do. I don’t care much for balls, Old Woman, but I can understand
that perfectly.” He sighed heavily. It was sad to hear the Old Woman
mourning for that lost joy of her youth, and sadder still, he thought
to himself, that things like balls could never, never, never be put
into old women’s Christmas stockings. He turned then to Mrs. Dumpty.
“And do you want a ball too, Mrs. Dumpty?”
Mrs. Dumpty looked up at His Majesty timidly.
“No, sir,” she replied, and then she hesitated.
“Well--?” said Old King Cole encouragingly.
“I’m afraid, sir, that you’ll think I’m rather a foolish woman to want
what I want,” she told him.
“People aren’t foolish to want things, no matter what they want,” King
Cole pronounced sagely. “What do you want in the whole world, Mrs.
Dumpty?”
“Well, sir,” began Mrs. Dumpty, “I want--I want--well, I want a lace
petticoat, King Cole, a lace petticoat with a thousand ruffles!”
“A thousand ruffles!” repeated King Cole, astonished. “Why, Mrs.
Dumpty, I don’t believe there ever was a petticoat with a thousand lace
ruffles on it!”
“Maybe there wasn’t, and maybe there isn’t,” answered Mrs. Dumpty
doggedly, “but that’s what I want, King Cole. I never had enough
ruffles in my whole life, sir. And somehow, there’s nothing quite like
ruffles to make a woman happy.”
The women all murmured sympathetically at this, as King Cole nodded
next to Old Mother Hubbard.
“Ruffles for you too, Mother Hubbard?” he asked. Women were queer, he
was thinking to himself. What on earth did they want of ruffles?
“Ruffles are all very well,” responded Mother Hubbard, “but I know
something better even than ruffles, sir.”
“And that is--” King Cole smiled reassuringly at her.
“And that is a--” Old Mother threw a reckless glance around the room,
“that is a--hurdy-gurdy!”
A hurdy-gurdy! No wonder they all gasped. Who but Mother Hubbard would
ever have thought of a hurdy-gurdy?
“Yes,” she repeated defiantly, “a hurdy-gurdy! You all may think it’s
funny to live alone with a dog, with a bare cupboard yawning in your
face, but I tell you it’s not a bit funny. No, not funny at all.” Poor
Mother Hubbard’s voice choked a bit, but she swallowed hard and went
on, “And if I had a hurdy-gurdy--oh, I’ve always longed for music, King
Cole, but now more than ever. If I had a hurdy-gurdy--”
“If you had a hurdy-gurdy,” supplied Old King Cole eagerly, “you could
play it--”
“And you could sing--” the Old Woman put in.
“And you could dance,” cried Mrs. Flinders.
“And the dog could dance too,” finished up Mrs. Claus.
“And see how jolly we’d all be,” said Mother Hubbard. “Now a
hurdy-gurdy would be a good thing for me, wouldn’t it?”
So there they sat, those grown-ups, talking about what they wanted in
their Christmas stockings just as Jack and Jill, just as Mistress Mary,
just as Polly Flinders, and Simple Simon, and Little Boy Blue talked
about what they wanted in their Christmas stockings every single year.
And these grown-ups did want the strangest things. The
candlestick-maker, who was the dirtiest and shabbiest old man in
Pudding Lane, confessed that he wanted a swallow-tail coat, “with pearl
buttons on it,” he added, “and a silk hankersniff in the top pocket.”
The candlestick-maker always said “hankersniff” for “handkerchief” and
if you corrected him, he would declare emphatically that of course it
was sniff--what else was a hanker for?--which seemed to settle the
matter.
Mr. Flinders, that citified gentleman who had come to Pudding Lane from
London, stated that he desired pigs. For in pigs, said he, he thought a
man might find a deal of comfort and a relief from the complexities of
this world. The butcher was frank to say that he wanted nothing in this
world but a wife. And Old Cross-Patch, who hadn’t said a word all the
evening, startled the company by grunting suddenly that she would like
to have a baby.
