It was afternoon recess at No. 4 District School, in Warner. There was a
heavy snow-storm; so every one was in the warm school-room, except a few
adventurous spirits who were tumbling about in the snow-drifts out in
the yard, getting their clothes wet and preparing themselves for
chidings at home. Their shrill cries and shouts of laughter floated into
the school-room, but the small group near the stove did not heed them at
all. There were five or six little girls and one boy. The girls, with
the exception of Jenny Brown, were trim and sweet in their winter
dresses and neat school-aprons; they perched on the desks and the arms
of the settee with careless grace, like birds. Some of them had their
arms linked. The one boy lounged against the blackboard. His dark,
straight-profiled face was all aglow as he talked. His big brown eyes
gazed now soberly and impressively at Jenny, then gave a gay dance in
the direction of the other girls.
"Yes, it does--_honest_!" said he.
The other girls nudged one another softly; but Jenny Brown stood with
her innocent, solemn eyes fixed upon Earl Munroe's face, drinking in
every word.
"You ask anybody who knows," continued Earl; "ask Judge Barker, ask--the
minister--"
"Oh!" cried the little girls; but the boy shook his head impatiently at
them.
"Yes," said he; "you just go and ask Mr. Fisher to-morrow, and you'll
see what he'll tell you. Why, look here"--Earl straightened himself and
stretched out an arm like an orator--"it's nothing more than
_reasonable_ that Christmas-trees grow wild with the presents all on
'em! What sense would there be in 'em if they didn't, I'd like to know?
They grow in different places, of course; but these around here grow
mostly on the mountain over there. They come up every spring, and they
all blossom out about Christmas-time, and folks go hunting for them to
give to the children. Father and Ben are over on the mountain to-day--"
"Oh, oh!" cried the little girls.
"I mean, I guess they are," amended Earl, trying to put his feet on the
boundary--line of truth. "I hope they'll find a full one."
Jenny Brown had a little, round, simple face; her thin brown hair was
combed back and braided tightly in one tiny braid tied with a bit of
shoe-string. She wore a nondescript gown, which nearly trailed behind,
and showed in front her little, coarsely-shod feet, which toed-in
helplessly. The gown was of a faded green color; it was scalloped and
bound around the bottom, and had some green ribbon-bows down the front.
It was, in fact, the discarded polonaise of a benevolent woman, who
aided the poor substantially but not tastefully.
Jenny Brown was eight, and small for her age--a strange, gentle,
ignorant little creature, never doubting the truth of what she was told,
which sorely tempted the other children to impose upon her. Standing
there in the school-room that stormy recess, in the midst of that group
of wiser, richer, mostly older girls, and that one handsome, mischievous
boy, she believed every word she heard.
This was her first term at school, and she had never before seen much of
other children. She had lived her eight years all alone at home with her
mother, and she had never been told about Christmas. Her mother had
other things to think about. She was a dull, spiritless, reticent
woman, who had lived through much trouble. She worked, doing washings
and cleanings, like a poor feeble machine that still moves but has no
interest in its motion. Sometimes the Browns had almost enough to eat,
at other times they half starved. It was half-starving time just then;
Jenny had not had enough to eat that day.
There was a pinched look on the little face up-turned towards Earl
Munroe's.
Earl's words gained authority by coming from himself. Jenny had always
regarded him with awe and admiration. It was much that he should speak
at all to her.
Earl Munroe was quite the king of this little district school. He was
the son of the wealthiest man in town. No other boy was so well dressed,
so gently bred, so luxuriously lodged and fed. Earl himself realized his
importance, and had at times the loftiness of a young prince in his
manner. Occasionally, some independent urchin would bristle with
democratic spirit, and tell him to his face that he was "stuck up," and
that he hadn't so much more to be proud of than other folks; that his
grandfather wasn't anything but an old ragman!
Then Earl would wilt. Arrogance in a free country is likely to have an
unstable foundation. Earl tottered at the mention of his paternal
grandfather, who had given the first impetus to the family fortune by
driving a tin-cart about the country. Moreover, the boy was really
pleasant and generous hearted, and had no mind, in the long run, for
lonely state and disagreeable haughtiness. He enjoyed being lordly once
in a while, that was all.
