So Miss Walters was seeing to it that Polly Haddon received food
regularly--"almost every night!" Of course Miss Walters had promised to
look out for the family, but the girls had hardly expected her to be so
generous.
And while they were still turning the revelation over wonderingly in
their minds, Polly Haddon called to them softly from the other room.
It was a bare little room into which they stepped--barer and poorer than
even they had imagined. And in the midst of a little iron bed lay Peter,
so pathetically white and emaciated that it tore their hearts to look at
him.
"Is he very bad?" asked Billie, turning to weary-eyed Polly Haddon.
"The doctor says he almost surely will die," answered the latter in a
toneless voice. "He has just one chance out of a hundred."
And as though speaking the doctor's name had brought him there, the big
man himself entered at that moment and the girls took that opportunity
to say good-bye.
"Poor little Peter," sighed Billie, as they walked slowly homeward. "I
suppose if he dies poor Mrs. Haddon will nearly die too."
"I wish there was something we could do," said Vi, frowning.
"I don't know what more we could do than we have done," said Laura
gloomily.
"Except," said Billie thoughtfully, her eyes fixed on the far horizon,
"find that invention of hers. I imagine that would make her so happy
that she might even persuade poor little Peter to live."
"Good gracious!" cried Laura, throwing up her hands in a despairing
gesture. "She's raving again, girls, she's raving again!"
Billie laughed, but her eyes were still very thoughtful.
But the holiday season was upon them and it was impossible for the girls
to be gloomy or unhappy for very long. They wished with all their hearts
that Polly Haddon and her pathetic little brood might be made happy and
prosperous once more, but even while they were wishing they could not
shake off the exultant thought that Christmas was coming. And Christmas
to most of them meant home and family and turkeys and cranberry sauce
and presents--oh, oodles of presents!
"No holiday quite as good as good old Christmas," observed Laura, gaily,
as she danced around with a package she had just been doing up in a red
ribbon.
"I'm with you on that," declared Billie. "Oh, do you know, sometimes I
can hardly wait until Christmas comes!"
"But you'll wait just the same," drawled Vi. "We all will."
"It's waiting that makes it worth while," declared Billie. "It's like
the small boy and the circus. Tell him in the morning that you will take
him in the afternoon and it doesn't amount to much. But tell him a month
ahead and he'll get a whole month's fun out of it before it comes off."
"All right, Billie, I'll tell you a secret," whispered Vi, with a
twinkle in her eyes. "About a year from now we'll have another
Christmas. Now is your time to start thinking about it." And then there
were giggles all around.
"I'll wait for one Christmas to be over before I think of the next,"
declared Billie.
Billie had asked Connie Danvers to come home with her for over the
holidays, but Connie, after, writing eagerly home for permission, had
had to refuse the invitation. Mrs. Danvers thanked Mrs. Bradley and
Billie, but there was to be a big reunion of the Danvers family that
Christmas and they had all counted on having Connie with them. If Billie
could come home with Connie for Christmas--but here Billie shook her
head decidedly, though the invitation was an enticing one. She knew that
her mother would certainly want her at home for the most wonderful day
in all the year.
And so when the time came, the classmates went their several ways after
many fond embraces had been exchanged--to say nothing of various
mysterious little green- and red-ribboned parcels.
The Christmas spirit is a wonderful thing, intangible, yet so real that
even the most hardened old reprobate will thrill to the magic of it. And
as these girls were neither hardened nor reprobates, they were kept in a
continual state of excitement and joyful anticipation for two whole
weeks before the great day arrived.
Ever since the opening of Three Towers Hall in the fall, the girls had
used their spare moments to sew on little mysterious things which were
immediately hidden upon the arrival of any of their fellow students, and
now these same pieces of needlework began to blossom forth in gay
be-ribboned boxes that passed between the girls in a continual stream.
Sometimes one would be found between the sheets of a girl's bed when she
jumped in at night and the touch of it would elicit a muffled shriek, to
be followed by hysterical giggles when the gift was pulled from its
hiding place and disclosed in all its glory to be admired and exclaimed
over by the girls who had not been lucky enough to bark their shins on
gifts of their own.
And sometimes another be-ribboned parcel would find its way into the
stocking of a lucky maiden while she slept or be discovered in an
out-of-the-way corner of her desk, nearly covered by books and papers.
And as the time drew still nearer, even interest in their studies
flagged, and the teachers, wisely forbearing to force them, entered into
the fun themselves, knowing that one could not study much while the
Christmas cheer was in the air.
The girls had fondly hoped that Teddy and Chet and Ferd would be able to
make the return trip with them, but as Boxton Academy did not close for
the holidays until the day after the official closing of Three Towers,
the girls were forced to give up the idea.
"Oh, well," Billie said resignedly, "as long as they get there for
Christmas it will be time enough."
The day of release came at last and found the three North Bend girls
doing a two-step of impatience on the station platform, waiting for the
train, which was already half an hour late.
"Goodness, but your bag looks stuffed, Billie," remarked Laura, stopping
before Billie's big suitcase whose bulging sides did look as though they
might burst at any moment and disgorge the contents.
