"Tomorrow is Christmas," announced Teddy Grant exultantly, as he sat
on the floor struggling manfully with a refractory bootlace that was
knotted and tagless and stubbornly refused to go into the eyelets of
Teddy's patched boots. "Ain't I glad, though. Hurrah!"
His mother was washing the breakfast dishes in a dreary, listless sort
of way. She looked tired and broken-spirited. Ted's enthusiasm seemed
to grate on her, for she answered sharply:
"Christmas, indeed. I can't see that it is anything for us to rejoice
over. Other people may be glad enough, but what with winter coming on
I'd sooner it was spring than Christmas. Mary Alice, do lift that
child out of the ashes and put its shoes and stockings on. Everything
seems to be at sixes and sevens here this morning."
Keith, the oldest boy, was coiled up on the sofa calmly working out
some algebra problems, quite oblivious to the noise around him. But he
looked up from his slate, with his pencil suspended above an obstinate
equation, to declaim with a flourish:
"Christmas comes but once a year,
And then Mother wishes it wasn't here."
"I don't, then," said Gordon, son number two, who was preparing his
own noon lunch of bread and molasses at the table, and making an
atrocious mess of crumbs and sugary syrup over everything. "I know one
thing to be thankful for, and that is that there'll be no school.
We'll have a whole week of holidays."
Gordon was noted for his aversion to school and his affection for
holidays.
"And we're going to have turkey for dinner," declared Teddy, getting
up off the floor and rushing to secure his share of bread and
molasses, "and cranb'ry sauce and--and--pound cake! Ain't we, Ma?"
"No, you are not," said Mrs. Grant desperately, dropping the dishcloth
and snatching the baby on her knee to wipe the crust of cinders and
molasses from the chubby pink-and-white face. "You may as well know it
now, children, I've kept it from you so far in hopes that something
would turn up, but nothing has. We can't have any Christmas dinner
tomorrow--we can't afford it. I've pinched and saved every way I could
for the last month, hoping that I'd be able to get a turkey for you
anyhow, but you'll have to do without it. There's that doctor's bill
to pay and a dozen other bills coming in--and people say they can't
wait. I suppose they can't, but it's kind of hard, I must say."
The little Grants stood with open mouths and horrified eyes. No turkey
for Christmas! Was the world coming to an end? Wouldn't the government
interfere if anyone ventured to dispense with a Christmas celebration?
The gluttonous Teddy stuffed his fists into his eyes and lifted up his
voice. Keith, who understood better than the others the look on his
mother's face, took his blubbering young brother by the collar and
marched him into the porch. The twins, seeing the summary proceeding,
swallowed the outcries they had intended to make, although they
couldn't keep a few big tears from running down their fat cheeks.
Mrs. Grant looked pityingly at the disappointed faces about her.
"Don't cry, children, you make me feel worse. We are not the only ones
who will have to do without a Christmas turkey. We ought to be very
thankful that we have anything to eat at all. I hate to disappoint
you, but it can't be helped."
"Never mind, Mother," said Keith, comfortingly, relaxing his hold
upon the porch door, whereupon it suddenly flew open and precipitated
Teddy, who had been tugging at the handle, heels over head backwards.
"We know you've done your best. It's been a hard year for you. Just
wait, though. I'll soon be grown up, and then you and these greedy
youngsters shall feast on turkey every day of the year. Hello, Teddy,
have you got on your feet again? Mind, sir, no more blubbering!"
"When I'm a man," announced Teddy with dignity, "I'd just like to see
you put me in the porch. And I mean to have turkey all the time and I
won't give you any, either."
"All right, you greedy small boy. Only take yourself off to school
now, and let us hear no more squeaks out of you. Tramp, all of you,
and give Mother a chance to get her work done."
Mrs. Grant got up and fell to work at her dishes with a brighter face.
"Well, we mustn't give in; perhaps things will be better after a
while. I'll make a famous bread pudding, and you can boil some
molasses taffy and ask those little Smithsons next door to help you
pull it. They won't whine for turkey, I'll be bound. I don't suppose
they ever tasted such a thing in all their lives. If I could afford
it, I'd have had them all in to dinner with us. That sermon Mr. Evans
preached last Sunday kind of stirred me up. He said we ought always
to try and share our Christmas joy with some poor souls who had never
learned the meaning of the word. I can't do as much as I'd like to. It
was different when your father was alive."
The noisy group grew silent as they always did when their father was
spoken of. He had died the year before, and since his death the little
family had had a hard time. Keith, to hide his feelings, began to
hector the rest.
"Mary Alice, do hurry up. Here, you twin nuisances, get off to school.
If you don't you'll be late and then the master will give you a
whipping."
