Christmas in My Heart

by Joe Wheeler

“Yes, sir, I do,” said Lillie’s new beau. “Packing.”

  And High View and Mill Street both laughed over it.

  Mrs. Scott said, “Did you ever taste anything so good as these doughnuts? You couldn’t find time to make me a batch once a week, could you?” So that Mrs. Dillingham and Mrs. Porter both said quickly, “Not unless she makes me one, too.”

  And mamma, pleased as Punch, but playing hard to catch, said maybe she could.

  Mr. Porter was saying to Ernie, “You folks ought to have some gravel down here on Mill Street.”

  And Ernie, who wasn’t afraid of anyone, not even a councilman, said with infinite sarcasm, “You’re telling me?”

  The big cars all drove away. Three or four others straggled by. Then no more. And pa turned off the light of the star.

  The house was still again except for the adenoidal breathing of one of the little boys. Even Ernie, coming in late, stopped tromping about upstairs. Everyone had to get up early to see Bert and Carrie off and get back to work. It made pa worry over his inability to get to sleep. This had been the most exciting day in years.

  Mamma was lying quietly, her heavy body sagging down her side of the bed. It took all pa’s self-control to pretend sleep. Twice he heard the old kitchen clock strike another hour. He would try it.

  “Mamma,” he called softly.

  “What?” she said instantly.

  “Can’t get to sleep.”

  “Wha’s the matter?”

  “Keep thinkin’ of everything. All that money comin’ to us. Company. Attention from so many folks. Children all home. Folks I work for all here and not a bit mad. You’d think I’d feel good. But I don’t. Somethin’ hangs over me. Like they’d been somebody real out there in the shed all this time; like we’d been leavin’ ’em stay out when we ought to had ’em come on in. Fool notion—but keeps botherin’ me.”

  And then mamma gave her answer. Comforting, too, just as he knew it would be. “I got the same feelin’. I guess people’s been like that ever since it happened. Their conscience always hurtin’ ’em a little because there wa’n’t no room for Him in the inn.”

  The Candle

  in the Forest

  TEMPLE BAILEY

  In each collection there has been a mandated item: “You must include this story.” This story represents the No. 1 mandate of the third collection. It is an old story that had almost been forgotten. But here and there were those who, having once heard it, were incapable of forgetting it, for it had warmed their hearts through all the years.

  I cry every time I read it.

  It reminds us that wealth may be measured in many ways; so can poverty. Often, either is merely a matter of perspective.

  What a joy it is to bring back from the edge of extinction such a wondrous story! It was written by Temple Bailey, author of some of the most moving Christmas stories ever penned. This one, once read, is virtually impossible to forget.

  The small girl’s mother was saying, “The onions will be silver, and the carrots will be gold—”

  “And the potatoes will be ivory,” said the small girl, and they laughed together. The small girl’s mother had a big white bowl in her lap, and she was cutting up vegetables. The onions were the hardest, because she cried over them.

  “But our tears will be pearls,” said the small girl’s mother, and they laughed at that and dried their eyes, and found the carrots much easier, and the potatoes the easiest of all.

  Then the next-door-neighbor came in and said, “What are you doing?”

  “We are making a vegetable pie for our Christmas dinner,” said the small girl’s mother.

  “And the onions are silver, and the carrots are gold, and the potatoes are ivory,” said the small girl.

  “I am sure I don’t know what you are talking about,” said the next-door-neighbor. “We are going to have turkey for dinner, and cranberries and celery.”

  The small girl laughed and clapped her hands. “But we are going to have a Christmas pie—and the onions will be silver and the carrots gold—”

  “You said that once,” said the next-door-neighbor, “and I should think you’d know they weren’t anything of the kind.”

  “But they are,” said the small girl, all shining eyes and rosy cheeks.

  “Run along, darling,” said the small girl’s mother, “and find poor Pussy-purr-up. He’s out in the cold. And you can put on your red sweater and red cap.”

