A MYSTERIOUS SANTA CLAUS

“Merry Christmas, Gail, Faith, Hope, Charity, Allee! Merry Christmas, everyone! My stocking has something in it, I can see from here. Wake up! Wake up! I want to look at my presents!”

A drop of something hot struck the tip of Gail’s nose, and she opened her sleepy eyes to find a white-robed, shivering figure shaking her vigorously with one hand, while in the other was a tiny, flickering candle, which dribbled hot wax prodigally as it was tipped about with reckless abandon by the excited pleader.

“What are you doing with that lighted candle?” demanded Gail, digging the wax off her nose and dodging another drop. “Put it out before you set the house on fire. It isn’t morning yet. It can’t be! I have hardly slept at all.”

“The clock struck a long time ago,” insisted Peace with chattering teeth, “and I counted much as five.”

“Five o’clock!” protested Gail. “Oh, surely not! Well, if it is that time, I suppose you can get up. Seems awfully quiet for that hour, though.” The older sister began the process of dressing, and in a few moments all six girls were gathered around the roaring fire in the kitchen, excitedly examining the contents of their stockings, which Gail had painstakingly filled with homemade gifts and a little cheap candy from the village store, her one Christmas extravagance.

“Mittens!” cried Peace, investigating the first package her excited hand drew forth. “You knit them, didn’t you, Gail? I saw Mrs. Grinnell teaching you how. Mine are red. Have you got some, Cherry?”

“Yes, blue; and Allée’s are pink. Aren’t they pretty?”

“Just see my lovely knit slippers,” cried Hope, throwing her arms about Gail’s neck and hugging her with a vim. “Where did you get all the yarn, sister?”

“I found a lot in the attic,” replied the oldest girl, smiling happily at the children’s appreciation of her labor; but she did not explain that a gorgeous, moth-eaten, old afghan had been raveled to provide all those pretty things.

“What is in your stocking, Faith?”

The girl held up a dainty white waist, but said never a word, for she recognized that Gail’s patient fingers had re-fashioned for her one of the dear mother’s hoarded treasures, and her heart was too full for utterance.

“I’ve got some handkerchiefs,” called Peace again, “and a ribbon if I only had some hair to tie with it! It’s too wide for a band, and that’s all I can wear here’s an apple, a penwiper and some candy. You’ve got pretty nearly the same c’lection, haven’t you, Cherry, and so have Hope and Allee. I wonder how Mrs. Grinnell happened to give me a hair-ribbon when she knows that my hair ain’t long enough to tie back.”

“How do you know Mrs. Grinnell gave it to you?” demanded Gail, too astonished to reprove her.

“I was in there one day when she had been to Martindale, and the ribbons happened to be on the table all unwrapped. This was one of them. Now, Gail, see what Santa Claus has brought you. There’s at least one thing, ’cause ”

Cherry clapped her hand over her younger sister’s mouth, and began to giggle. So did Gail, when she drew forth from her stocking a bulky potato pig with toothpicks for legs, match-heads for eyes and a dry woodbine tendril for a tail.

“Who in the world made that?” she laughed, tears close to the surface, for she had expected nothing this Christmas day.

“Mr. Strong,” gulped Peace, dancing with delight at her sister’s evident surprise. “Look at his back! We put a saddle on the old porker. Isn’t that cute? It’s a spandy new dollar with this year’s date on it. See?”

Gail turned the curious animal over, and sure enough, there was a bright, shining Goddess of Liberty, skilfully sunk in the pig’s potato back.

Swallowing back the lump in her throat, which threatened to choke her, Gail whispered, “Where did you get it, dear? The money, I mean.”

“We took up a c’lection,” was the startling answer.

“A collection!” echoed Gail.

“Yes. You know last Sunday was Home Mission day, and the money was to be sent to poor ministers’ families on the pioneer ”

“You mean frontier,” corrected Hope.