What amazing things! A ball, a thousand ruffles, a hurdy-gurdy, a
swallow-tailed coat, pigs, a wife, a baby! As Santa Claus stood there
listening behind the door, he thought to himself that no little boy in
the world had ever faced such a problem as this was. For, of course, if
they wanted these things, it was Santa Claus’s duty to provide them, he
thought. That was the kind of boy he was, you know. If anybody in the
world wanted anything, he considered it his business to see that it was
forthcoming.
Moreover, these grown-ups, Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater, Mrs. Dumpty, the Old
Woman, the candlestick-maker, Mr. Flinders, the butcher, Cross-Patch
and all the others, had reached such a pitch now that they were
actually going to hang up their stockings on Christmas Eve. They were
going to do this just for fun, as they said, and yet Santa Claus could
tell by the wistful tone of their voices, by the yearning hope in their
voices, that they did halfway expect that somebody or other would,
after all, make their Christmas wishes come true.
No wonder he didn’t sleep a wink that night, or at least many winks.
For this was the greatest dilemma any boy ever was in. Here were
people wanting things. Here were people about to hang up their
Christmas stockings. And here was he, Santa Claus, without one thing to
put in those stockings.
How could _he_ get a swallow-tail coat with pearl buttons and a silk
hankersniff in the top pocket? How could he manage a ball for the Old
Woman? And how on earth could anybody, even Mother Goose or a fairy,
produce a wife for the butcher? Or a baby for Cross-Patch? Santa
Claus’s heart was very heavy as he thought of these things and he
almost wished, although not quite, of course, that he had never gone
into the Christmas business.
But little did Pudding Lane guess what was going on in Santa Claus’s
mind these days. They were all too busy attending to his surprise.
The children made presents for Santa Claus. Judy was knitting, with
many grunts and sighs, a pair of red mittens, and although the poor
little girl had made a mistake and knitted both mittens for the left
hand, still they were extremely handsome mittens, red as a holly berry
and warm as fur. Humpty-Dumpty carved a whistle for Santa, one that
blew so shrill and loud that it sounded like the wind itself whistling
around the corner. Jack and Jill had planted an orange seed in a
geranium pot and now, bless you, there was growing up in that pot a
lovely little orange tree, such as nobody in Pudding Lane had ever seen
before. In fact, when they told Mrs. Claus about it, she didn’t believe
it.
“Has it got oranges on it?” she wanted to know.
“No,” admitted Jill.
“Has it got orange blossoms on it?”
“No, ma’am,” Jill was constrained to admit. “No blossoms, Mrs. Claus.”
“Well, then,” said that lady, “how do you know it’s an orange tree?”
“Because it grew from an orange seed,” explained Jill; “nothing would
grow from an orange seed but an orange tree, would it, Mrs. Claus?”
“That I don’t know,” answered Mrs. Claus, “but it looks to me as though
an orange tree ought to have oranges on it.”
It was about this time that Mother Goose sent a big box of gifts from
Banbury Cross for Santa Claus’s stocking. It was about this time, too,
that Jack-of-All-Trades made a fine new key for Mrs. Claus’s cupboard,
so that when the gifts were stored there they might be safely locked
up against Santa Claus’s discovery.
But still Santa Claus himself was deeply troubled. He hammered and
pounded as usual in the old woodshed, making the children’s gifts, but
still he wondered and pondered about the grown-ups’ Christmas, and
still he could see no way out of this overwhelming difficulty. The
days flew by, Christmas was coming closer and closer, and he had done
nothing toward getting the ruffled petticoat, the swallow-tail coat,
the wife and the baby and all the other things.
And then, unannounced, Piggy-Peddler dropped in one day and something
happened.
Of all the children in Pudding Lane, Santa Claus was Piggy-Peddler’s
favorite, and so it was quite natural that Piggy-Peddler should notice
how Santa’s little fat chops drooped and how melancholy were his blue
eyes. He did notice these things, and he wasted no time in making
inquiries, but took Santa Claus off into a corner and said, “Look here,
old man, something’s up. Why don’t you tell Piggy-Peddler about it?”