"He won't," answered the irrepressible Teddy. "He never whips us, he
doesn't. He stands us on the floor sometimes, though," he added,
remembering the many times his own chubby legs had been seen to better
advantage on the school platform.
"That man," said Mrs. Grant, alluding to the teacher, "makes me
nervous. He is the most abstracted creature I ever saw in my life. It
is a wonder to me he doesn't walk straight into the river some day.
You'll meet him meandering along the street, gazing into vacancy, and
he'll never see you nor hear a word you say half the time."
"Yesterday," said Gordon, chuckling over the remembrance, "he came in
with a big piece of paper he'd picked up on the entry floor in one
hand and his hat in the other--and he stuffed his hat into the
coal-scuttle and hung up the paper on a nail as grave as you please.
Never knew the difference till Ned Slocum went and told him. He's
always doing things like that."
Keith had collected his books and now marched his brothers and sisters
off to school. Left alone with the baby, Mrs. Grant betook herself to
her work with a heavy heart. But a second interruption broke the
progress of her dish-washing.
"I declare," she said, with a surprised glance through the window, "if
there isn't that absent-minded schoolteacher coming through the yard!
What can he want? Dear me, I do hope Teddy hasn't been cutting capers
in school again."
For the teacher's last call had been in October and had been
occasioned by the fact that the irrepressible Teddy would persist in
going to school with his pockets filled with live crickets and in
driving them harnessed to strings up and down the aisle when the
teacher's back was turned. All mild methods of punishment having
failed, the teacher had called to talk it over with Mrs. Grant, with
the happy result that Teddy's behaviour had improved--in the matter of
crickets at least.
But it was about time for another outbreak. Teddy had been unnaturally
good for too long a time. Poor Mrs. Grant feared that it was the calm
before a storm, and it was with nervous haste that she went to the
door and greeted the young teacher.
He was a slight, pale, boyish-looking fellow, with an abstracted,
musing look in his large dark eyes. Mrs. Grant noticed with amusement
that he wore a white straw hat in spite of the season. His eyes were
directed to her face with his usual unseeing gaze.
"Just as though he was looking through me at something a thousand
miles away," said Mrs. Grant afterwards. "I believe he was, too. His
body was right there on the step before me, but where his soul was is
more than you or I or anybody can tell."
"Good morning," he said absently. "I have just called on my way to
school with a message from Miss Millar. She wants you all to come up
and have Christmas dinner with her tomorrow."
"For the land's sake!" said Mrs. Grant blankly. "I don't understand."
To herself she thought, "I wish I dared take him and shake him to find
if he's walking in his sleep or not."
"You and all the children--every one," went on the teacher dreamily,
as if he were reciting a lesson learned beforehand. "She told me to
tell you to be sure and come. Shall I say that you will?"
"Oh, yes, that is--I suppose--I don't know," said Mrs. Grant
incoherently. "I never expected--yes, you may tell her we'll come,"
she concluded abruptly.
"Thank you," said the abstracted messenger, gravely lifting his hat
and looking squarely through Mrs. Grant into unknown regions. When he
had gone Mrs. Grant went in and sat down, laughing in a sort of
hysterical way.
"I wonder if it is all right. Could Cornelia really have told him? She
must, I suppose, but it is enough to take one's breath."
Mrs. Grant and Cornelia Millar were cousins, and had once been the
closest of friends, but that was years ago, before some spiteful
reports and ill-natured gossip had come between them, making only a
little rift at first that soon widened into a chasm of coldness and
alienation. Therefore this invitation surprised Mrs. Grant greatly.
Miss Cornelia was a maiden lady of certain years, with a comfortable
bank account and a handsome, old-fashioned house on the hill behind
the village. She always boarded the schoolteachers and looked after
them maternally; she was an active church worker and a tower of
strength to struggling ministers and their families.
"If Cornelia has seen fit at last to hold out the hand of
reconciliation I'm glad enough to take it. Dear knows, I've wanted to
make up often enough, but I didn't think she ever would. We've both
of us got too much pride and stubbornness. It's the Turner blood in us
that does it. The Turners were all so set. But I mean to do my part
now she has done hers."
And Mrs. Grant made a final attack on the dishes with a beaming face.
When the little Grants came home and heard the news, Teddy stood on
his head to express his delight, the twins kissed each other, and Mary
Alice and Gordon danced around the kitchen.
Keith thought himself too big to betray any joy over a Christmas
dinner, but he whistled while doing the chores until the bare welkin
in the yard rang, and Teddy, in spite of unheard of misdemeanours, was
not collared off into the porch once.
