“Like the one in Daddy Williams’ window?” inquired Toad.
“Just like it, and when you give it a punch, whack! it comes back at you, quick as a flash.”
“What did Fat get?”
“Oh, a lot of books and a pair of ice skates,” replied Reddy, “so he’s gone over to White’s pond to try them.”
“Chuck got his building game; you know, the one he wanted, and he wouldn’t come out,” declared Toad in fine disgust. “He’s making things with it.”
“Who’s that just starting?” and Reddy pointed up the long hill where some one was getting ready to coast down. “Well, if it isn’t Mike O’Reilly!” he exclaimed—“here ahead of us.”
Then, as the sled with Mike lying flat on it shot past them, they greeted him with a shout.
“Hello,” returned Mike, his face all aglow with joy, “look at what I got for Christmas.”
“Bet you’re glad now that you gave it to him,” said Reddy as the two boys reached the top of the hill. “Let me go down with you the first trip?”
“You bet!” Toad assented.
“Merry Christmas,” Reddy shouted, giving the sled a push from behind. “One, two, three, we’re off,” and down they flew.
“She’s speedy, all right,” he declared as the cold north wind stung his cheeks.
“And she steers like a bird,” echoed Toad.
PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD-WILL TO DOGS, by Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
PART I
If you don’t like Christmas stories, don’t read this one!
And if you don’t like dogs I don’t know just what to advise you to do!
For I warn you perfectly frankly that I am distinctly pro-dog and distinctly pro-Christmas, and would like to bring to this little story whatever whiff of fir-balsam I can cajole from the make-believe forest in my typewriter, and every glitter of tinsel, smudge of toy candle, crackle of wrapping paper, that my particular brand of brain and ink can conjure up on a single keyboard! And very large-sized dogs shall romp through every page! And the mercury shiver perpetually in the vicinity of zero! And every foot of earth be crusty-brown and bare with no white snow at all till the very last moment when you’d just about given up hope! And all the heart of the story is very—oh very young!
For purposes of propriety and general historical authenticity there are of course parents in the story. And one or two other oldish persons. But they all go away just as early in the narrative as I can manage it.—Are obliged to go away!
Yet lest you find in this general combination of circumstances some sinister threat of audacity, let me conventionalize the story at once by opening it at that most conventional of all conventional Christmas-story hours—the Twilight of Christmas Eve.
Nuff said?—Christmas Eve, you remember? Twilight? Awfully cold weather? And somebody very young?
Now for the story itself!
After five blustering, wintry weeks of village speculation and gossip there was of course considerable satisfaction in being the first to solve the mysterious holiday tenancy of the Rattle-Pane House.
Breathless with excitement Flame Nourice telephoned the news from the village post-office. From a pedestal of boxes fairly bulging with red-wheeled go-carts, one keen young elbow rammed for balance into a gay glassy shelf of stick-candy, green tissue garlands tickling across her cheek, she sped the message to her mother.
“O Mother-Funny!” triumphed Flame. “I’ve found out who’s Christmasing at the Rattle-Pane House!—It’s a red-haired setter dog with one black ear! And he’s sitting at the front gate this moment! Superintending the unpacking of the furniture van! And I’ve named him Lopsy!”
“Why, Flame, how—absurd!” gasped her mother. In consideration of the fact that Flame’s mother had run all the way from the icy-footed chicken yard to answer the telephone it shows distinctly what stuff she was made of that she gasped nothing else.
And that Flame herself re-telephoned within the half hour to acknowledge her absurdity shows equally distinctly what stuff she was made of! It was from the summit of a crate of holly-wreaths that she telephoned this time.
“Oh Mother-Funny,” apologized Flame, “you were perfectly right. No lone dog in the world could possibly manage a great spooky place like the Rattle-Pane House. There are two other dogs with him! A great long, narrow sofa-shaped dog upholstered in lemon and white—something terribly ferocious like ‘Russian Wolf Hound’ I think he is! But I’ve named him Beautiful-Lovely! And there’s the neatest looking paper-white coach dog just perfectly ruined with ink-spots! Blunder-Blot, I think, will make a good name for him! And—”
“Oh—Fl-ame!” panted her Mother. “Dogs—do—not—take houses!” It was not from the chicken-yard that she had come running this time but only from her Husband’s Sermon-Writing-Room in the attic.