Santa Claus, oh, so relieved now to have somebody to confide in, told
Piggy-Peddler the whole story. He told Piggy-Peddler how he had heard
the grown-ups talking that night about the things they wanted, how
those grown-ups had planned to hang up their stockings just to see if
something wouldn’t happen, and how he, Santa Claus, longed to find
those things for the grown-ups and put them in their stockings, but
couldn’t possibly do it.
Piggy-Peddler listened intently, and when Santa Claus had finished, he
spoke softly.
“So that’s it,” he said. “Those dear, funny, grown-up people. They want
the things they’ve never had. Of course they do.”
“And they’ve been wanting them ever since they were young,” added Santa
Claus.
“Mrs. Dumpty and her ruffles,” said Piggy-Peddler.
“And Cross-Patch,” said Santa.
“And the candlestick-maker!” continued Piggy-Peddler. “Can’t you just
see him, Santa Claus, switching those tails around, with a dirty shirt
above them, and his rusty boots below?”
“Still, I think he’d look nice,” Santa Claus said.
“Nice! He’d look elegant!”
Santa Claus laughed aloud. It would be such fun, he was thinking, to
see the candlestick-maker flourishing happily around in his tails.
“I wonder”--Piggy-Peddler was musing--“I wonder if he would do it, just
this once, for these people of Pudding Lane.”
“Who?”
Piggy-Peddler was lost in thought.
“Who, Piggy-Peddler?” persisted Santa Claus. “You wonder if who would
do what?”
“Oh!” Piggy-Peddler started and laughed. “Why, I was wondering, Santa
Claus, if Father Time wouldn’t, just this one time, let these people
have an hour of their youth again. If he would, you know, they could
have all their desires. Their wishes would all come true.”
At this Santa Claus could only stare.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“Well, it’s just this, Santa Claus,” explained Piggy-Peddler. “Father
Time, if he wanted to, could turn the clock back on Christmas Eve. He
could let these people fly back to the time when they were young, and
he could give them whatever they wanted.”
“He could?” Santa’s mouth was wide open at such news.
“He could,” replied Piggy-Peddler.
“Would they be children again?”
“No, you never can be a child again, quite, you know, after you’ve once
grown up,” Piggy said. “But you can feel very young, oh, very young,
even as young as sixteen.”
Santa Claus, thinking to himself that sixteen was not what he’d call
young, spoke again.
“He could make their wishes come true, you say?”
“For an hour.”
“Only for an hour?”
“Oh, that’ll be long enough. It isn’t keeping things that’s fun, you
know. Why, they wouldn’t want these things forever, Santa Claus. The
Old Woman can’t jig around at a ball the rest of her life, can she? And
that petticoat! Mrs. Dumpty would worry her life out washing the thing!
You know what a fussy little lady she is.”
“But the baby for Cross-Patch?” pursued Santa Claus. He was thinking
how badly he’d feel if his baby sister should have stayed with them
only an hour.
“Well, that is a little different,” admitted Piggy. “But think of the
poor baby living with old Cross-Patch. I’ll tell you, Santa, we’ll get
her a parrot afterwards. They’re lots better for old cross-patches than
babies. Also, the butcher doesn’t really want a wife, you know. He only
thinks he does.”
“But they said they wanted these things more than anything else in the
world,” said Santa Claus persistently.
“They do!” cried Piggy. “The things you’ve always wanted are the very
things you want most. But that doesn’t mean you have to keep them
forever. And think how happy they’d all be on Christmas. Why, this will
make them happy the rest of their lives, and they’ll never get through
talking about it.”
“And Father Time could do this?” asked Santa again.
“He could,” replied Piggy-Peddler. “He’s very powerful, you know. The
only question is, would he? That’s what I am wondering.”
“Do you know him, Piggy-Peddler?”
“Very well,” answered Piggy.
“Could you ask him?”