  So the small girl hopped away like a happy robin, and the next-door-neighbor said, “She’s old enough to know that onions aren’t silver.”

  “But they are,” said the small girl’s mother. “And carrots are gold and the potatoes are—”

  The next-door-neighbor’s face was flaming. “If you say that again, I’ll scream. It sounds silly to me.”

  “But it isn’t in the least silly,” said the small girl’s mother, and her eyes were blue as sapphires, and as clear as the sea; “it is sensible. When people are poor, they have to make the most of little things. And we’ll have only inexpensive things in our pie, but the onions will be silver—”

  The lips of the next-door-neighbor were folded in a thin line. “If you had acted like a sensible creature, I shouldn’t have asked you for the rent.”

  The small girl’s mother was silent for a moment; then she said, “I am sorry—it ought to be sensible to make the best of things.”

  “Well,” said the next-door-neighbor, sitting down in a chair with a very stiff back, “a pie is a pie. And I wouldn’t teach a child to call it anything else.”

  “I haven’t taught her to call it anything else. I was only trying to make her feel that it was something fine and splendid for Christmas Day, so I said that the onions were silver—”

  “Don’t say that again,” snapped the next-door-neighbor, “and I want the rent as soon as possible.”

  With that, she flung up her head and marched out the front door, and it slammed behind her and made wild echoes in the little home.

  And the small girl’s mother stood there alone in the middle of the floor, and her eyes were like the sea in a storm.

  But presently the door opened, and the small girl, looking like a red-breast robin, hopped in, and after her came a great black cat with his tail in the air, and he said, “Purr-up,” which gave him his name.

  And the small girl said, out of the things she had been thinking, “Mother, why don’t we have turkey?”

  The clear look came back into the eyes of the small girl’s mother, and she said, “Because we are content.”

  And the small girl said, “What is content?”

  And her mother said, “It is making the best of what God gives us. And our best for Christmas Day, my darling, is our Christmas pie.”

  So she kissed the small girl, and they finished peeling the vegetables, and then they put them to simmer on the back of the stove.

  After that, the small girl had her supper of bread and milk, and Pussy-purr-up had milk in a saucer on the hearth, and the small girl climbed up in her mother’s lap and said, “Tell me a story.”

  But the small girl’s mother said, “Won’t it be nicer to talk about Christmas presents?”

  And the small girl sat up and said, “Let’s.”

  And the mother said, “Let’s tell each other what we’d rather have in the whole wide world.”

  “Oh, let’s,” said the small girl. “And I’ll tell you first that I want a doll—and I want it to have a pink dress—and I want it to have eyes that open and shut—and I want it to have shoes and stockings—and I want it to have curly hair—” She had to stop, because she didn’t have any breath left in her body, and when she got her breath back, she said, “Now, what do you want, Mother, more than anything else in the whole wide world?”

  “Well,” said the mother, “I want a chocolate mouse.”

  “Oh,” said the small girl scornfully, “I shouldn’t think you’d want that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because a chocolat
e mouse isn’t anything.”

  “Oh, yes, it is,” said the small girl’s mother. “A chocolate mouse is Dickory-Dock, and Pussy-Cat-Pussy-Cat-where-have-you-been-was-frightened-under-a-chair, and the mice in Three-Blind-Mice ran after the farmer’s wife, and the mouse in A-Frog-Would-a-Wooing-Go went down the throat of the crow—”

  And the small girl said, “Could a chocolate mouse do all that?”

  “Well,” said the small girl’s mother, “we could put him on the clock, and under a chair, and cut his tail with a carving knife, and at the very last we could eat him like a crow—”

  The small girl said, shivering deliciously, “And he wouldn’t be a real mouse?”

  “No, just a chocolate one, with cream inside.”

  “Do you think I’ll get one for Christmas?”

  “I’m not sure,” said the mother.

  “Would he be nicer than a doll?”

  The small girl’s mother hesitated, then told her the truth. “My darling, Mother saved up money for a doll, but the next-door-neighbor wants the rent.”