“Oh don’t they though?” gloated Flame. “Well, they’ve taken this one, anyway! Taken it by storm, I mean! Scratched all the green paint off the front door! Torn a hole big as a cavern in the Barberry Hedge! Pushed the sun-dial through a bulkhead!—If it snows tonight the cellar’ll be a Glacier! And—”
“Dogs—do—not—take—houses,” persisted Flame’s mother. She was still persisting it indeed when she returned to her husband’s study.
Her husband, it seemed, had not noticed her absence. Still poring over the tomes and commentaries incidental to the preparation of his next Sunday’s sermon his fine face glowed half frown, half ecstasy, in the December twilight, while close at his elbow all unnoticed a smoking kerosine lamp went smudging its acrid path to the ceiling. Dusky lock for dusky lock, dreamy eye for dreamy eye, smoking lamp for smoking lamp, it might have been a short-haired replica of Flame herself.
“Oh if Flame had only been ‘set’ like the maternal side of the house!” reasoned Flame’s Mother. “Or merely dreamy like her Father! Her Father being only dreamy could sometimes be diverted from his dreams! But to be ‘set’ and ‘dreamy’ both? Absolutely ‘set’ on being absolutely ‘dreamy’? That was Flame!” With renewed tenacity Flame’s Mother reverted to Truth as Truth. “Dogs do not take houses!” she affirmed with unmistakable emphasis.
“Eh? What?” jumped her husband. “Dogs? Dogs? Who said anything about dogs?” With a fretted pucker between his brows he bent to his work again. “You interrupted me,” he reproached her. “My sermon is about Hell-Fire.—I had all but smelled it.—It was very disagreeable.” With a gesture of impatience he snatched up his notes and tore them in two. “I think I will write about the Garden of Eden instead!” he rallied. “The Garden of Eden in Iris time! Florentina Alba everywhere! Whiteness! Sweetness!—Now let me see—orris root I believe is deducted from the Florentina Alba—”
“U—m—m—m,” sniffed Flame’s Mother. With an impulse purely practical she started for the kitchen. “The season happens to be Christmas time,” she suggested bluntly. “Now if you could see your way to make a sermon that smelt like doughnuts and plum-pudding—”
“Doughnuts?” queried her Husband and hurried after her. Supplementing the far, remote Glory-of-God expression in his face, the glory-of-doughnuts shone suddenly very warmly.
Flame at least did not have to be reminded about the Seasons.
“Oh mother!” telephoned Flame almost at once, “It’s—so much nearer Christmas than it was half an hour ago! Are you sure everything will keep? All those big packages that came yesterday? That humpy one especially? Don’t you think you ought to peep? Or poke? Just the teeniest, tiniest little peep or poke? It would be a shame if anything spoiled! A—turkey—or a—or a fur coat—or anything.”
“I am—making doughnuts,” confided her Mother with the faintest possible taint of asperity.
“O-h,” conceded Flame. “And Father’s watching them? Then I’ll hurry! M-Mother?” deprecated the excited young voice. “You are always so horridly right! Lopsy and Beautiful-Lovely and Blunder-Blot are not Christmasing all alone in the Rattle-Pane House! There is a man with them! Don’t tell Father—he’s s
o nervous about men!”
“A—man?” stammered her Mother. “Oh I hope not a young man! Where did he come from?”
“Oh I don’t think he came at all,” confided Flame. It was Flame who was perplexed this time. “He looks to me more like a person who had always been there! Like something I mean that the dogs found in the attic! Quite crumpled he is! And with a red waistcoat!—A—A butler perhaps?—A—A sort of a second hand butler? Oh Mother!—I wish we had a butler!”
“Flame—?” interrupted her Mother quite abruptly. “Where are you doing all this telephoning from? I only gave you eighteen cents and it was to buy cereal with.”
“Cereal?” considered Flame. “Oh that’s all right,” she glowed suddenly. “I’ve paid cash for the telephoning and charged the cereal.”
With a swallow faintly guttural Flame’s Mother hung up the receiver. “Dogs—do—not—have—butlers,” she persisted unshakenly.
She was perfectly right. They did not, it seemed.
No one was quicker than Flame to acknowledge a mistake. Before five o’clock Flame had added a telephone item to the cereal bill.