“I could and I will,” came Piggy-Peddler’s reply. “He ought to do it
for you, Santa Claus. Father Time thinks very highly of you, you know.”
“He doesn’t know me,” said Santa.
“Oh, yes, he does. He knows everybody. He may be old and his beard may
be long and white, but he knows everybody in the world, Santa Claus,
and don’t you forget that.”
“And you will go to him, Piggy-Peddler,” begged Santa Claus, “and ask
him to turn the clock back?”
“I will,” replied Piggy-Peddler, “this very minute I’ll go, Santa
Claus.”
And he did. He left Pudding Lane that very minute, and as Santa Claus
went back to his work, his heart beat a little rat-a-tat-tat of joy, as
he reflected that maybe, after all, The Old Woman could have her ball,
Mrs. Dumpty her ruffles, and Cross-Patch her baby on Christmas morning.
2
Christmas Eve had come. Deeper than ever was the snow. The houses
looked as if their mothers had put white hoods on them; the ground was
spread as with white fur; and the trees held their burden of snow as
lightly as if it were lace.
But nobody had time for scenery in Pudding Lane that night. In every
house, lights were burning; in every house, the mothers were flying
madly about, the fathers were jumping from room to room, and the
children were hopping, shrieking, dancing, as children always do on
this best night of the year.
At last, however, the stockings were all up at the fireplaces. At last
the children were all in bed and sound asleep. At last it was time for
Santa Claus, that fat little boy in a bright red suit, to take his
pack, go to the roofs, slide down the chimneys and fill the stockings
as he did every year.
But what about the surprise for Santa himself? Wait a bit. It wasn’t
time for that yet. And what about the gifts for the grown-ups? Were
they to get the things they wanted? Was Father Time really going to
turn the clock back, as Piggy-Peddler and Santa Claus had so ardently
hoped he would?
Well, whether Father Time was going to make the wishes come true or
not, the grown-ups were certainly hanging up their stockings. For there
was the old candlestick-maker in his shop, pawing through a drawerful
of socks. First he pulled out a white sock, but that one, alas, had a
hole in it. Then he found a brown one, but oh, my goodness, that one
had two holes in it. Then he found a gray sock, a woolen one that Mrs.
Claus, good soul, had knitted for him. But that one had shrunken in the
wash, and nobody wants a shriveled-up sock to hang up for Christmas.
At last he came upon a fine black affair that looked as if it had
been made for a giant, so enormous it was. This was the very thing,
and cackling and wheezing, the candlestick-maker hung it up beside
Jack-Be-Nimble’s smaller stocking and went to bed.
The butcher hung up his stocking, and lonely it looked too, that
stocking, as it dangled from his bachelor’s fireplace. The Flinderses
hung up their stockings, one on each side of Polly’s; Mrs. Dumpty hung
up hers,--oh, all the grown-ups hung up stockings that night. And
although they tried to pretend to themselves that it was all in fun,
still they all knew perfectly well that it wouldn’t be a bit funny if
they should get up the next morning to find these stockings empty and
their wishes still just wishes.
Only Mr. and Mrs. Claus did not join in this great stocking ceremony.
Something had happened at the Clauses’, which had turned that humble
home almost inside out and left no time for such minor considerations
as stockings.
Mrs. Claus discovered it just after Santa had left with his pack.
“Now,” said she to Mr. Claus, “I’ll get out the things for _his_
stocking.”
“But he’ll see ’em when he comes in,” objected the baker.
“Now, Mr. Claus, you ought to know by this time he always comes in
by the back door and goes up the back steps on Christmas Eve. What’s
the harm, then, of getting out the things now and putting them in his
stocking in the front room?”
“No harm, no harm at all,” agreed Mr. Claus hastily.
So Mrs. Claus went to her workbasket to get the key to the cupboard in
which Santa’s surprises were hidden. The key, oddly enough, was not
there.
“Well, that’s funny,” Mrs. Claus said. Whereupon she went to the
kitchen shelf, but the key wasn’t there, either. Nor was it behind the
clock on the mantel, or in the best alabaster vase in the parlor, or
in the old valise upstairs. And if it wasn’t in these treasure troves,
where was it? That is what Mrs. Claus wanted to know.
