The Surprise Book

II The Telephone Santa Claus

The shops were full of Christmas toys. There were Christmas greens and fir trees everywhere. Big ribbon-trimmed holly wreaths began to appear in front windows and everybody in the streets carried Christmas bundles. At this time, too, Mary Louise, who lived in the large and beautiful house with mother and daddy, and who was the only little girl they had, began to plan what she should ask Santa Claus to bring her.

Can anybody ever have too many toys? Mary Louise had a whole toy closet full. There were certain “very best toys” put by nurse on the top shelf for special occasions and there were countless “every day toys,” some of them a bit broken, but a great many of them quite whole and splendid, ever so much nicer than the toys that Mary Louise’s little friends had to play with. Still, Mary Louise wanted more toys. The list that she was now writing in her round, wiggly handwriting had already covered several sheets of large pad paper that nurse had given her.

Mary Louise sat at the big flat desk in the library. Her velvet dress was almost lost in the big arm-chair that was daddy’s favorite. Behind her was a cheerful fire on the hearth and it snapped and crackled joyously. Mary Louise’s blue eyes travelled about the room as if seeking fresh inspiration in the objects that they rested upon. She already had everything, but she wanted more, and so she put the pencil on the paper and continued the letter to Santa Claus.

“I want two new Teddy bears, the biggest you have, Santa Claus,” the pencil said. “I want one that is pure white like snow and another that is furry and brown. Both should have a squeak and if you have any that will growl, I’d like that kind, too.

“I want a white doll carriage lined with pink satin. They have them at Bunty’s Department Store, for I saw them once and they cost twenty-five dollars. I want a big doll to go in it. I want a whole wardrobe of clothes for it, a new doll cradle, and it must have a pink silk dress, too. I want a doll that will open and shut its eyes—one with real hair. It must talk, too.

“You can bring me, beside this, a boy doll with a sled and all the different kinds of clothes that a little boy ought to wear. I want a real toy automobile with a horn and a lamp—not the kind that is like a tricycle, because I already have one like that—I mean the real kind that runs with gasoline. They cost a hundred and twenty-five dollars, maybe a little more, but I don’t think you mind what they cost.

“I want a doll house that is nicer than the one you gave me before. It ought to be big enough for me to go into myself and I would like to have it built up in the garden like a real house. You can put it down by the greenhouses because it will be too big to bring into our house or carry down the chimney, I know. And then too I want—”

Mary Louise’s blue eyes considered the ceiling for a space of time: “I want a ring like mother’s—one with a blue stone in it,” she added. While she was trying to think of something else to ask for, the door of the library opened and in walked Mary Louise’s big daddy. He glanced for a minute at Mary Louise and he took up the telephone.

Mary Louise’s daddy was busy there several minutes. He watched Mary Louise nibbling the end of her pencil and he looked over her shoulder at the letter. As he did so, a smile crossed his face. “Writing to Santa Claus, Mary Louise?” he asked when he put down the receiver.

“I was wondering what to ask for next,” Mary Louise informed him. “I think I’ll ask for another pony. Nibbles is very nice, of course, but I’d rather like one that will trot faster. I think I’d like a white pony with a white kid harness and a white basket-cart.”

“You’re asking for a great many things, aren’t you?” daddy suggested. “Maybe it might be well to close the letter now. I’ll take it with me and mail it on the way down town—better address the envelope.”

“I might think of something more,” remonstrated Mary Louise. But she folded the six sheets of pad paper and put them into the envelope that daddy held out. Then she addressed it to Mr. Santa Claus, Santa Claus Land, Santa Claus Country, North Pole, exactly as nurse had told her.

Daddy put it into his overcoat pocket as Mary Louise had seen him put letters that he posted for mother. Then as the library door closed, she plumped herself down upon the thick black fur rug in front of the fire to look at a picture book.

She had not been there very long when the telephone bell rang. James didn’t come as he ought and Marie was upstairs, so Mary Louise incommoded herself by getting up from the rug to answer it. It had already rung three times and she was quite ready to scold Marie for not answering it. But she did not have the chance as Marie still did not come. So Mary Louise took up the receiver. “Hello!” she called.

“Hello,” came a cheery answer.

“What is it?” inquired Mary Louise.

“I want to talk to Miss Mary Louise Snow,” came the answer. “I’m Santa Claus.”

“Oh, I’m her!” gasped Mary Louise. “I’m—I’m her!” Never before had Santa Claus called Mary Louise up by telephone! Never had she spoken to him except for a few brief minutes at a Christmas party celebration.

