and Mildred didn't go to see the old woman nearly every day, and make
sure she wanted for nothing."
"Well, well," interrupts Cecil, "don't rake up bye-gones on Christmas
Eve of all days in the year. Forgive and forget--peace and
goodwill--that's what the bells always seem to me to be saying. I say,
my friend, I'm sure your Mother would be willing to let the young master
sit by her fire for five minutes, after he's nearly got himself
killed--and buried too--riding to Appleton to do his sister and cousin a
good turn."
A shadow of a smile lurks on Jack's grim visage at this appeal, and he
proceeds to lead the way across a difficult "hog-backed" stile, over
which he helps to lift Bertie with more gentleness than might be
expected. Then striding before them through the snow, which is more
even, and easy to wade through in the open field, he presently stops at
the door of a little thatched cottage which is opened by a tidy old
woman.
Bertie is soon established in her own high-backed wooden chair by the
fire, drinking hot if somewhat hay-scented tea, and obtaining great
relief from the attentions his friend is now better able to bestow upon
the injured foot. Meanwhile this is becoming a very sad Christmas Eve to
the anxious watchers at Edenhurst. The Squire has returned home, puzzled
and half incredulous at the confused report of Master Bertie's
disappearance which has reached him, but when the snow-soaked saddle and
the riderless pony have been shown him, he too grows seriously alarmed,
and without waiting to change his wet things sets off in the direction
of Appleton.
Other messengers have already been despatched but the hours pass by and
no news is obtained, no one happening to think of the short cut and old
Mrs. Brown's cottage. Even the bells are mute--the villagers cannot bear
to ring them when their dear lady is in such trouble. She is trying hard
to force herself to believe that nothing _can_ be so very wrong--it is
foolish to be so over-anxious.
No one has any heart to carry on the joyous preparations for Christmas
in which Bertie usually bears an active part, but Mrs. Chetwynd will not
let the poor people suffer, and their gifts of warm clothing and tea and
sugar are all looked over and carefully ticketed by Mildred and Alice.
Poor girls! they have little spirit for the work, but it is better for
them than the dreary waiting which follows. At last Alice can bear it no
longer. She throws a cloak round her and steals out into the avenue.
The air is clearer now and the snow has ceased to fall. The earth is
covered with a brilliant white sheet, and overhead the wintry stars are
shining out one by one in the deep blue vault. The girl begins to feel
more hopeful, as the still frosty air cools her hot cheek, and the stars
look down upon her with their silent greeting of peace.
"Glad tidings of great joy"--the Christmas message of nearly nineteen
centuries ago--surely it cannot be that a heart-breaking grief is to
come on them on this, of all nights in the year! A prayer is in her
heart--on her lips--and even in that moment, as if in answer, there
burst forth the most joyous of all sounds to Alice's ear--their own
village bells ringing a Merry Christmas peal! It had been understood
that this was to be the signal of Bertie's being found and safe. Louder
and louder it comes, and eager congratulations are exchanged by the
anxious watchers. Mrs. Chetwynd wants to fly to meet her boy, but is
gently restrained by Mildred, who reminds her that his father must be
with him. Nor is it long before a happy group are seen approaching.
There is Bertie (who has insisted on putting his injured foot to the
ground lest his mother should be frightened by seeing him carried)
bravely hopping along with the aid of his father's strong arm faithful
little Nettle trotting close at his side and Jack Brown, with whom the
Squire has shaken hands and exchanged a "Merry Christmas" slouching
behind--but whose is the tall figure on Bertie's other side? Ah! cousin
Mildred knows, and well is it perhaps that the growing darkness throws a
friendly veil over the joyous blushes and the happy thankful tears that
mark that meeting.
ASAPH SHEAFE'S CHRISTMAS.
Asaph had just the Christmas presents he wanted. "Wanted" is hardly the
word: he had not supposed that a boy like him could have such things for
his own. His father and mother gave him one present, it was a camera
obscura, and thirty glass plates all ready to take photographic views.