When the young teacher got home from school that evening he found the
yellow house full of all sorts of delectable odours. Miss Cornelia
herself was concocting mince pies after the famous family recipe,
while her ancient and faithful handmaiden, Hannah, was straining into
moulds the cranberry jelly. The open pantry door revealed a tempting
array of Christmas delicacies.
"Did you call and invite the Smithsons up to dinner as I told you?"
asked Miss Cornelia anxiously.
"Yes," was the dreamy response as he glided through the kitchen and
vanished into the hall.
Miss Cornelia crimped the edges of her pies delicately with a relieved
air. "I made certain he'd forget it," she said. "You just have to
watch him as if he were a mere child. Didn't I catch him yesterday
starting off to school in his carpet slippers? And in spite of me he
got away today in that ridiculous summer hat. You'd better set that
jelly in the out-pantry to cool, Hannah; it looks good. We'll give
those poor little Smithsons a feast for once in their lives if they
never get another."
At this juncture the hall door flew open and Mr. Palmer appeared on
the threshold. He seemed considerably agitated and for once his eyes
had lost their look of space-searching.
"Miss Millar, I am afraid I did make a mistake this morning--it has
just dawned on me. I am almost sure that I called at Mrs. Grant's and
invited her and her family instead of the Smithsons. And she said they
would come."
Miss Cornelia's face was a study.
"Mr. Palmer," she said, flourishing her crimping fork tragically, "do
you mean to say you went and invited Linda Grant here tomorrow? Linda
Grant, of all women in this world!"
"I did," said the teacher with penitent wretchedness. "It was very
careless of me--I am very sorry. What can I do? I'll go down and tell
them I made a mistake if you like."
"You can't do that," groaned Miss Cornelia, sitting down and wrinkling
up her forehead in dire perplexity. "It would never do in the world.
For pity's sake, let me think for a minute."
Miss Cornelia did think--to good purpose evidently, for her forehead
smoothed out as her meditations proceeded and her face brightened.
Then she got up briskly. "Well, you've done it and no mistake. I don't
know that I'm sorry, either. Anyhow, we'll leave it as it is. But you
must go straight down now and invite the Smithsons too. And for pity's
sake, don't make any more mistakes."
When he had gone Miss Cornelia opened her heart to Hannah. "I never
could have done it myself--never; the Turner is too strong in me. But
I'm glad it is done. I've been wanting for years to make up with
Linda. And now the chance has come, thanks to that blessed blundering
boy, I mean to make the most of it. Mind, Hannah, you never whisper a
word about its being a mistake. Linda must never know. Poor Linda!
She's had a hard time. Hannah, we must make some more pies, and I must
go straight down to the store and get some more Santa Claus stuff;
I've only got enough to go around the Smithsons."
When Mrs. Grant and her family arrived at the yellow house next
morning Miss Cornelia herself ran out bareheaded to meet them. The two
women shook hands a little stiffly and then a rill of long-repressed
affection trickled out from some secret spring in Miss Cornelia's
heart and she kissed her new-found old friend tenderly. Linda returned
the kiss warmly, and both felt that the old-time friendship was theirs
again.
The little Smithsons all came and they and the little Grants sat down
on the long bright dining room to a dinner that made history in their
small lives, and was eaten over again in happy dreams for months.
How those children did eat! And how beaming Miss Cornelia and
grim-faced, soft-hearted Hannah and even the absent-minded teacher
himself enjoyed watching them!
After dinner Miss Cornelia distributed among the delighted little
souls the presents she had bought for them, and then turned them loose
in the big shining kitchen to have a taffy pull--and they had it to
their hearts' content! And as for the shocking, taffyfied state into
which they got their own rosy faces and that once immaculate
domain--well, as Miss Cornelia and Hannah never said one word about
it, neither will I.
The four women enjoyed the afternoon in their own way, and the
schoolteacher buried himself in algebra to his own great satisfaction.
When her guests went home in the starlit December dusk, Miss Cornelia
walked part of the way with them and had a long confidential talk with
Mrs. Grant. When she returned it was to find Hannah groaning in and
over the kitchen and the schoolteacher dreamily trying to clean some
molasses off his boots with the kitchen hairbrush. Long-suffering Miss
Cornelia rescued her property and despatched Mr. Palmer into the
woodshed to find the shoe-brush. Then she sat down and laughed.
"Hannah, what will become of that boy yet? There's no counting on what
he'll do next. I don't know how he'll ever get through the world, I'm
sure, but I'll look after him while he's here at least. I owe him a
huge debt of gratitude for this Christmas blunder. What an awful mess
this place is in! But, Hannah, did you ever in the world see anything
so delightful as that little Tommy Smithson stuffing himself with plum
cake, not to mention Teddy Grant? It did me good just to see them."