“Where did you put it?” asked the baker innocently.
“How do I know?” retorted Mrs. Claus. “I seemed to remember putting it
in all these places, but I didn’t.”
“Look in the almanac,” suggested her husband.
“The almanac!” repeated Mrs. Claus contemptuously, but she looked there
just the same.
She also looked in the woodbox and in the apple barrel and in the
cooky jar, where no key ought ever to be and where no key was, either.
She ripped open the beds and searched under the mattresses, and the
fact that her children were in those beds made no whit of difference
to Mrs. Claus. She tore up the carpet from under Mr. Claus’s feet;
she scratched in the corners of the room like a cat digging for a
mouse; she peered sharply down into the stove, and when the key was
not discovered there, shook down the coals angrily. And at last, after
tearing up the entire house by its roots, she sat down on a chair and
looked at Mr. Claus with a tragic face.
“It’s lost,” she announced hoarsely.
“Never mind,” Mr. Claus replied soothingly, “we’ll get another.”
“But it’s a special key,” she wailed, “made specially for this
Christmas Eve. And Jack-of-All-Trades is dead asleep by now, and if he
wasn’t, he’d never have time now to make another.”
“Well, then, we’ll have to break the door open,” said Mr. Claus.
“But we have no ax!” Poor Mrs. Claus, she had lost all her old
enterprise in that short time.
“We’ll borrow one,” replied Mr. Claus, and with that they both leaped
out of the kitchen to borrow an ax from the neighbors.
It was exactly midnight when Santa Claus had finished filling the
stockings of Simple Simon, Jack and Jill, little Bo-Peep and all the
other children of Pudding Lane. He had just clicked Mistress Mary’s
gate behind him, when up popped Piggy-Peddler in front of him.
“It’s all right,” whispered Piggy-Peddler delightedly. “It’s going on
right now.”
“Oh!” cried Santa Claus. “It is? He’s really turning the clock back?”
“This very minute,” reported Piggy-Peddler.
“But it’s too early, Piggy-Peddler,” said Santa Claus. “The grown-ups
will never be awake at this hour. They’ve just gone to bed.”
Piggy-Peddler laughed.
“Don’t you worry about those grown-ups. They’re worse than children
ever thought of being. Mark my word, they’re sneaking down the steps
right this minute. Father Time knows them; that’s why he set this hour.”
“Are they really going to get the very things they asked for?” asked
Santa Claus.
“The very things,” Piggy told him.
“The petticoat?”
“Oh, such a petticoat! A riot of ruffles!” Piggy-Peddler answered.
“A thousand of them?”
“A thousand, and one for good measure. A thousand and one ruffles,
Santa Claus.”
“And the baby?”
“The most wonderful baby,” replied Piggy. “He never cries and never
wakes up in the middle of the night and never swallows safety pins.”
“Then he isn’t a real baby,” declared Santa Claus. He knew about
babies. There had been five of them in his family.
“Yes, he’s a real baby,” Piggy-Peddler insisted. “For he does fall out
of bed, and he does eat old shoes, and he does chase sunbeams all over
the nursery floor.”
Santa Claus, however, was not quite convinced.
“Does he go into a rage if he can’t get the sunbeam?”
“The most awful rage, bellowing and roaring.”
“No tears though,” supplemented Santa Claus.
“No tears,” corroborated Piggy. “Too mad for tears.”
“Well, I guess he’s a real baby then,” Santa Claus admitted. “But,
oh, Piggy, don’t you wish we could peep in at the windows and see the
grown-ups getting their Christmas presents?”
“I never wished anything so much in the world,” was Piggy’s heartfelt
reply.
“But it isn’t nice to peep in at windows, is it?”
“Peeping is dreadful,” said Piggy-Peddler.
“So I suppose we’d better go home,” suggested Santa.
“I think that’s all we can do,” Piggy agreed.