They were made to work by the new dry process, so that, without
over-nice manipulation of chemicals, Asaph could go where he pleased and
make his own photographs.
What the children gave him I must not tell, we have so little room. But,
of all the children in Boston who had their Christmas presents at
breakfast, none was better pleased than Asaph as he opened his parcels.
It was afterwards that his grief and sorrow came. When his mother's turn
came, and she opened the parcels on her table, for in the Sheafe house
each of them had a separate present-table, after she had passed the
little children's she came to Asaph's present to her. It was in quite a
large box done up in a German newspaper. She opened it carefully, and
lifted out a Bohemian coffee-pot, which Asaph had bought at the German
woman's shop in Shawmut avenue. Mrs. Sheafe eagerly expressed her
delight, and her wonder that Asaph knew she wanted it. But alas! all her
love could not hide the fact that the nose of the coffee-pot was broken
at the end, and what was left was all in splinters.
Poor Asaph saw it as soon as she. And the great big tears would come to
his manly eyes. He bent his head down on his mother's shoulder, and the
hot drops fell on her cheek. She kissed the poor boy, and told him she
should never mind. It would pour quite as well, and she should use it
every morning. She knew how many months of his allowance had gone for
this coffee-pot. She remembered how much she had been pleased with Mrs.
Henry's; and she praised Asaph for remembering that so well.
"This is the joy of the present," she said, "that my boy watches his
mother's wishes, and that he thinks of her. A chip more or less off the
nose of the coffee-pot is nothing."
And Asaph would not cheat the others out of their "good time." And he
pretended to be soothed. But, all the same, there was a great lump in
his throat almost all that day.
When the children were going to church he walked with Isabel, and he
told her how it all happened. He would not tell his mother, and he made
Isabel promise not to tell. He had spent every cent of his money in
buying his presents. He had them all in that big basket which they
bought at the Pier. He was coming home after dark, on foot, because he
could not pay his fare in the horse-car. All of a sudden a little German
boy with a tall woman by him, stopped him, and said with a very droll
accent, which Asaph imitated, "East Canton street," and poked out a card
on which was written, "Karl Shoninger, 723 East Canton street."
"Belle, I was in despair. It was late; I was on Dwight street, and I led
them to Shawmut avenue and tried to explain. Belle, they did not know
one word of English except 'East Canton street.' They kept saying, 'East
Canton street,' as a dog says 'Bow-wow.' I looked for an officer and
could not find one. It snowed harder and harder. I was coward enough to
think of shirking. But then I said, 'Lie and cheat on Christmas eve,
that you may lug home your Christmas presents; that is too mean.' And I
said very loud, 'Kom hier.' I guess that's good German any way. And I
dragged them to their old 723 East Canton street. It is a mile if it is
an inch. I climbed up the snowy steps to read the number. But I slipped
as I came down, and knocked my own basket off the step where it stood.
That is how mamma's coffee-pot came broken, I suppose; but all looked so
steady in the basket that I never thought of it then. That's how I came
late to supper. But, Belle, don't you ever tell mamma as long as you
live."
And Belle never did. She told me.
Illustration: IN EAST CANTON STREET.
When the Christmas dances were half over; when they had acted
_Lochinvar_ and _Lord Ullin's Daughter_, but before they acted
_Villekens_ and _Johnny the Miller_, supper was served in Mrs. Sheafe's
dining-room. All the best china was out. Grandmamma's "Spode" was out,
and the silver pitcher the hands gave papa on his fiftieth birthday; and
Mrs. Sheafe's wedding breakfast-set--all that was left of it; and
Asaph's coffee-pot held the place of honor. One wretched bit of broken
ware had consented to be cemented in its place. But yet it was but a
miserable nose, and the lump came into Asaph's throat again as he looked
at it. And he almost wished his mother had put it away so that he need
not hear her tell uncle Eliakim the hateful story.