  “Hasn’t Daddy any more money?”

  “Poor Daddy has been sick so long.”

  “But he’s well now.”

  “I know. But he has to pay for the doctors, and money for medicine, and money for your red sweater, and money for milk for Pussy-purr-up, and money for our pie.”

  “The boy-next-door says we’re poor, Mother.”

  “We are rich, my darling. We have love, each other, and Pussy-purr-up—”

  “His mother won’t let him have a cat,” said the small girl, with her mind still on the boy-next-door. “But he’s going to have a radio.”

  “Would you rather have a radio than Pussy-purr-up?”

  The small girl gave a crow of derision. “I’d rather have Pussy-purr-up than anything else in the whole wide world.”

  At that, the great cat, who had been sitting on the hearth with his paws tucked under him and his eyes like moons, stretched out his satin-shining length and jumped up on the arm of the chair beside the small girl and her mother, and began to sing a song that was like a mill-wheel away off. He purred to them so loud and so long that at last the small girl grew drowsy.

  “Tell me some more about the chocolate mouse,” she said, and nodded, and slept.

  The small girl’s mother carried her into another room, put her to bed, and came back to the kitchen, and it was full of shadows.

  But she did not let herself sit among them. She wrapped herself in a great cape and went out into the cold dusk. There was a sweep of wind, heavy clouds overhead, and a band of dull orange showing back of the trees, where the sun had burned down.

  She went straight from her little house to the big house of the next-door-neighbor and rang the bell at the back entrance. A maid let her into the kitchen, and there was the next-door-neighbor, and the two women who worked for her, and a daughter-in-law who had come to spend Christmas. The great range was glowing, and things were simmering, and things were stewing, and things were steaming, and things were baking, and things were boiling, and things were broiling, and there were the fragrances of a thousand delicious dishes in the air.

  And the next-door-neighbor said: “We are trying to get as much done as possible tonight. We have plans for 12 people for Christmas dinner tomorrow.”

  And the daughter-in-law, who was all dressed up and had an apron tied about her, said in a sharp voice, “I can’t see why you don’t let your maids work for you.”

  And the next-door-neighbor said: “I have always worked. There is no excuse for laziness.”

  And the daughter-in-law said, “I’m not lazy, if that’s what you mean. And we’ll never have any dinner if I have to cook it.” And away she went out of the kitchen with tears of rage in her eyes.

  And the next-door-neighbor said, “If she hadn’t gone when she did, I should have told her to go,” and there was rage in her eyes but no tears.

  She took her hands out of the pan of bread crumbs and sage, which was being mixed for the stuffing, and said to the small girl’s mother, “Did you come to pay the rent?”

  The small girl’s mother handed her the money, and the next-door-neighbor went upstairs to write a receipt. Nobody asked the small girl’s mother to sit down, so she stood in the middle of the floor and sniffed the entrancing fragrances, and looked at the mountain of food that would have served her small family for a month.

  While she waited, the boy-next-door came in and said, “Are you the small girl’s mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to have a tree?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want to see mine?”

  “It would be wonderful.”

  So he led her down a long passage to a great room, and there was a tree that touched the ceiling, and on the very top branches and on all the other branches were myriads of little lights that shone like stars, and there were gold bells and silver ones, and red and blue and green balls, and under the tree and on it were toys for boys and toys for girls, and one of the toys was a doll in a pink dress! At that, the heart of the small girl’s mother tightened, and she was glad she wasn’t a thief, or she would have snatched at the pink doll when the boy wasn’t looking and hidden it under her cape, and run away with it.

  The next-door-neighbor-boy was saying, “It’s the finest tree anybody has around here. But Dad and Mother don’t know that I’ve seen it.”

  “Oh, don’t they?” said the small girl’s mother.

  “No,” said the boy-next-door, with a wide grin, “and it’s fun to fool ’em.”

  “Is it?” said the small girl’s mother. “Now, do you know, I should think the very nicest thing in the whole world would be not to have seen the tree.”

