"Will they be good to them?" I questioned, wistfully.
I had heard of people whipping dolls! And once a little boy had drowned
a doll! His sister's! It was dreadful!
"Oh, I'm sure this doll is going to be spoiled," Evelyn answered, with
her hand on the queen.
I looked from her to the great doll with shy admiration. They both had
the same fair hair, and the same pink cheeks and the same gray eyes.
Their faces were just like flowers.
"I think her name is Evelyn, too," I said.
I had always thought that Evelyn liked me, but that day I was sure of
it. We had a long talk in a big chair about all the things which I
wanted for Christmas. She said that I was surely to come Christmas
morning and see the orphans get their dolls. Somebody named Santa Claus
would be there. I had heard of Santa Claus before, but only in a general
sort of a way. He seemed to be a very kindly sort of person who gave
away dolls by the hundred, sometimes to orphans, and sometimes just to
little girls who needed them. It was a question how much you had to need
them.
At the very last Evelyn gave me a message to deliver.
"Rhoda," she said, earnestly, "tell grandmother that there is good news.
What she was wishing for is really going to happen!"
She hugged me up closer to her.
"Oh, what a Christmas this will be!" she cried. "We are all going to get
what we want, all of us, even Rhoda!"
Afterwards she changed. When I went out of the door she drew me back and
looked at me anxiously, almost coldly.
"Rhoda, don't tell grandmother anything," she said. "It might be a
mistake. I wouldn't have her disappointed for the world!"
I did not want grandmother to be disappointed, but still when I went
back into our house and saw her sitting by the window, I felt that I
should like to tell her some good news. Just that once. She looked so
frail and old, and I had never noticed before how white her hair was.
My mother was very tender with grandmother. Every morning she would send
her three children, the twins and me, to kiss her, and when my father
came home at night she would send him to lean on the back of the big
chair, and look down at the closed Bible. Grandmother never took the
picture out when my father was there. She never even listened to the
people passing by outside. She would talk to him about other things in
which neither of them took much interest, until he would go away, half
sadly, half angrily.
"She is the most absurd woman who ever lived," he told my mother. "Here
is Frank winning laurels by the dozen, and, on account of her stupid
prejudice, she won't listen to his name. Does she expect to keep this
thing up forever?"
"She is thinking of him all the time," my mother said, quietly. "She
loves him."
"I know she loves him!" my father cried. "She loves him better than she
does me. I was always the one who didn't count! Always."
My mother laid her hand upon his arm and stopped him.
"Hush, Robert," she said.
Her eyes wandered over me sitting on my stool by the fireplace, and
passed to little brother Dick playing with his blocks.
"Who can judge a mother's heart?" she questioned, softly, and then
turned upon him with a demand that was almost wrathful. "Have you
nothing to be thankful for," she cried, "that you grudge him a thought
at Christmas time!"
My mother always took grandmother's part. She seemed to understand
grandmother better than my father did. Once I heard her say that the
curl in the Bible was like one of little Dick's. She laid it against his
soft hair, and it matched, color and curl, as if it had been cut from
his head. After that she was even kinder to grandmother than before.
Norah out in the kitchen was the happiest person in the house. Every
night she wrote home to Ireland, and sometimes she laughed and sometimes
she cried. I liked to hear about Ireland. I would climb upon the kitchen
table and watch her write, and listen when she read bits of her letters
to me. I knew all about Norah's people, and could call her brothers and
sisters, and even her cousins, by name. She was sending money in her
letter to buy her mother a new green plaid shawl for Christmas. She was,
also, going to buy the priest a pig. Norah was worried about the priest.
He gave away everything that he had to the poor of the parish, and went
hungry all the time. After much thought she had decided on the present
of a pig, as being a thing which the priest might keep for himself.
"Though they're that owdacious, Rhoda," she cried, in high wrath, "that
I'm thinking they'll take the pig, too!"
"What would they do with the pig, Norah?" I asked, anxiously.
"Sure, they might eat it!" she answered, with a dark frown.
"Norah, what if you were to put a blue ribbon about its neck?" I
suggested.
She went into fits of laughter and hugged me.
"To think that you've niver even seen a pig!" she cried. "To think of it
dressed up! The innocent!"
It was on that same night that with a great parade of secrecy she showed
me something hidden in the knife tray. It was a doll's hat made of blue
velvet, and trimmed with lovely white feathers, such as came out of the
pillows when Norah thumped them in the morning. Right in front there was
a big brass pin that shone like gold. Norah watched me while I examined
the hat, breathlessly. She seemed much pleased with my admiration, and
turned it around and around on one of her big fingers that I might
decide on the prettiest side, which was, of course, the one with the
brass pin.
"But whom is it for, Norah?" I asked.
"It's for a small frind of mine," she explained, with an air of deep
mystery.
It was very strange. The dolls and the picture-book, even the hat, were
all for somebody's little friend, never for me.
"I wonder what I'll get?" I said, weakly.
"Why don't you ask Santa Claus, dear?" Norah inquired.