“You are,” returned the voice. “Well, I’m glad you are at home, Mary Louise. There’s something very special that I want to talk about. It’s almost time for me to receive your usual Christmas letter. I suppose there are a great many things that you will want. Have you been a good little girl this year?”

“Sometimes,” Mary Louise faltered. “I have tried very hard not to have tantrums. Maybe I did once or twice but I tried not to say things when Marie would unsnarl my hair.”

“Have you learned your multiplication tables?”

“Up to sevens,” answered Mary Louise. “I think I can say them, but I can’t always remember what seven times nine is and I forget seven times twelve.”

“That sounds as if you had tried fairly well,” the voice of Santa Clause commented. “There are a great many Christmas presents that you would like, I suppose?”

“Yes,” returned Mary Louise, “Oh, yes, Santa Claus! I just wrote you my letter and I hadn’t quite finished it when daddy came in and took it to mail, so maybe I’ll write another later on. I didn’t ask for any games or things. I might send another letter when I think of what I want. If you like, I will tell you the things that I asked for in my first letter if I can remember them. I want a big, big doll that can talk, and it must have real hair and shut and open its eyes and it must have blue eyes and real eye-lashes too. I asked for a pink silk dress and gloves, I think—I can’t remember. And there were to be two big Teddy bears with a growl and a squeak both—very big bears, one pure white and the other furry and brown. I want a white pony, too, and a white cart and harness. The letter will tell you all about that—I forget all that I said in the letter,” she explained. “It was ’most six pages long of big pad paper.”

“That was rather long,” chuckled Santa Claus.

“Yes,” smiled Mary Louise, “but I think I forgot to say that I wanted gloves for the doll.”

“I’m not sure I can bring the gloves,” Santa Claus said. “I think, however, that I might get the doll to you. Would you rather have a doll than the two Teddy bears?”

“I want both,” replied Mary Louise. It seemed strange that Santa Claus should not understand a thing, as simple as that! “Teddy bears are very po-pular, I know, but I guess you must have ever so many and you’ve usually brought me nicer things than you’ve given other little girls that I know.”

“Well, maybe I can bring a Teddy bear, if there’s one left over, Mary Louise, but I’m not at all sure I can bring the pony this year, you know. I’m afraid I’ve got to cut down on your presents, Mary Louise. That’s why I called up. I have something very, very important to ask you. I want to know if you can help me? I’m trying to distribute my gifts more—more properly this year. You know, of course, Mary Louise, that there are ever so many little children that do not get Christmas presents, especially in war time.”

“Are there?” inquired Mary Louise. “I suppose it’s the children who have been naughty.”

“Oh, no.”

“What is it, then?”

“It’s not because I forget them or because they are naughty,” explained Santa Claus’ voice. “It’s because too many goodies go to the rich little children. Then the poor little children who would like toys—they have nothing.”

“Oh,” gasped Mary Louise. “Then, I suppose you’ve given me more than my share?”

“I’m afraid so,” answered Santa.

“Don’t the poor children have anything?”

“Sometimes I’ve given to the wrong people,” came the evasive answer. “You see, I have a great deal to do. I ought to have a lot of people to help me. How can one person do it all! Sometimes I don’t find the right children and I use up the things that grow in the Santa Claus Land and then I have nothing left after the long, long lists are made up for the very particular little rich children.”

“Oh, dear!”

“Yes, that’s why. Do you want to give up some of your things this year so that they can go to the poor children?”

Mary Louise reflected. “Which?” she asked. “Do you mean the doll or the pony or the automobile or the new doll house?”

“You have about a hundred dolls, haven’t you?”

“No,” corrected Mary Louise, “only just seventy-six, counting the little bits of china ones in the doll house. Without these there are about forty—but only twenty are big ones.”

“Well,” chuckled Santa Claus, “that seems to me a good deal too many. You could give up the doll, I think. Suppose that you were a little girl who had never had any doll ever!”

“Well, but I’d like the pink doll—”

“I’ll tell you what,” Santa Claus suggested. “You think things over. Maybe I’ll find that I can spare a pink doll for you, after all. But I want you to help me look out for some of the poor children this year and I want you to buy at least six presents out of your very own money. I want you to find some children that I ought to know about. I want you to help them for me. I’ll telephone you some addresses where there are little poor children and you must write these down and keep them and see that the boys and girls have proper Christmas presents. Will you do it?”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Santa Claus, gladly,” returned Mary Louise. “I have nineteen dollars in my bank, I think. My daddy will help me.”

“No, I don’t want your daddy to help you. It’s to be your very own money!”

“All right. I’ll not ask him. Of course I want to help you, Mr. Santa Claus. I’ll love to do it.”

