THE CHRISTMAS TREE
Betsey was sitting on the slippery couch looking quite serious. She was
not Mr. Betts today, nor even Dr. Betson. She was just a little girl
with a sore throat, watching the big, real Dr. Lawrence as he rummaged
around in his black bag. He put up his uncomfortable glass spoon that he
pressed down one’s tongue with, and fished out an oblong pasteboard box.
“Oh!” said Betsey.
Dr. Lawrence looked up quickly. “Why do you say ‘Oh!’ Sister?” he asked.
Betsey’s eyes were fastened on the little box. “It’s _just_ the shape of
a Victrola,” she said.
“Hmmmm!” buzzed the big doctor, taking the cover off and dropping in
some tiny pink tablets and some large white ones. “If you will take a
white pill every hour, and gargle a pink one (dissolved in water, of
course) every _half_ hour, you shall have the box! And——hullo! Here’s a
bit of wire just about right for a crank! Now, Mr. Tom, we’ll do up your
burned thumb.”
Tom had been experimenting a little too much with Norah’s teakettle and
the steam had made quite a big blister. Dr. Lawrence unrolled a sheet of
pure white absorbent cotton.
“Oh!” said Betsey.
“Now, deary me!” cried Dr. Lawrence, pretending to be quite put out. “I
suppose the child wants my cotton, too. Mr. Avery, make Betsey stop
saying ‘Oh!’ I won’t have a thing left to give the little girl down the
road, if this child takes all my pills, and boxes, and wire,—and now my
cotton!”
Betsey slipped off the couch and danced around happily. She loved to
hear Dr. Lawrence joke. “It makes such perfectly beautiful snow,” she
said. “And just imagine my little automobile plowing along in it, making
wheel-ruts just like yours.”
“Well, I suppose you’ll have to have it,” said Dr. Lawrence, resignedly.
“I’ll charge your father for it, though,—see if I don’t. And poor Tom
what will he do?”
“O you can have enough for his thumb,” said Betsey.
“Hmmmm!” buzzed on the doctor, winding away. “Down the road is a little
girl nine years old. She has three dolls, and they’re about as long as
Tom’s thumb.”
“Tom Thumb!” interrupted Betsey.
“Yes’m,” laughed Dr. Lawrence. “Well, this little girl Molly has a lame
knee,—a very lame knee, and I had to send her to bed for a month.”
“A _month_!” echoed Betsey.
“Does it seem long to you?” asked Dr. Lawrence thoughtfully. “That’s
just how it seems to her.”
“Does Molly play with her dolls?” asked Betsey.
“Yes, she sews for them, but they each need a party dress.”
“Can’t she make party dresses?”
“O yes, she _can_, if she has the proper materials. Now, you see a party
dress requires some thin sort of fuzzy cloth——”
“You don’t mean fuzzy, Dr. Lawrence,” interrupted Betsey, smiling. “You
mean soft and drapey.”
“That’s it. I see _you_ know what a party dress is made of. And perhaps
some ribbons and a little piece of lace. How about that?”
Betsey crossed the room, took one of the doctor’s big hands in both hers
and gave it a hard squeeze. “I think you’re a perfectly lovely doctor,
and I saw just what you were driving at all the time. And don’t you
_dare_ to go before I come back.”
And she went directly to the playroom, opened Madame Bettina’s box of
cloth, and looked over its contents. She finally selected a dainty
rosebud muslin with a pink border, a thin dimity covered with wreaths of
tiny forget-me-nots, and a pretty yellow voile. She pulled out a length
of baby ribbon to match each dress, and a handful of soft lace, and
folded the whole carefully in white tissue-paper. Then she went
down-stairs with such a sudden thought in her curly head that she sang a
little tune all the way.
She burst into the library with her little parcel to find Dr. Lawrence
talking and laughing with Father, and putting on his big fur coat.
“What’s up?” he asked, catching sight of Betsey’s shining face.
“_Could_ you wait a minute?” begged Betsey. “You see, Mr. and Mrs.