“Well, whatever ear it was,” continued Peace, serenely; “and that made me wonder why folks never took up c’lections for poor ministers’ families right here among them. I asked Mr. Strong about it, and he said we would take up another c’lection straight away, and buy a Christmas present for a ‘hero minister’s hero mother-daughter.’ He made me learn those words; and we got a dollar in ten cent pieces without half trying. I ’spect we could have raised a fortune if we’d had more time, but this was on our way home from school yesterday. We couldn’t find anything pretty enough to buy here at the village, and it was too late to go to Martindale for it, so we changed the dimes into a dollar and put it in the potato pig. He said it ought to be a shining white angel, but I told him right away that we had angels enough in this family already, and he better make a horse. That is what he tried to do, but it looked so much like a pig when he got done that I pulled off the string tail and mane and put on a pig’s tail, and he said it did look better. You are to use the money for your very own self and ”

The clock began to strike. One two That was all.

“Mercy me!” ejaculated Peace, staring at the accusing faces of her sisters. “I truly did hear that clock strike as much as five a long time ago.”

“No doubt you did,” laughed sunny Hope. “It struck midnight and you woke up in the middle of the count.”

“Let’s go back to bed,” suggested Gail, anxious to be alone with her tumultuous thoughts; and to her surprise no dissenting voice was raised, although as she crept once more beneath the covers of her cot, she heard Peace say decidedly, “I sha’n’t take off my clothes again. Once a day is enough for any huming being to dress. Do you s’pose Santa will come again while we sleep?”

It was daylight before they woke from their second nap, and as Peace flew out of bed once more, she cried in delight, “Oh, it’s snowing again! Now it will seem like Christmas sure! Let’s clean off the walks before breakfast. Gail won’t let us eat our candy yet.”

She made short work of her toilette, threw on her wraps and was out of doors almost before Cherry had opened her eyes; but the next moment she came stumbling back into the house with the wild yell “Girls, girls, Santa Claus did come again, and left a tre-men-jus big mince pie on the porch I picked a teenty hole in the top to see for sure if ’twas mincemeat and a bundle of something else. Hurry up, I can’t wait to open it! Oh, the paper fell off, and it’s shoes tennis slippers in the winter! Think of it! That is worse than Mrs. Grinnell’s hair-ribbon, ain’t it?”

“Peace!” cried Gail in shocked tones, entering the kitchen with the rest of the family at her heels. “You should be grateful for the presents people give you and not poke fun at them.”

“I am grateful, Gail, truly. I ain’t poking fun at them, honest, though they are funny presents for this time of the year. I s’pose, maybe, my hair will get long enough for a ribbon sometime, though Mrs. Strong says it is too curly to grow fast. And when summer comes, we can wear these slippers, if they aren’t too small. They look awful little already. These are marked for Allee, and here are mine, and those are Cherry’s. There aren’t any for the rest of you. I s’pose the pie is for you. You’re lucky. I would rather have the pie than the shoes.”

“Oh, Peace!”

“Well, wouldn’t you? There is someone at the front door.”

Gail disappeared through the hall to answer the knock, and Peace, with her new shoes in her hand, slipped out of the kitchen door. “Just as I thought,” she muttered to herself. “Mr. Hardman brought them over. He thinks they will make up for that money he never paid us last summer, but they won’t. He can just have his old shoes right back again!”

Out to the barn she marched, hunted up a scrap of paper and a pencil left there for just such emergencies, laboriously scribbled a note, which she tied to the slippers, and deposited the bundle on the Hartman steps, where he found it when he came out to sweep paths. “Well, I swan,” he exclaimed, half in anger, half amused, as he picked tip the rejected shoes, “if she hasn’t trotted them slippers back! Peace, of course. Let’s see what she says.” Carefully he untied the little slip and read:

“Here are your shoes. Im greatful but this is the rong seesun for them. By summer they will be to small as they aint very big now. Ive got over wanting tenis shoes anyhow. The muny you owe us would have come in handier. Peace Greenfield.”

He tucked the note in his pocket, dropped the shoes on the kitchen mantle, and went chuckling about his morning work. Hardly had he finished his numerous tasks, when he was surprised to see Peace coming slowly up the path, with eyes down-cast and face an uncomfortable red. She knocked lightly, as if hoping no one would hear, and looked disappointed when he opened the door.

