to me," he said. "Didn't you know it was wrong for you to do such a thing? Don't you know you ought not to take anything whatever that belongs to other people and sell it to them?"
* * *
"They are all hers."
* * *
"Then why ask her to pay for them?"
* * *
"I wanted the money for the poor little Brett children and there wasn't any other way."
* * *
"But why should she have to pay for her own things?"
* * *
"Because she hadn't given any money to the Brett children, and I didn't begin to ask what they are worth."
* * *
"Don't you know it is wrong?"
* * *
"No, sir."
* * *
"Do you realize what you have done?"
* * *
"Yes, sir."
* * *
"Tell me what."
* * *
Joan looked up in his face and smiled a smile of innocent intelligence. "I opened one of the long windows in her best room," said she, "and I took those things I sold her yesterday and these I brought to-day, and i hid them in the Brett house. Then yesterday afternoon I packed them very nicely in the bag. I couldn't get all the things in, so I had these left over, and I came and sold them."
* * *
"Do you think she is going to pay you any more, you little—" began Lottie, but Sarah hushed her.
* * *
"I am not going to pay her, but I am going to give her some more money to buy things for the Brett children," said she.
* * *
"And you don't think you have done wrong?" persisted the minister.
* * *
Joan looked at him wearily. "They are her own things and she has them back, and she has paid me the money, and you heard her say she was going to give me some more, and it is for the Brett children. I haven't done wrong. The lady didn't give the money in the first place to the Brett children, so, of course, I had to see to it. And now she has her presents all back and everything. I think I must go now or I shall have no time to buy some meat and cook the children's dinner."
* * *
Sarah opened her black silk bag and handed a bill to the little girl. "Kiss me, dear," she whispered.
* * *
Joan threw both arms around her neck and kissed her, over and over.
* * *
"Will you come and see me?" whispered Sarah, fondly.
* * *
"Yes, ma'am; I'd love to."
* * *
They all stood at a window, watching the child go down the path. Suddenly Silas Whitman began to speak. He seemed unconscious of the two women. He watched the little girl, the red silk rag from her coat-lining streaming, march proudly away with a curious air, as if she led a platoon, not as if she marched alone.
* * *
"There she goes," said the minister. "There she goes, red flag flying! Our problem is her truth, and who shall judge? It may be, all of this, the celestial prototype of Bolshevism. She may be the little advance-scout of the last army of the world, the child facing Pharisees, and righteous, and ancient evil, triumphant wisdom. There she goes, little anarchist, holy-hearted in holy cause, and if her way be not as mine, who am I to judge? It may be that breaking the stone letter of the law in the name of love is the fulminate which shatters the last link of evil which holds the souls of the world from God."
* * *
The minister caught up his coat, put it on, and went out. He did not look at the women.
* * *
They stared at each other.
* * *
"Lordamassey!" said Lottie.
The Snowflake Tree
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
The Snowflake Tree
THE hawthorn is dead, the rose-leaves have fled
On the north wind over the sea:
Now the petals will fall that are rarest of all,
Sweetheart, from the Snowflake Tree.