“Oh—Mother,” questioned Flame. “The little red sweater and Tam that I have on?—Would they be all right, do you think, for me to make a call in? Not a formal call, of course—just a—a neighborly greeting at the door? It being Christmas Eve and everything!—And as long as I have to pass right by the house anyway?—There is a lady at the Rattle-Pane House! A—A—what Father would call a Lady Maiden!—Miss—”
“Oh not a real lady, I think,” protested her Mother. “Not with all those dogs. No real lady I think would have so many dogs.—It—It isn’t sanitary.”
“Isn’t—sanitary?” cried Flame. “Why Mother, they are the most absolutely—perfectly sanitary dogs you ever saw in your life!” Into her eager young voice an expression of ineffable dignity shot suddenly. “Well—really, Mother,” she said, “In whatever concerns men or crocheting—I’m perfectly willing to take Father’s advice or yours. But after all, I’m eighteen,” stiffened the young voice. “And when it comes to dogs—I must use my own judgment!”
“And just what is the lady’s name?” questioned her Mother a bit weakly.
“Her name is ‘Miss Flora’!” brightened Flame. “The Butler has just gone to the Station to meet her! I heard him telephoning quite frenziedly! I think she must have missed her train or something! It seemed to make everybody very nervous! Maybe she’s nervous! Maybe she’s a nervous invalid! With a lost Lover somewhere! And all sorts of pressed flowers!—Somebody ought to call anyway! Call right away, I mean, before she gets any more nervous!—So many people’s first impressions of a place—I’ve heard—are spoiled for lack of some perfectly silly little thing like a nutmeg grater or a hot water bottle! And oh, Mother, it’s been so long since any one lived in the Rattle-Pane House! Not for years and years and years! Not dogs, anyway! Not a lemon and white wolf hound! Not setters! Not spotty dogs!—Oh Mother, just one little wee single minute at the door? Just long enough to say ‘The Rev. and Mrs. Flamande Nourice, and Miss Nourice, present their compliments!’—And are you by any chance short a marrow-bone? Or would you possibly care to borrow an extra quilt to rug-up under the kitchen table...? Blunder-Blot doesn’t look very thick. Or—Oh Mother, p-l-e-a-s-e!”
When Flame said “Please” like that the word was no more, no less, than the fabled bundle of rags or haunch of venison hurled back from a wolf-pursued sleigh to divert the pursuer even temporarily from the main issue. While Flame’s Mother paused to consider the particularly flavorous sweetness of that entreaty—to picture the flashing eye, the pulsing throat, the absurdly crinkled nostril that invariably accompanied all Flame’s entreaties, Flame herself was escaping!
Taken all in all, escaping was one of the best things that Flame did.... As well as the most becoming! Whipped into scarlet by the sudden plunge from a stove-heated store into the frosty night her young cheeks fairly blazed their bright reaction. Frost and speed quickened her breath. Glint for glint her shining eyes challenged the moon. Fearful even yet that some tardy admonition might overtake her she sped like a deer through the darkness.
It was a dull-smelling night. Pretty, but very dull-smelling. Disdainfully her nostrils crinkled their disappointment.
“Christmas Time adventures ought to smell like Christmas!” she scolded. “Maybe if I’m ever President,” she argued, “I won’t do so awfully well with the Tariff or things like that! But Christmas shall smell of Christmas! Not just of frozen mud! And camphor balls...! I’ll have great vats of Fir Balsam essence at every street corner! And gigantic atomizers! And every passerby shall be sprayed! And stores! And churches! And—And everybody who doesn’t like Christmas shall be dipped!”
Under her feet the smoothish village road turned suddenly into the harsh and hobbly ruts of a country lane. With fluctuant blackness against immutable blackness great sweeping pine trees swished weirdly into the horizon. Where the hobbly lane curved darkly into a meadow through a snarl of winter-stricken willows the rattle of a loose window-pane smote quite distinctly on the ear. It was a horrid, deserted sound. And with the instinctive habit of years Flame’s little hand clutched at her heart. Then quite abruptly she laughed aloud.
“Oh you can’t scare me any more, you gloomy old Rattle-Pane House!” she laughed. “You’re not deserted now! People are Christmasing in you! Whether you like it or not you’re being Christmased!”