Delight are going to have a Christmas tree and invite some poor little
children. And I want to write an invitation to Molly’s three dolls! She
could send the dolls over by you when you come this afternoon, and
perhaps I can take them back myself tomorrow.”
“Good enough!” said the doctor good-naturedly, sliding out of his coat
again. “Molly will be so glad she won’t know _what_ to do. I’ll wait.”
Betsey climbed in haste into the big desk chair and wrote carefully on
her blue notepaper:
Mr. and Mrs. William Delight request the honor of your company at a
Christmas Party on December 24th at three o’clock. And on the little
blue envelope she wrote, “For Molly’s three dolls.”
“I will deliver it directly,” said Dr. Lawrence, “and this afternoon I
will bring the company.” And he blew a kiss to Betsey for thanks.
The moment the doctor had gone, Mr. Betts went to his shop and began on
his Victrola, for this was to be Mr. Delight’s present to his wife. Mr.
Betts cut the slender legs with a sharp penknife and bent out the tiny
doors. Then he pasted shiny dark-red paper all over the outside and
pushed in the crank.
“It _almost_ looks as if it would play,” declared Betsey. Then she took
a white pill and gargled a pink one, for she always kept her promise.
Then all was ready.
[Illustration: “HE LEFT A PRINT OF EACH TINY FOOTSTEP”]
“O William!” said Mrs. Delight, sitting down on the gilt sofa beside her
husband, “don’t you think we could get the Christmas tree ourselves?”
“Indeed we could! Put on your long coat and furs, and I will bring the
car around, and we will find one.” Betsey spread out the soft white snow
for the forest, and dressed Mr. Delight in his gray fox coat with its
curly black collar. Then she put on Mrs. Delight’s long brown coat and
fastened up her lovely ermine furs. “The little darling!” she said,
kissing her, and settling both the little dolls in the automobile.
The car did make a fascinating rut in the snow, and when Betsey walked
Mr. Delight over to the hemlock trees he left a print of each tiny
footstep.
Whang! Whang! resounded his tiny axe. Finally the tree toppled over with
a delightful thud,—it was only the very tip of Betsey’s real tree which
stood down-stairs ready for lighting.
“O the sweet little tree!” cried Betsey, seizing it, and, I am sorry to
say, leaving the little couple stranded in the forest.
“I’ll set it in one of my wooden circles that seam-binding comes on, and
cover it with green crêpe paper.”
First she cleared all the furniture out of the little drawing-room and
set up the tree. Then she began to wind her shining tinsel and paper
chains around it, and hung on her dazzling, colored glass balls, blue
and red, and green and gold. And then she hung presents by the dozen on
it. A tiny rocking-horse and a sled, she had to place at the foot of the
tree.
“You poor things!” she exclaimed at last, catching sight of Mr. Delight
lying on his back in the snow. “You must come and get dressed in time
for your own party.”
“I think, William,” began Mrs. Delight enthusiastically, “that I will
wear my blue accordion-plaited crêpe-de-chine.”
“And I will wear my dress-suit,” said Mr. Delight, as Betsey slipped his
tiny cuffs up his sleeves.
“You can stand here,” said Betsey, setting up the host and hostess by
the little Victrola, “and then you will be all ready when the children
arrive.”
And she went down to get ready herself.
“Don’t you think it would be nice, Betsey,” said Mother, as she buttoned
Betsey’s blue cashmere dress, “if you should make a few clothes for
Molly’s children? Just some odd things like a kimono or a sweater?”
“I’m going to,” said Betsey happily, nodding her curly head. “I have an
old gray golf-glove that I can make a sweater of,——the wrist for the
sweater part, and two fingers for the sleeves.”
“That’s my kind daughter,” said Mother, approvingly. “Now run down and
let the doctor in.”
“_Here_ are those three children!” cried Dr. Lawrence, holding out a
square box. “Please hurry and take them! Bless me! I didn’t take a
minute’s comfort for fear I should smash them to bits! Can I come to the
party? How’s the throat?”
Betsey laughed at his list of questions and opened her mouth obediently.
