THE VERY BEST CHRISTMAS OF ALL
Christmas morning, early and dark and gray!
Patty woke, she sat up in bed, she listened.
Not a sound!
Father and Mother and Grandmother must still be fast asleep.
Had Santa Claus come last night?
There was one sure way of telling. Was her stocking filled?
So Patty slipped out of bed and stole into the living-room.
There stood the Tree, fragrant and green, looking taller and more
beautiful than ever in the dull morning light.
Under the Tree, propped comfortably against the low branches, sat Polly
Perkins King. Her face wore a wise little smile as if she knew all that
had happened last night, but would never, never tell.
‘Merry Christmas, Polly,’ whispered Patty as she crept into the room.
‘Oh, look at my stocking, look!’
Yes, the stocking that last night had hung from the mantelpiece, so
thin and limp, had now become delightfully plump and thick, with
strange little bumps and knobs all over it, and with packages actually
peeping over the edge of the top, it was so full.
‘Oh!’ said Patty again, her eyes fixed on the stocking, ‘oh, Polly,
look!’
Up on a chair climbed Patty and with nimble fingers unfastened the
stocking and lifted it down.
Then into Mother’s room she ran to wake Mother and Father and
Grandmother, too, across the hall, and to be the very first one to wish
them all a Merry Christmas Day.
You would never guess all the presents that had been crowded into
Patty’s stocking.
Of course there were apples and oranges and candies and nuts.
There was a little watch to be worn on Patty’s wrist.
‘Not a really truly watch,’ explained Patty, ‘but just as good as a
really truly one.’
There was a pair of soft gray gloves all lined with fur.
‘As soft as a kitten and as warm as a bear,’ declared Patty, trying
them on at once. ‘Maybe Santa Claus wears this kind his very own self.’
‘Maybe he does,’ answered Father. ‘Open that long box, Patty. It says
on the card, “Merry Christmas from Thomas.” Perhaps Santa Claus came in
through the hall last night, for Thomas must have asked him to put this
in your stocking for him.’
Thomas was the hall boy, you remember, and a good friend to Patty, too.
So Patty untied Thomas’s box. It held a large silk handkerchief,
blue-and-red on one side and red-and-blue on the other.
It was bright, it was gay, and Patty was delighted.
‘But I shan’t use it for a handkerchief,’ said she. ‘It is too good.
I shall use it for a--for a shawl,’ said Patty, putting it about her
shoulders and making herself look like a little Mother Bunch.
‘You might wear it for a muffler under your coat,’ suggested Father,
‘like my black-and-white muffler, you know.’
‘I will,’ said Patty, ‘I will wear it this very day.’
For Patty was going on a journey this Christmas Day. She was going
to Four Corners with Father and Mother and Grandmother to eat her
Christmas dinner at the Farm with Aunt Mary and Uncle Charles.
So Patty made haste to empty her stocking.
She found a string of beautiful pink coral beads in the toe. There was
a small paint-box, and a book full of pictures all ready for Patty to
paint. There was a ball of gay red worsted and two knitting-needles.
Grandmother must have known something about that, for she had long ago
promised to teach Patty to knit.
But the present in her stocking that Patty liked best of all was a wee
pair of brown mittens so tiny that no little girl, not even a baby
girl, could possibly have squeezed her fingers into them.
Then whom were the mittens for?
Patty knew in a minute.
‘They are for Polly!’ cried Patty. ‘They are for Polly Perkins. She
shall wear them to-day to show Aunt Mary and Uncle Charles.’
Yes, Polly Perkins was going with Patty to the Farm. Mother had said
she might because it was Christmas Day.
Soon they were ready for the journey. Polly Perkins looked well,
dressed in her new brown cape and hood, trimmed with beaver fur, and
her brown mittens that were a perfect fit. Patty, too, wore her new
fur-lined gloves, and her string of pink coral beads, while about her
neck as a muffler was Thomas’s gay silk handkerchief, the blue-and-red
side out.
But just before Patty left the house, she began to run around, looking
here and there and asking every one,
‘Where are my mice? Where are my five mice? Oh, Mother! Oh,
Grandmother! Please help me find my mice!’
What did Patty mean? Why should a little girl want to find five mice?
And just as she was starting on a journey, too!
Well, wait and see.