The lump was in his throat when he went to bed. But he fell asleep soon
after. I must confess that there were a few wet spots on his pillow. His
last thought was the memory that all his hoarded monthly allowances had
gone for the purchase of a broken-nosed pitcher.
The two angels who watch his bedside saw this, and one of them said to
the other, "Would you not tell him?" But the other said, "Wait a little
longer."
* * * * *
What the angels would not tell him I will tell you. For it happened that
I was driving round in my sleigh that Christmas night, on the very snow
which was falling, while Asaph was fumbling up the steps in East Canton
street, and I stopped at a house not far from Boylston station as you
turn into Lamartine street, and found myself in the midst of the
drollest home festivity.
The father was sitting with two babies on his knee. The other children
were delving in a trunk to find something which would stay in the
bottom. The house-mother clearly did not know where anything was in the
trunk or anywhere else. But a broad grin was on every face, and whatever
was said was broken by ejaculations and occasional kisses.
At last the lost parcel revealed itself, and opened out into some balls
for a Christmas-tree, which these honest people had brought all the way
from Linz on the Danube, quite sure that no such wonders would be known
in that far-off America.
There are many other tales to be printed in this volume, so that I must
not tell you, as I should be glad to do, all the adventures that that
house-mother and her three boys and her two girls and the twin babies
had encountered as they came from Linz to join Hans Bergmann, the father
of the seven and the husband of their mother.
He had come the year before. They had come now by the way of Antwerp,
and had landed in Philadelphia. But the _Schiller_ had made so short a
run that, when they arrived, Hans Bergmann was not in Philadelphia to
meet them. Of course the Frau Bergmann should have waited in
Philadelphia as Hans Bergmann had bidden her. But, on the hint of a
voluble woman who spoke pure Bohemian, whom she met on the pier--who
knew just where he boarded in New York--she took her charge to New York,
to find that he had left that boarding-house three months before. Still,
eager to spend Christmas with him, she had hurried to Boston to ask his
uncle where he was. She had arrived in Boston, with the snow-storm, the
day before Christmas itself, having made an accidental detour by
Bridgeport and Westfield. Happily for her, the boy Asaph had led her to
uncle Karl's lodgings just as uncle Karl was leaving them forever on his
way to Chicago.
Happily for Hans Bergmann, uncle Karl had the wit to pile them all into
a carriage and to send them to a friend of his at the Boylston station,
bidding him keep them under lock and key.
Then to Hans Bergmann uncle Karl telegraphed: "Find your wife at Burr
street, number 40, Boylston station."
Then Hans Bergmann, who had been bullying every police station in New
York to know where his family was, had taken the early train and had
spent his Christmas in ploughing through snow-drifts to Boston.
And so it was, that, at nine on Christmas night, I saw the children in a
Christmas party, not quite as well arranged, but quite as happy, as any
I saw that day.
And all this came about because a kind Asaph Sheafe forgot himself on
Christmas eve, and showed Frau Bergmann the way to East Canton street.
As it happened, I saw the diamond necklace that John Gilder gave his
bride that night.
But it did not give so much pleasure as Asaph Sheafe's Christmas present
to the Bergmanns did.
And yet he never knew he gave it.
Transcriber's Note:
Images of the original pages are available through the Internet
Archive. See http://archive.org/details/whoatepinksweetm00cool.
Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation within a story, such as
_fireplace_ beside _fire-place_, have been retained.
Where captions were not provided to describe illustrations in the
original publication, they have been added for this ebook.
In paragraph nine (original page 90) of BERTIE'S RIDE the right
edge of the image is defective and some punctuation has been
obscured. The text "Now let us talk about something else Alice,
when you can be spared from the tree Mother wants all the help she
can get...." has been emended to read "Now let us talk about
something else. Alice, when you can be spared from the tree, Mother
wants all the help she can get...."