He did now, with Jenny--he eyed her with a gay condescension, which
would have greatly amused his tin-peddler grandfather.
Soon the bell rung, and they all filed to their seats, and the lessons
were begun.
After school was done that night, Earl stood in the door when Jenny
passed out.
"Say, Jenny," he called, "when are you going over on the mountain to
find the Christmas-tree? You'd better go pretty soon, or they'll be
gone."
"That's so!" chimed in one of the girls. "You'd better go right off,
Jenny."
She passed along, her face shyly dimpling with her little innocent
smile, and said nothing. She would never talk much.
She had quite a long walk to her home. Presently, as she was pushing
weakly through the new snow, Earl went flying past her in his father's
sleigh, with the black horses and the fur-capped coachman. He never
thought of asking her to ride. If he had, he would not have hesitated a
second before doing so.
Jenny, as she waded along, could see the mountain always before her.
This road led straight to it, then turned and wound around its base. It
had stopped snowing, and the sun was setting clear. The great white
mountain was all rosy. It stood opposite the red western sky. Jenny kept
her eyes fixed upon the mountain. Down in the valley shadows her little
simple face, pale and colorless, gathered another kind of radiance.
There was no school the next day, which was the one before Christmas. It
was pleasant, and not very cold. Everybody was out; the little village
stores were crowded; sleds trailing Christmas-greens went flying; people
were hastening with parcels under their arms, their hands full.
Jenny Brown also was out. She was climbing Franklin Mountain. The snowy
pine boughs bent so low that they brushed her head. She stepped deeply
into the untrodden snow; the train of her green polonaise dipped into
it, and swept it along. And all the time she was peering through those
white fairy columns and arches for--a Christmas-tree.
That night, the mountain had turned rosy, and faded, and the stars were
coming out, when a frantic woman, panting, crying out now and then in
her distress, went running down the road to the Munroe house. It was the
only one between her own and the mountain. The woman rained some
clattering knocks on the door--she could not stop for the bell. Then she
burst into the house, and threw open the dining-room door, crying out in
gasps:
"Hev you seen her? Oh, hev you? My Jenny's lost! She's lost! Oh, oh, oh!
They said they saw her comin' up this way, this mornin'. _Hev_ you seen
her, _hev_ you?"
Earl and his father and mother were having tea there in the handsome
oak-panelled dining-room. Mr. Munroe rose at once, and went forward,
Mrs. Munroe looked with a pale face around her silver tea-urn, and Earl
sat as if frozen. He heard his father's soothing questions, and the
mother's answers. She had been out at work all day; when she returned,
Jenny was gone. Some one had seen her going up the road to the Munroes'
that morning about ten o'clock. That was her only clew.
Earl sat there, and saw his mother draw the poor woman into the room and
try to comfort her; he heard, with a vague understanding, his father
order the horses to be harnessed immediately; he watched him putting on
his coat and hat out in the hall.
When he heard the horses trot up the drive, he sprang to his feet. When
Mr. Munroe opened the door, Earl, with his coat and cap on, was at his
heels.
"Why, you can't go, Earl!" said his father, when he saw him. "Go back at
once."
Earl was white and trembling. He half sobbed: "Oh, father, I must go!"
said he.
"Earl, be reasonable. You want to help, don't you, and not hinder?" his
mother called out of the dining-room.
Earl caught hold of his father's coat. "Father--look here--I--_I believe
I know where she is_!"
Then his father faced sharply around, his mother and Jenny's stood
listening in bewilderment, and Earl told his ridiculous, childish, and
cruel little story. "I--didn't dream--she'd really be--such a
little--goose as to--go," he choked out; "but she must have, for"--with
brave candor--"I know she believed every word I told her."
It seemed a fantastic theory, yet a likely one. It would give method to
the search, yet more alarm to the searchers. The mountain was a wide
region in which to find one little child.
Jenny's mother screamed out, "Oh, if she's lost on the mountain,
they'll never find her! They never will, they never will! Oh, Jenny,
Jenny, Jenny!"
Earl gave a despairing glance at her, and bolted up-stairs to his own
room. His mother called pityingly after him; but he only sobbed back,
"Don't, mother--please!" and kept on.
The boy, lying face downward on his bed, crying as if his heart would
break, heard presently the church-bell clang out fast and furious. Then
he heard loud voices down in the road, and the flurry of sleigh-bells.