So Santa Claus went home, and Piggy went to the Horners’, where he was
staying over Christmas.
Piggy did not go straight to bed, however, for not only did he find
Mr. and Mrs. Horner up and gloating over the lovely gifts in their
Christmas stockings, but he found Jack Horner up too--think of it, on
Christmas Eve--and moreover, making a great to-do about his Christmas
pie.
“He wants to eat it now,” Mrs. Horner told Piggy.
“Well, let him eat it then,” advised Piggy-Peddler, disgusted.
You couldn’t do anything with a boy like Jack, he was thinking, and
there was no use trying.
The rest of the grown-ups, however, had no such difficulties to
spoil their Christmas stockings, and right that minute they were all
tiptoeing down to their front parlors just as Piggy-Peddler said they
would be doing.
Mrs. Dumpty, in her pink flannel nightgown and with her eyes bulging
over her sputtering candle, was the first one down. She craned her
neck as she got near the stocking, and her eyes, pushing themselves
almost out of their sockets, searched the dimness intently. Would the
petticoat be there? Oh, beating heart, be still! Supposing it were not--
Ah, but there it was, the petticoat of her heart, lovelier even than
she had imagined. Such foamy ruffles! So many of them! Oh, what a
petticoat! Suddenly Mrs. Dumpty threw it around her and rushed out.
Where was the woman going?
At about the same time old Cross-Patch came shuffling in to her
stocking. She hadn’t slept much in her excitement, but had lain there
tense and still until at last she could stand it no longer. There she
came, shuffle, shuffle. She held the candle high and squinted at the
stocking. Was that--could it be--a baby’s fuzzy head poking up out of
the top? It was! Oh, happy old Cross-Patch. She pinched the baby to see
if it were real; she grunted and chuckled and cackled. She wasn’t a bit
cross now. Then, taking the baby under one arm, she too rushed out and
away.
And did the candlestick-maker get his swallow-tail coat? He did. Pearl
buttons, hankersniff and all? Pearl buttons, hankersniff and all. Did
Mr. Flinders find himself possessed of pigs? Most assuredly. Red little
pigs, big black pigs, middle-aged speckled pigs, and all grunting and
wallowing in a manner to delight any pig-lover’s heart.
But surely the butcher didn’t find a wife in his stocking? Well, he
just did. A charming lady with a pink cheek, a high heel, and a mincing
step, a woman exactly to the butcher’s taste. Old Mother Hubbard got
her hurdy-gurdy too, and you should have seen her and the dog dancing
to its music.
But the strange thing was that all of them took their gifts in their
arms and rushed out from their homes, just as Mrs. Dumpty and
Cross-Patch had done. They all went to the same place too, and that
place was--guess where--the Old Woman’s Shoe.
Words fail me as I try to describe the scene they all found in the once
humble old Shoe. There was the Shoe ablaze with light and color; there
were the ladies and gentlemen of the ball, in satins and velvet, bowing
and pirouetting; there was Prince Charming himself, the most agreeable
man you ever want to see; and finally there was the Old Woman, gay as a
feather, almost unrecognizable now in her fine red dress and her gold,
gold slippers.
With great hilarity the Old Woman greeted her friends, and if she
kissed Mr. Horner and shook hands with Mrs. Horner instead of the other
way around, as she intended, nobody minded, especially Mr. Horner.
Indeed, so enlivened became the gentlemen that they all said they
wanted such a handshake,--which was certainly a gay turn for the party
to take.
So they frolicked on and danced and were merry. Oh, yes, they admired
each other’s Christmas presents too. The butcher’s wife was received
with great cordiality, Cross-Patch’s baby was declared to be the
nicest baby everybody had ever seen; and Mother Hubbard’s hurdy-gurdy
rolled out its lovely tunes as Mrs. Dumpty, in her ruffled petticoat
and the candlestick-maker, in his tails, stepped gravely through a
minuet.
Only the Clauses were not there.
But we know where they were, don’t we? Or do we?