“Merry Christmas, Peace. Come in, come right in,” he said cordially, his eyes gleaming with, amusement. “What can I do for you this morning?”

“Give me back the shoes I left on your porch,” she answered, in tones so low he could hardly hear. “Gail said I must come over and get them and ipologize for being so rude. She says it is very rude to return Christmas presents like that. If you meant them for a present, why, that’s different; but I thought likely it was our pay for picking strawberries last summer. Now, which was it, a present or our pay?” The old, independent, confident spirit asserted itself once more in the little breast, and Peace raised her eyes to his with disconcerting frankness.

“Well, well,” stammered the man, hardly knowing what to say. “Suppose they are a Christmas present, will you accept and wear ’em?”

“When it comes summer time, if I haven’t outgrown them. My feet are getting big fast.”

“But if they are in pay for the strawberry picking, you won’t take them? Is that it?”

“I s’pose I will have to take them after Gail’s lecture,” Peace sighed dismally, “but I’ll never put ’em on never!”

Delighted with her candor and rebel spirit, he said, after a brief pause, “Well, now, I mean them for a Christmas present, Peace, and I’d like mighty well for you to wear them. If they are too small, come next summer, I will get them changed for you. Will you take them?”

“Y e s.”

“And be friends?”

Peace hesitated. “Friends are square with each other, ain’t they?”

“I reckon they are.”

“Then I don’t see how we can be friends,” she said firmly.

“Why not?” His face was blank with surprise; and his wife, who had been a silent spectator of the scene, laughed outright.

“’Cause you owe us a dollar and a half for picking strawberries last summer, and if you don’t pay it, you ain’t square with us, are you?”

“Well, I swan!” he mumbled. Then he, too, laughed, and thrusting his hand into his pocket, drew out a handful of silver. “Here are six silver quarters, a dollar and fifty cents. That settles our account, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And I’ve treated you on the square?”

“Yes.”

“And you will come sit on my lap?”

“I don’t s’pose it will do any hurt,” she answered grudgingly, for she had not yet adjusted herself to this new friendship with her one-time enemy, but she went to him slowly and permitted to lift her to his knee.

“There, now,” he said, settling her comfortably. “That’s more like it! Now that I have settled my account with you, tell me what you are going to do about the money you owe me?”

“Dave!” interposed little Mrs. Hartman, but he laughingly waved her aside.

“What money that I owe you?” gasped poor Peace, the rosy color dying from her face.

“Didn’t you dump twenty boxes of my strawberries into the chicken yard last summer?”

“Y e s.”

“Those berries sold for twenty cents a box. Twenty times twenty is four dollars. You spoiled four dollars’ worth of berries, Peace Greenfield. Are you being square with me?”

The child sat dumb with despair, and seeing the tragedy in the great, brown eyes, Mrs. Hartman again said, remonstratingly, “Dave!”

“Hush, Myra Ann,” he commanded. “This is between Peace and me. If we are to be friends, we must be square with each other, you know.”

There was a desperate struggle, and then Peace laid the shining quarters back in his hand, saying bravely, “Here’s my first payment. I haven’t the rest now, but if you will wait until I earn it, I’ll pay it all back. I will have Hope figure up just how much I owe you, so’s I will know for sure. Can you wait? Maybe you will let me pick strawberries next summer until I get it paid up. Will you? ’Cause what money I get this winter I’d like to give to Gail for a coat. She has to wear Faith’s jacket now whenever she goes anywhere, and, of course, two people can’t wear one coat at the same time.”

“No, they can’t,” he answered soberly, with a suspicion of a tremble in his voice. “Is that what you meant to do with this money?”

“Yes. Gail got a dollar for Christmas, and I thought this would ’most make enough to buy a good coat for her. She needs one dreadfully.”

Mr. Hartman slipped the money into the grimy fist again, cleared his throat and then said, “Now, I’ve got a plan. You keep this dollar and fifty cents for your work last summer, and when the strawberries are ripe again, we’ll see about your picking some more to pay for the spoiled ones. Is that all right?”