  “Because,” said the small girl’s mother, “the nicest thing in the world would be to have somebody tie a handkerchief around your eyes, so tight, and then to have somebody take your hand and lead you in and out, and in and out, and in and out, until you didn’t know where you were, and then to have them untie the handkerchief—and there would be the tree, all shining and splendid!” She stopped, but her singing voice seemed to echo and re-echo in the great room.

  The boy’s staring eyes had a new look in them. “Did anybody ever tie a handkerchief over your eyes?”

  “Oh, yes—”

  “And lead you in and out, and in and out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, nobody does things like that in our house. They think it’s silly.”

  The small girl’s mother laughed, and her laugh tinkled like a bell. “Do you think it’s silly?”

  He was eager. “No, I don’t.”

  She held out her hand to him. “Will you come and see our tree?”

  “Tonight?”

  “No, tomorrow morning—early.”

  “Before breakfast?”

  She nodded.

  “I’d like it!”

  So that was a bargain, and with a quick squeeze of their hands on it. And the small girl’s mother went back to the kitchen, and the next-door-neighbor came down with the receipt, and the small girl’s mother went out the back door and found that the orange band that had burned on the horizon was gone, and that there was just the wind and the singing of the trees.

  Two men passed her on the brick walk that led to the house, and one of the men was saying, “If you’d only be fair to me, Father.”

  And the other man said, “All you want of me is money.”

  “You taught me that, Father.”

  “Blame it on me—”

  “You are to blame. You and mother—did you ever show me the finer things?”

  Their angry voices seemed to beat against the noise of the wind and the singing trees, so that the small girl’s mother shivered, and drew her cape around her, and ran as fast as she could to her little house.

  There were all the shadows to meet her, but she did not sit among them. She made coffee and a dish of milk toast, and set the toast in the oven to keep hot,
and then she stood at the window watching. At last she saw through the darkness what looked like a star low down, and she knew that that star was a lantern, and she ran and opened the door wide.

  And her young husband set the lantern down on the threshold, and took her in his arms, and said, “The sight of you is more than food and drink.”

  When he said that, she knew he had had a hard day, but her heart leaped because she knew that what he had said of her was true.

  Then they went into the house together, and she set the food before him. And that he might forget his hard day, she told him of her own. And when she came to the part about the next-door-neighbor and the rent, she said, “I am telling you this because it has a happy ending.”

  And he put his hands over hers and said, “Everything with you has a happy ending.”

  “Well, this is a happy ending,” said the small girl’s mother, with all the sapphires in her eyes emphasizing it. “Because when I went over to pay the rent, I was feeling how poor we were and wishing that I had a pink doll for Baby, and books for you, and, and—and a magic carpet to carry us away from work and worry. And then I went into the parlor and saw the tree—with everything hanging on it that was glittering and gorgeous, and then I came home.” Her breath was quick and her lips smiling. “I came home—and I was glad I lived in my little home.”

  “What made you glad, dearest?”

  “Oh, love is here; and hate is there, and a boy’s deceit, and a man’s injustice. They were saying sharp things to each other—and—and—their dinner will be a stalled ox—and in my little house is the faith of a child in the goodness of God, and the bravery of a man who fought for his country—”

  She was in his arms now.

  “And the blessing of a woman who has never known defeat.” His voice broke on the words.

  In that moment it seemed as if the wind stopped blowing, and as if the trees stopped sighing, as if there was the sound of heavenly singing.

  The small girl’s mother and the small girl’s father sat up very late that night. They popped a great bowlful of crisp snowy corn and made it into balls; they boiled sugar and molasses, and cracked nuts, and made candy of them. They cut funny little Christmas fairies out of paper and painted their jackets bright red, with round silver buttons of the tinfoil that came on cream cheese. And then they put the balls and the candy and the painted fairies and a long red candle in a big basket, and set it away. And the small girl’s mother brought out the chocolate mouse.