“Well, good-bye. If I can, I’ll come on Christmas eve to your tree. You do the very best you can, Mary Louise, and invite the poor children to share your tree!”

The receiver was hung up at the other end of the line and Mary Louise stood bewildered before the library table where she had just written her long Christmas list. She stood there thinking it all over from beginning to end. She, she had been asked to help Santa Claus! It was a great distinction! Poor overworked Santa Claus had appealed to her as a very rich little girl who already had everything—and she mightn’t get the pink doll at all!

Then Mary Louise could not keep the secret any longer and she dashed up the stairs to mother’s room. She wouldn’t let mother go out of the room till she had told her the whole story and mother had a very important engagement and was all ready to go out in the car. Together they emptied Mary Louise’s bank and counted out exactly nineteen dollars and fifty-three cents. Mary Louise wanted to take it and start right out in the car to buy the presents, but with difficulty mother explained that she had better wait till Santa Claus sent in the names and she had found out what the children wanted.

And Santa Claus did telephone the names. Mary Louise was at dinner and James answered the telephone. Mary Louise felt badly that she had not been called, but there was no need to take her away from dinner; James had the addresses on the telephone pad, mother said. She was sure they were right.

Mary Louise wished daddy were home. It seemed to her that he would never come. As she felt sure she would need to buy a tree for the Christmas party, she got nurse to take her to that shop in the afternoon. But it is wonderful to think that a Christmas tree costs money! Before this, Mary Louise had never considered the subject. It was a very tall tree and it was an expensive tree. The charge for it ate into the nineteen dollars and fifty-three cents considerably. The things that went onto the tree must all be new. Santa Claus must see that Mary Louise had bought new ones to please him. So she bought ever so many-stars and birds, and balls of red, yellow, blue, green, white, silver, gold. And there was need of tinsel. If Mary Louise had had her own way, she would have spent almost all the nineteen dollars and fifty-three cents just on that tree without thinking of the consequences. Why, if she had, how could she have bought any presents for the poor children?

Next day, after having told daddy all about it, she wrote to the addresses that Santa Claus had given her. She wrote the letters in ink and used her very bestest best blue note-paper. All the letters were sealed with a Santa Claus sticker. It did take a great deal of time, I assure you.

The invitations were to Mamie and Johnnie and Toby Smith. They were to Tony Pettino and Lily Wicks and Benny Wicks who lived in a part of the city Mary Louise had never seen. Nurse said it was a very sad part of the city. When Mary Louise asked if she might go there and see it and see the children, nurse said she guessed Santa Claus didn’t know what he was talking about—she guessed not. Mary Louise insisted, but all in vain. Santa Claus had told her what the children’s ages were and left the gifts to Mary Louise’s selection.

When daddy had taken the letters to the poor children in his overcoat pocket to mail, Mary Louise fell to planning about the gifts. Only one little girl—all boys! How dreadful! But mother helped Mary Louise by suggesting things that little boys might like. From her own playthings Mary Louise selected her biggest doll for Lily and would have given her ever so many other dolls, had not mother thought that Mary Louise might add other little girls to her Christmas list of poor children and make the helping of Santa Claus more equally distributed among those who might otherwise be forgotten.

How fast the nineteen dollars and fifty-three cents did go—just buying the tree and the fixings, and the sled and the overcoat and mittens, and skates, and carts, and baseball bats! It was a tragic moment when Mary Louise suddenly discovered that Benny had been neglected and didn’t have as many gifts as the others. She consulted daddy, as there were no boys’ toys among her playthings and nothing seemed right. Daddy said—well, he said she might work and earn the money to buy Benny a present.

Never in her life had Mary Louise worked to earn money! “How can I earn money?” she asked.

Daddy thought. “If you will learn the seven times seven table, and the eight, and the nine and any of the others, I’ll give you a dollar for every one you can say perfectly. That’s very special, Mary Louise, because it’s Christmas, you know.”

Dear me! To think of having to sit down quietly in all the excitement of Christmas rush and learn horrid multiplication tables! If anything was work, that surely was!

But where there’s a will there’s a way and Mary Louise did it. She did it so well that she remembered all of the seven table perfectly. She also went on and learned the eight and nine table and the ten table—that was easy. Then, being quite enthusiastic, she tried hard at the others and mastered the twelve table after keeping at it a steady day. With the proceeds of these earnings, paid gravely by daddy, she was able to buy Benny a game, and when she went to buy it and found some little poor children right by the car that stopped at the entrance of Bunty’s Department Store, she was able to invite them then and there and go right in and buy presents for them. They needed woolen scarfs and mittens, and Mary Louise had found presents on the toy shelf among the toys kept for very special occasions. These would do for them.