The mice were found, tucked away in a paper bag, and were placed in
Father’s overcoat pocket for safe-keeping.
And then they were off.
The snow was falling, a flake here and a flake there, when they
started. But as the train sped farther and farther along into the
country, the ground grew white and the window-panes of the train were
dotted thick with flying snow. Soon each little bush and tree was
clothed in a warm white cloak, while every fencepost and pole wore a
round white hood or a tall pointed cap that gave to some of them the
sauciest air in the world.
It was a real snowstorm, and Patty couldn’t help thinking that nothing
could have been planned that would have given her greater pleasure.
She thought the country beautiful in its covering of spotless white.
She was delighted when Uncle Charles met them at the Four Corners
Station with the old two-seater and the farm team of horses, instead
of the automobile. As the horses pulled and plunged through the snow,
Patty and Polly peeped over the edge of the carriage robe, their eyes
very bright and their noses very red, but with their fingers as warm as
toast in their new Christmas gloves, and both of them enjoying every
moment of their ride.
The old red farmhouse looked pretty and homelike in its heavy trimming
of soft white snow. And there in the doorway stood Aunt Mary, so
anxious to see her visitors that she couldn’t wait indoors another
moment.
Presents, and another beautiful Christmas Tree, and every one laughing
and talking and wishing ‘Merry Christmas’ all at once. That is what
happened at first, with Patty in the midst of it, hopping about, and
sitting on people’s laps, and then slipping away to walk around the
Christmas Tree again and again.
But presently Patty remembered something.
‘Where are the kitties, Aunt Mary?’ asked Patty, ‘the four new little
kitties you wrote Mother to tell me about?’
‘Out in the barn,’ said Aunt Mary. ‘Would you like to see them? Uncle
Charles will take you out there if you do.’
‘I have brought each of them a Christmas present, and one for their
mother, too,’ said Patty with a happy face. ‘They are mice, little mice
made of catnip, and I would like to give them to the kitties now.’
‘You might see whether your present for Patty is dry yet,’ called Aunt
Mary after Uncle Charles, as, well wrapped up, he and Patty and the
mice set out for the barn.
‘Another present for me? Do let me see it, Uncle Charles,’ begged
Patty, all excitement.
So up the narrow barn stairs to the loft went Patty and Uncle Charles
and the mice. And there in one corner of the loft stood a cradle, an
old-fashioned wooden cradle, made by Uncle Charles for Polly Perkins
as soon as Grandmother’s letter telling of the three Polly Perkinses
had reached the Farm. It was painted a lovely shade of blue, and though
the paint was still a little moist, Uncle Charles believed it would be
quite dry by night so that the cradle might be safely carried home.
‘Aunt Mary has made the pillows and sheets and blankets for it,’ said
Uncle Charles, setting the cradle aswing. ‘This is the kind of a bed
your great-grandmother was put to sleep in, Patty King.’
Then down the stairs went happy Patty and Uncle Charles to see the
four new kitties and their mother.
The big gray mother cat was sleepy and plump, but she had the most
interesting and lively family of kittens that Patty had ever seen.
One was gray, one was black-and-white, one was all white with pale
blue eyes, and the last and smallest and liveliest one of all was
orange-yellow and white, ‘a tortoise-shell kitten,’ Uncle Charles said
it was called.
How the kittens did like their catnip mice! Even their sleepy old
mother tossed and boxed her mouse about, and presently ran up and down
the length of the barn as lively as any of her lively brood of kittens,
who leaped and tumbled and raced about to their hearts’ content and to
Patty’s great entertainment.
‘I think they are so excited because this is the first Christmas
present they have ever had,’ said Patty to Uncle Charles, as after a
peep at the horses and the cows they made their way through the snow
back to the house.
Then out came the little pillows and mattress and sheets and blankets
for Polly Perkins’s new cradle. And when they had been admired and
shown to every one, and to Polly Perkins, too, it was dinner-time.
So it was not until after dinner and late in the afternoon that Patty
was able to sit down in peace and quiet with Polly and talk over this
most delightful Christmas Day.
‘Of course, Polly,’ said Patty, ‘this is the first Christmas you have
ever had. You must feel like the kittens, so excited you don’t know
what to do. Now I have had five Christmases. Five of them--just think!
But I will tell you something, Polly Perkins. This Christmas is the
very best Christmas of all.’
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.