Very tentatively she puckered her lips to a whistle. Almost instantly from the darkness ahead a dog’s bark rang out, deep, sonorous, faintly suspicious. With a little chuckle of joy she crawled through the Barberry hedge and emerged for a single instant only at her full height before three furry shapes came hurtling out of the darkness and toppled her over backwards.
“Stop, Beautiful-Lovely!” she gasped. “Stop, Lopsy! Behave yourself, Blunder-Blot! Sillies! Don’t you know I’m the lady that was talking to you this morning through the picket fence? Don’t you know I’m the lady that fed you the box of cereal?—Oh dear—Oh dear—Oh dear,” she struggled. “I knew, of course, that there were three dogs—but who ever in the world would have guessed that three could be so many?”
As expeditiously as possible she picked herself up and bolted for the house with two furry shapes leaping largely on either side of her and one cold nose sniffing interrogatively at her heels. Her heart was very light—her pulses jumping with excitement—an occasional furry head doming into the palm of her hand warmed the whole bleak night with its sense of mute companionship. But the back of her heels felt certainly very queer. Even the warm yellow lights of the Rattle-Pane House did not altogether dispel her uneasiness.
“Maybe I’d better not plan to make my call so—so very informal,” she decided suddenly. “Not at a house where there are quite so many dogs! Not at a house where there is a butler...anyway!”
Crowding and pushing and yelping and fawning around her, it was the dogs who announced her ultimate arrival. Like a drift of snow the huge wolf-hound whirled his white shagginess into the vestibule. Shrill as a banging blind the impetuous coach-dog lurched his sleek weight against the door. Sucking at a crack of light the red setter’s kindled nose glowed and snorted with dragonlike ferocity. Without knock or ring the door-handle creaked and turned, three ecstatic shapes went hurtling through a yellow glare into the hall beyond, and Flame found herself staring up into the blinking, astonished eyes of the crumpled old man with the red waistcoat.
“G-Good evening—Butler!” she rallied.
“Good evening, Miss!” stammered the Butler.
“I’ve—I’ve come to call,” confided Flame.
“To—call?” stammered the Butler.
“Yes,” conceded Flame. “I—I don’t happen to have an engraved card with me.” Before the continued imperturbability of the old Butler all subterfuge seemed suddenly quite useless. “I never have had an engraved card,” she confided quite abruptly. “But you might tell Miss Flora, if you please—”
...Would nothing crack the Butler’s imperturbability...? Well maybe she could prove just a little bit imperturbable herself! “Oh! Butlers don’t ‘tell’ people things, do they...? They always ‘announce’ things, don’t they...? Well, kindly announce to Miss Flora that the—the Minister’s Daughter is—at the door...! Oh, no! It isn’t asking for a subscription or anything!” she hastened quite suddenly to explain. “It’s just a Christian call...! B—Being so nervous and lost on the train and everything...we thought Miss Flora might be glad to know that there were neighbors.... We live so near and everything.... And can run like the wind! Oh, not Mother, of course...! She’s a bit stout! And Father starts all right but usually gets thinking of something else! But I...? Kindly announce to Miss Flora,” she repeated with palpable crispness, “that the Minister’s Daughter is at the door!”
Fixedly old, fixedly crumpled, fixedly imperturbable, the Butler stepped back a single jerky pace and bowed her towards the parlor.
“Now,” thrilled Flame, “the adventure really begins.”
It certainly was a sad and romantic looking parlor, and strangely furnished, Flame thought, for even “moving times.” Through a maze of bulging packing boxes and barrels she picked her way to a faded rose-colored chair that flanked the fire-place. That the chair was already half occupied by a pile of ancient books and four dusty garden trowels only served to intensify the general air of gloom. Presiding over all, two dreadful bouquets of long-dead grasses flared wanly on the mantle-piece. And from the tattered old landscape paper on the walls Civil War heroes stared regretfully down through pale and tarnished frames.
“Dear me...dear me,” shivered Flame. “They’re not going to Christmas at all...evidently! Not a sprig of holly anywhere! Not a ravel of tinsel! Not a jingle bell...! Oh she must have lost a lot of lovers,” thrilled Flame. “I can bring her flowers, anyway! My very first Paper White Narcissus! My—”
With a scrape of the foot the Butler made known his return.
“Miss Flora!” he announced.
The Christmas Megapack Page 38