When once Mary Louise had started to help Santa Claus, there was no knowing where she would end. Whenever she went out, she saw little children whom she was sure Santa Claus had forgotten because they looked so wistfully in at shop windows. Some of them nurse let her speak to and she added these to her list for the party. There seemed to be no table of thirteens to learn but daddy gave a dollar for every poem she could recite and Mary Louise knew ever so many and it was easy to learn short ones.

Oh, dear! Oh, dear! How the time did fly! Before Mary Louise knew it, Christmas Eve was there! There had been all the fun of fixing the tree and daddy and mother had helped. Mary Louise hoped Santa Claus wouldn’t disappoint her! She hoped that he surely would come! She was very much relieved when James came in and said that he had just been asked to deliver a message that came from Santa Claus over the telephone. It was a telegram and it said:

Will be at your Christmas party Christmas Eve eight o’clock.

Santa Claus.

After that, Mary Louise didn’t worry. She let Marie take the tangles out of her hair and help her into her very best pink silk dress and then she dashed downstairs to wait for all the guests who had been invited to come. She wanted to play games with them and she wanted to tell them all about Santa Claus and she hoped they would like to sing carols and dance around the tree—but most of all she hoped that they would like the presents she had arranged for them at Santa Claus’ suggestion. Oh, wouldn’t it be fun to see Santa Claus give out the big white Teddy bear and the big brown fuzzy bear and the pink doll and the cart and the skates and—and—

But here the doorbell rang and there was a scuffle of happy feet. It was Lily and Benny and Tony and all the rest. They were as happy as happy could be. Mary Louise greeted them all and then they beamed upon her almost as if she were Santa Claus herself, but I just wish you could have heard the shrieks of delight when the front doorbell rang and James ushered in Santa Claus himself! It was just too bad that daddy wasn’t there to see all the fun, though mother did hope that maybe he might be able to come later. Oh, what a good time they all did have! It was the very best and happiest Christmas that Mary Louise had ever, ever, ever had! It was wonderful!

Why, Mary Louise had such a good time that she forgot all about the pink doll till Santa Claus came and gave it to her, after giving out all the other gifts. It was the very doll that Mary Louise had wanted, but she asked Santa Claus to be sure he could spare it and that he had neglected nobody else to give her the doll. He said he guessed not—at least he hoped not, and then they sat on the sofa and ate ice cream together while Santa Claus joked and told stories. But he couldn’t stay very long, he said, and he had to go. Then just afterwards, alas, in came daddy, who might have met Santa Claus, if only he had got there a wee bit sooner! And the children danced around the tree and sang carols. And then they all wished Mary Louise a Happy Christmas and went home with arms laden with packages that they hugged tight and smiled and chuckled over.

After the children went, there was just mother and daddy left. They both kissed Mary Louise and vowed that they’d have another party again next year, maybe. Then daddy took Mary Louise upon his knee and put a little blue ring upon her finger. It was the kind of a ring that Mary Louise had wanted—one just like mother’s, only little. And mother told Mary Louise that her Christmas present was the doll house. It was coming as soon as possible. It was so big that one could play inside and it was to be placed right close to the garden greenhouses.

It was a Christmas that Mary Louise never forgot and couldn’t forget, even if it had not been for the blue ring and the multiplication tables!

III The Penny Bank Window

“That penny bank is to blame for it all,” said Billy Williams. “If it hadn’t been for the bank, nothing would have happened.” The bank was quite full of pennies that Billy had been saving carefully ever since his birthday. It had been given him then with nine times nine bright pennies to put into it. That was because Billy was nine years old.

One afternoon Billy took up the china bank and shook it to hear it rattle. Really, when the bank rattled, it made Billy feel tremendously rich. There was almost a whole dollar in the bank by now! But right here, out fell one dull penny and it rolled along the floor.

Billy let it roll till it stopped and the rattle of the bank seemed quite as big without the missing penny, so he suddenly decided to spend it—but for what? Why, just at that very minute, Billy felt hungry. Mother was off at work and would not be home to get their dinner till six. Billy was all alone in the rooms over the drygoods shop where he lived with his mother. He had eaten the bread and butter that she left out for his lunch and he was hungry. It suddenly dawned upon him that he wanted a lollypop and that he could find a nice, sweet, red one at the candy store around the corner. “All right!” beamed Billy. He put the dull penny in his pocket and raced off to get the lollypop.