“Fine! Fine!” said the doctor, peering at the throat over his
spectacles. “Christmas day will find you as well as ever. Now, for that,
can’t I come to the party?”
“If you’d like to,” said Betsey, her eyes dancing, for she knew that Dr.
Lawrence would make the best playmate a little girl ever had. And she
led the way with Molly’s dolls, all dressed in the new party dresses,
made since morning by the delighted Molly,—every stitch by hand.
“Well, what a fine man your Mr. Delight is!” declared Dr. Lawrence,
sitting down heavily in the big chair before the doll-house.
“He is. He doesn’t drink or smoke,—just like Father, you know,” said
Betsey.
“I should know that to look at him,” said Dr. Lawrence. “And what a
pretty little wife he has, to be sure!”
“Here come the children, William,” cried Betsey in Mrs. Delight’s sweet
voice.
“Yes, yes, my dear!” boomed Dr. Lawrence hastily, taking a tiny Dutch
boy and a Kewpie doll out of his pocket. “I found two more poor
children, Edith, and brought them along. They live in the alley!”
“O lovely!” said Betsey, admiring the Kewpie’s white fur suit. “Let’s
show them the tree the very first thing.”
[Illustration: “DINNER AM SERVED, SAH,” DRAWLED DR. LAWRENCE, POKING
DINAH’S HEAD BETWEEN THE PINK PORTIÈRES]
And as the children stood speechless around the tree, Betsey and her
playmate untied parcel after parcel, introduced the Dutch boy to his new
sled, and laughed to hear Dumpling growl at the rocking-horse.
“Dinner am served, sah,” drawled Dr. Lawrence, poking Dinah’s head
between the pink portières.
“Get into line, then, children,” giggled Betsey, “and march into the
dining-room.”
Eight dolls are quite a handful for even two people to attend to, but
Betsey and the doctor finally managed to seat the five children around
the big table and get them all waited upon by Dinah and Mrs. Delight.
Betsey had made a big paper brick of ice cream, made up of tiny cubes of
different colors, exactly like the big one that was waiting down-stairs
for her own Christmas dinner.
“You’re a mighty good cook, missus!” piped up Dr. Lawrence for the
Kewpie, rolling his eyes at Dinah. Just then the nursery clock struck
four.
“Bless my soul! I must go!” shouted Dr. Lawrence, getting up in a great
rush and nearly upsetting the whole house.
“O I’m sorry!” said Betsey, following him down-stairs,—“but I’m very
much obliged for this short call. And tomorrow can I go and take Molly’s
dolls back to her?”
“I think you may. If you gargle, you know.”
The two entered the library where Father and Mother were seated.
“I never saw a little girl in all my life,” said Dr. Lawrence to nobody
in particular, “who played so charmingly with her dolls. Now I have a
little niece who had the greatest doll-house last Christmas that you
ever laid eyes on. It was just perfect. Little marble-topped tables, and
desk telephones, and _clothes_—! Why, her dolls had so many clothes they
didn’t know what to do. And all made,—every one of ’em,—all finished. I
never used to understand why she didn’t play with ’em. And now,”—he made
a low bow to Betsey,—“now I know.”
“Because she didn’t have anything to make?” questioned Betsey.
“Exactly so,” said Dr. Lawrence. “Elise had nothing to do but dress and
undress those dolls. She couldn’t talk for them because there was
nothing to say. In fact, I’d like to give a perfectly _bare_ doll-house
to every little girl I know. I wouldn’t give her a single piece of
furniture, or any money to buy it with, either.”
“Betsey has had just a dollar this year for baby ribbon and tissue-paper
and white cardboard,” remarked Mrs. Avery with a smile.
“Well, then, for only a dollar,” replied Dr. Lawrence, “you are learning
many good lessons, Mistress Betsey, with your sewing and carpentering,
and laying rugs. And I hope you will play dolls until you’re quite grown
up!”
And now (this being a true story), if you would like to know how old
Betsey was when she finally covered up the House of Delight, and packed
away her dear little dolls, just turn this page and hunt for a tiny
figure hidden in one corner!
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Transcriber’s note:
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.