“Yes,” cried Peace, giving a delighted little jump. “You aren’t near bad, are you?”

“I hope not,” he replied with a queer laugh. “Can you give me a kiss, do you suppose?”

“If you will skin me a rabbit,” she answered promptly.

“If I’ll what?” he yelled in amazement, almost dropping her from his lap.

“Skin me a rabbit. Winkum and Blinkum are starving to death Faith says so and they really don’t seem as fat as when Bryan gave them to me; so if we can save them by eating them up, we better do it. Don’t you think so?”

“Well, now, that might be a good idea,” he answered slowly, for he regarded rabbits as a nuisance, and was not anxious to see any such pests in his neighborhood. “Stewed rabbit makes a pretty good dish, too.”

“That’s what I had heard. Will you skin them for me?”

“Yep, any time you say so.”

“All right, I’ll get them now and we will have them for dinner.”

She was off like a flash before he could say another word, returning almost immediately with the squirming rabbits in her apron, and he dressed them carefully. By the time the long process was finished her face was very sober, and she offered no objections when he claimed two kisses instead of one as his reward, but gathering up the hapless bunnies, she departed for home.

“Here’s our Christmas dinner, Gail,” she announced, dumping her burden onto the cluttered kitchen table. “I wish it had been chicken, but Mr. Hartman says stewed rabbit is real good.”

“Where did you get these?” demanded Gail, surmising the truth.

“They are Winkum and Blinkum. Mr. Hartman undressed them for me. I got my shoes back, and here’s the strawberry money for your new coat, Gail.” As clearly as possible she made her explanations, and went away to put up the tennis slippers, leaving dismayed Gail to face the unique situation.

“What can I do?” she cried, almost in tears.

“Get yourself a new coat, if you can find one for the price,” answered Faith, listlessly scrubbing a panful of turnips for dinner.

“I don’t mean the coat. I had scarcely thought of the money. I mean the rabbits.”

“Cook them! People eat rabbits.”

“But these were pets.”

“They are dead now. You might as well use them as to throw them away. We have no turkey or chicken for dinner.”

Gail shivered, but obediently cut up the rabbits and put them on the stove to cook, mentally resolving not to eat a bite of them herself.

The morning hours flew rapidly by, the dinner was done at last, and the hungry girls were scrambling into their chairs when Faith cried sharply, “Hope, you have set seven plates!”

Instinctively each heart thought of the absent member, gone from them since the last Christmas Day, and Gail reached over to remove the extra dishes, when Hope stopped her by saying, “Teacher read us a beautiful poem of how some people always set a place for the Christ Child on His birthday, hoping that He would come in person to celebrate the day with them, and I thought it was such a pretty idea that I I ”

“Yes, dear,” said Gail gently. “We will leave the extra plate there.”

“It does seem queer, doesn’t it, that we have big dinners on Christmas Day ’cause it is Christ’s birthday, and then we never give Him a dish,” observed Peace, passing her plate for a helping.

“Did the Christ Child come?” asked Allee eagerly. “In the story, I mean.”

“Not in the way they looked for Him,” answered Hope. “But a little beggar child came. Some of the family were going to send it out into the kitchen to eat with the servants, but one little boy insisted that it should have the empty chair they had set for the Christ Child. So the ragged beggar was pushed up to the table and fed all he wanted. When the dinner was over, a great shining light filled the room and Christ appeared to tell them that in feeding the little beggar they had entertained Him. It was all written out in rhyme and was so pretty. What is the matter, Gail? You aren’t eating anything.”

The other sisters paused to look at the older girl’s plate, and Gail’s sensitive face flushed crimson, but before she could offer any explanation, Peace abruptly dropped her knife and fork, pushed her dishes from her, and burst into tears.

“Why, what ails you, child?” cried Faith, who herself had scarcely touched the dinner before her.

“I can’t be a carnival and eat my bunnies,” sobbed Peace. “I’d as soon have a slab of kitten.”