"It has twenty presents in it," confided Billie, surveying her fat
property with a loving eye. "I only hope it holds out till we get home,
that's all!"
Then the train puffed around the bend and slowed up to the station. And
several hours later three very much flushed, very much excited, and very
pretty young girls popped off the train at North Bend and straight into
the arms of their doting families.
"Merry Christmas!" they cried to every one in general and no one in
particular. "Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Oh,
isn't it glorious to be at home!"
The boys arrived the next day, and they all had a great reunion at
Billie's home, where they exchanged presents and talked in hushed tones
of what they hoped that Santa Claus would bring them--to-morrow! For
this was Christmas Eve!
But the party broke up soon, and they all went to bed early so that they
could get up at six o'clock the next morning--at the very latest.
Oh, the fun of anticipating and the joy of Christmas Day. First of all,
the bulging stocking with its lumps of coal and pieces of carefully
wrapped sugar with really pretty things stuck in between.
Then the mad rush for the Christmas tree and the admiring exclamations
over its glittering beauty. And then--the opening of the gay,
be-ribboned boxes. The laughter, the joy, the tears, as each little
parcel disclosed something prettier or funnier or dearer than the last.
It was all so wonderful that it was a pity it could not have lasted
forever.
Then, after Christmas, one glorious, ecstatic week of fun that passed
like a day. There were dances and parties and sleighrides and so many
other festivities that there was hardly a minute of the day that was not
accounted for.
It was not till the week was almost over that the girls thought
penitently of the Haddons.
"I wonder," said Billie, as she turned over and over in her fingers a
ten dollar gold piece that had been a gift from an aunt, "what kind of
Christmas poor little Peter has had."
"Oh, for goodness' sake, Billie!" Laura replied a little impatiently,
"what is the use of spoiling all our fun by bringing up the unhappiness
of some one else? We can't help it if the Haddons haven't had as nice a
Christmas as we have. We certainly have done all we could."
But Vi had been eyeing Billie's gold piece, and suddenly she had a
bright idea all her own.
"Listen," she said, pulling out her pocket book and fumbling in it
eagerly. She brought out a glistening five dollar gold piece. "We all
got a little money in gold this Christmas. Suppose we do it up in a box
and leave it at the Haddons' door when we get back. We have enough money
to get along with for the rest of the term, anyway."
For a moment Laura looked a little undecided, but Billie jumped up, ran
over to Vi and hugged her.
"You're a perfect angel!" she cried. "That's just exactly what I was
thinking myself. Only I wasn't going to ask you girls. I was just going
to leave mine and say nothing about it."
"Oh, well," grumbled Laura, taking her own bright coin from its hiding
place and handing it over reluctantly. "If you girls are going to be
foolish I suppose I've got to be too. Only it's no joke," she added, in
a plaintive tone that made the girls giggle, "when you think of all the
sodas and candy it would buy!"
At last the long anticipated holidays were at an end and after a few
days of readjustment at the school, the classmates settled down to work
in earnest. For the rest of the semester was crowded with work and the
prizes were held out as a glittering bait to spur them on to fresh
endeavor.
Only once, after their return to the Hall, the girls found time to run
over to see the Haddons, hoping to be able to hide the generous gift
they had decided to make in some inconspicuous place where it would not
be discovered until they had had time to make their escape.
Polly Haddon seemed very glad indeed to see them, but she had no good
news to report of Peter. He was still very low, but the doctor, great
man that he was, was bending every energy to bring him through.
"But he will die," said the mother, despairingly. "There is so little
left of him now that I wonder that every breath he draws is not his
last. Oh, my little boy! My poor little boy! I'll not let him be taken
from me!"
They comforted her as best they could, and then Billie, to the
astonishment of her chums, began asking questions about the knitting
machinery model, the disappearance of which had so changed life for this
distracted woman.
"Was the model large or was it small, so that it could easily be stolen
and hidden away?" she asked, while Polly Haddon looked up at her with
something like surprise in her black eyes.
"It was large," she answered. "And rather heavy. It could not be easily
stolen, and neither could it have been hidden away in any small place.
That is why we wondered. But why do you ask?"
"I don't know," answered Billie honestly. "Perhaps it is just because I
would like to help you so much."
The woman reached over and patted her hand gently, but her eyes had
become listless again.
"You--everybody--have been so good to me," she said, tonelessly. "I
don't know why you have been so good--no one ever was before. But there
is one thing you can not do for me. You can not restore my poor
husband's invention, the loss of which caused his death. That would be a
miracle. And in these days no one is working miracles."
Mrs. Haddon left the room for a moment, and in that moment Billie
slipped the little box containing their three precious gold pieces
behind the alarm clock that stood on a shelf over the sink.
The woman returned before Billie had quite finished, but she was too
worried and anxious and unhappy to notice anything unusual. And the
little box was still safe in its hiding place when the girls took their
leave a few minutes later.
"Won't she be surprised when she finds it?" crowed Vi delightedly. "I
feel like Santa Claus."
"Well, you don't look like it," returned Laura, "Your face isn't red
enough."