His father had raised the alarm, and the search was organized.
After a while Earl arose, and crept over to the window. It looked
towards the mountain, which towered up, cold and white and relentless,
like one of the ice-hearted giants of the old Indian tales. Earl
shuddered as he looked at it. Presently he crawled down-stairs and into
the parlor. In the bay-window stood, like a gay mockery, the
Christmas-tree. It was a quite small one that year, only for the
family--some expected guests had failed to come--but it was well laden.
After tea the presents were to have been distributed. There were some
for his father and mother, and some for the servants, but the bulk of
them were for Earl.
By-and-by his mother, who had heard him come down-stairs, peeped into
the room, and saw him busily taking his presents from the tree. Her
heart sank with sad displeasure and amazement. She would not have
believed that her boy could be so utterly selfish as to think of
Christmas-presents _then_.
But she said nothing. She stole away, and returned to poor Mrs. Brown,
whom she was keeping with her; still she continued to think of it all
that long, terrible night, when they sat there waiting, listening to the
signal-horns over on the mountain.
Morning came at last and Mr. Munroe with it. No success so far. He drank
some coffee and was off again. That was quite early. An hour or two
later the breakfast-bell rang. Earl did not respond to it, so his mother
went to the foot of the stairs and called him. There was a stern ring in
her soft voice. All the time she had in mind his heartlessness and
greediness over the presents. When Earl did not answer she went
up-stairs, and found that he was not in his room. Then she looked in the
parlor, and stood staring in bewilderment. Earl was not there, but
neither were the Christmas-tree and his presents--they had vanished
bodily!
Just at that moment Earl Munroe was hurrying down the road, and he was
dragging his big sled, on which were loaded his Christmas-presents and
the Christmas-tree. The top of the tree trailed in the snow, its
branches spread over the sled on either side, and rustled. It was a
heavy load, but Earl tugged manfully in an enthusiasm of remorse and
atonement--a fantastic, extravagant atonement, planned by that same
fertile fancy which had invented that story for poor little Jenny, but
instigated by all the good, repentant impulses in the boy's nature.
On every one of those neat parcels, above his own name, was written in
his big crooked, childish hand, "Jenny Brown, from--" Earl Munroe had
not saved one Christmas-present for himself.
Pulling along, his eyes brilliant, his cheeks glowing, he met Maud
Barker. She was Judge Barker's daughter, and the girl who had joined him
in advising Jenny to hunt on the mountain for the Christmas-tree.
Maud stepped along, placing her trim little feet with dainty precision;
she wore some new high-buttoned overshoes. She also carried a new beaver
muff, but in one hand only. The other dangled mittenless at her side; it
was pink with cold, but on its third finger sparkled a new gold ring
with a blue stone in it.
"Oh, Earl!" she called out, "have they found Jenny Brown? I was going up
to your house to--Why, Earl Munroe, what have you got there?"
"I'm carrying up my Christmas-presents and the tree up to Jenny's--so
she'll find 'em when she comes back," said the boy, flushing red. There
was a little defiant choke in his voice.
"Why, what for?"
"I rather think they belong to her more'n they do to me, after what's
happened."
"Does your mother know?"
"No; she wouldn't care. She'd think I was only doing what I ought."
"All of 'em?" queried Maud, feebly.
"You don't s'pose I'd keep any back?"
Maud stood staring. It was beyond her little philosophy.
Earl was passing on when a thought struck him.
"Say, Maud," he cried, eagerly, "haven't you something you can put in?
Girls' things might please her better, you know. Some of mine
are--rather queer, I'm afraid."
"What have you got?" demanded Maud.
"Well, some of the things are well enough. There's a lot of candy and
oranges and figs and books; there's one by Jules Verne I guess she'll
like; but there's a great big jack-knife, and--a brown velvet bicycle
suit?"
"Why, Earl Munroe! what could she do with a bicycle suit?"
"I thought, maybe, she could rip the seams to 'em, an' sew 'em some way,
an' get a basque cut, or something. Don't you s'pose she could?" Earl
asked, anxiously.
"I don't know; her mother could tell," said Maud.
"Well, I'll hang it on, anyhow. Maud, haven't you anything to give her?"
"I--don't know."