“That’s just the way I feel,” said Cherry, and no one laughed at Peace’s rendering of cannibal.

In the midst of this scene there was a knock at the kitchen door, but before anyone could answer, Mrs. Grinnell rustled in, bearing in her arms a huge platter of roast turkey, which she set down upon the table with the remark, “It was that lonesome at home I just couldn’t eat my dinner all by myself, so I brought it over to see if you didn’t want me for company.”

“You aren’t a ragged beggar,” Peace spoke up through her tears, before the others had recovered from their surprise; “but I guess you’ll do. You can have the chair we set for Jesus.”

Gail explained, while the platter of stewed rabbit was being removed, and once more dinner was begun. The turkey was done to a turn, the dressing was flavored just right and filled with walnuts and oysters, the vegetables had never tasted better, the biscuits were as light as a feather, Mrs. Strong’s cranberry sauce had jelled perfectly, and the Hartman mince-pie was a miracle of pastry. The seven diners did the meal full justice, and when at last the appetites were satisfied, the table looked as if a foraging party had descended upon it.

“That was quite a dinner,” remarked Peace, as she pushed her chair back from the table. “If I had just known it was going to happen, Mr. Hartman needn’t have skinned the rabbits. There is a whole platter full of Winkum and Blinkum left, and it’s all wasted. Mercy me, what a shame!”

She went out into the kitchen and surveyed the rejected delicacy with mournful eyes. Then a new idea occurred to her, and, with no thought of irreverence, she murmured to herself, “I don’t believe the Christ Child would have cared whether He had turkey or rabbit for dinner. I’m going over and get that passle of half-starved German kids to eat this up.”

Throwing Gail’s faded shawl over her head, she ran across the snowy fields to the old tumble-down house on the next road, where the new family lived. The children were at play in the yard seven in all, and none of them larger than Hope but at sight of her they came forward hand in hand, jabbering such queer gibberish that Peace could not understand a word.

“Come over to my house and have some dinner,” she invited them, but not one of them moved a step. “We’ve got a whole platter of stewed rabbit,” she urged, but they only stared uncomprehendingly. “Perhaps you have had your dinner. Are you hungry?”

“Hungry,” suddenly said the oldest boy, putting one hand to his mouth and the other on his stomach. “Ja, sehr hungrig.”

Peace was delighted with the pantomime method of making herself understood, and imitating his motions, she pointed to the little brown house and beckoned.

“Ja, ja,” cried the chorus of seven, their faces beaming with pleasure, “wir kommen.” And they quickly followed her across the snow to the kitchen door.

“Gail, I have brought the Christ Child,” she announced, as she ushered the ragged, hungry brood into the house. “I thought it was a pity to waste all that salt and pepper you used in fixing up Winkum and Blinkum, so I invited these ragged beggars over to eat it up.”

Mrs. Grinnell gasped her surprise and consternation. Faith exclaimed angrily, “Peace Greenfield!” But Gail, with never a chiding word, sprang to the table and began clearing away the soiled dishes, while Hope ran for clean plates; and in short order the seven little towheads were hovering around the platter of stewed rabbit and creamed potatoes, revelling in a feast such as they had never known before; nor did they stop eating until every scrap of food had vanished. Then they rose, bowing and smiling, and trying in their own tongue to thank their hostesses for the grand dinner.

Peace was captivated with their quaint manners and reverent attitude, and when they had backed out of the door, she went with them to the gate, kissing her hand to them as they disappeared down the road, still calling over their shoulders, “Du bist das Christkind!”

“I don’t know what they are saying,” she murmured, “but it makes me feel like flapping my wings and crowing.” She leaped to her tall gatepost to give vent to her jubilant feelings, but tumbled quickly to the ground again without stopping to crow. “Abigail Greenfield!” she shouted, racing for the house. “See what was on the gatepost, a nenvelope with money in it, and on the outside it says, ’Christmas greetings to the Six Sisters.’ Now will you believe someone lost it? It ain’t Mr. Strong’s writing, though. Maybe the Christ Child brought it. Oh, Gail, do you s’pose He did?”