If it hadn’t been for the bank, there would not have been the lollypop. If it had not been for the lollypop, there would have been no penny bank window. So, you see, the bank was responsible. Hardly had Billy bought the red lollypop and torn the paper off than he became quite absorbed in eating it—and he stepped down from the curb at the street corner quite without looking. It was a careless thing to do, for he didn’t see what was coming. What was coming happened to be an automobile that rounded the corner without tooting its horn!

The doctor felt Billy all over and pronounced him a very lucky boy indeed. “There might have been nothing left of you, my son,” said he. “But there happens to be a good deal left in spite of the fact that your foot got bumped into. You’ll have to keep quiet for a while; then you’ll be as good as new.”

“I suppose I mightn’t be so lucky another time,” grinned Billy, “but I guess I’ll be more careful in crossing streets. It’s the fault of the lollypop.” But it didn’t seem very lucky to be hurt and have to sit all day in a chair while mother was away. It was fearfully lonely. Even though Mrs. Finger from the next-door flat brought in magazines and two picture books; even though, after school, some of the boys came in to play checkers and dominoes and they stayed as long as they could when they really wanted to be outdoors with the other kids. Even though Billy learned to knit for the soldiers; even though he snipped pillows for the Red Cross, it was frightfully lonely till mother came home from work.

After he watched the children pass on their way to school one morning, his eyes roved across the yard where the leafless trees beyond shut off the view of the roofs of other houses. Below in the quiet street hopped sparrows. It was cold out there and they found nothing to eat. Billy bent forward and lifted the window. From his breakfast tray that mother had left, he took a slice of bread and tossed it far out. The sparrows darted for it and chirped and twittered. Billy laughed. “Don’t I wish they’d come up here to the window,” he sighed. “Guess I’ll try it an’ see if they will.” And there was one venturesome sparrow who did come! Billy was still watching him when the doctor came for his morning visit.

“If I were you, Billy Williams, I’d start a bird window,” the doctor suggested. “My little girl knows all about bird windows and she’s made several at home. The birds come every day. That foot looks as if it were doing well—suppose I ask my little girl to come in and make you a bird window?”

Billy said he’d like it jim dandy. It really was awfully lonesome. Nothing ever passed in the street. If there were birds to watch, it would be fun. “You won’t forget about the bird window,” he cautioned, as the doctor took up his grip to go. And the doctor said he surely wouldn’t.

Knitting progressed that day rather slowly. All Billy’s bread went into the street to the sparrows. But Billy had reached almost as far as the end of his gray muffler in the afternoon—and the boys had come in from school for a hasty, “Hello, kid, we’re glad you’re alive and gay! We can’t stop because—” Yes, of course, they couldn’t come every day but it was lonesome. Then there came a knock at the door and in came a little girl. She was as bright and cheerful as her crimson cloak.

“Hello,” she greeted. “If you’re the boy that ate the lollypop and got run into, I know all about you. I’m the doctor’s little girl. I came to help you make a bird window—bird windows are my specialty, you know,” she laughed.

“I’ve got some money, if you need to buy anything,” Billy announced. “I want a real jim dandy window! You’ll make me a nice one, won’t you? I like birds and animals, don’t you? I never had any pets but I always did want a bird or something. Maybe I can tame the birds when they come to my window. How do you fix it?”

“Well, you have to have a shelf of some kind—a box that is shallow will make that,” explained the doctor’s little girl. “I brought some nails and a hammer with me and I brought a lump of suet that the cook gave me. She sometimes won’t give it to me but this time I told her about you and she gave it without another word. She says she’s sorry for you and so’m I. I’m going to fix you up a splendid window.”

The doctor’s little girl thrust up the sash of Billy Williams’ window. “I’m awfully hard up,” she pursued, “or I’d have bought some sunflower seed to bring with me. You ought to have sunflower seed to sprinkle on your bird-shelf, for it brings the chickadees and the purple finches and ever so many other kinds of birds. The woodpeckers come for the suet and if you have peanuts, beautiful big blue jays will come and carry them off. Could I have twenty cents to buy sunflower seed, do you suppose? It costs ten cents a pound at the druggist’s.”

Billy showed her the penny bank and they shook it and shook it till there was really more money than twenty cents—“If it hadn’t been for the bank, I’d have been running about now,” Billy grumbled. “That bank’s got to give me something nice now anyhow!”

“Well, I’m shaking it to punish it,” laughed the doctor’s little girl. “I’m shaking it ever so hard. I don’t believe it likes to be shaken. You did have ever so much money in it. I don’t wonder that you wanted the lollypop!”

She slipped the money into her purse and went off to make purchases. Billy told her to get anything that the money would buy. He wanted a bird window that would be the best anybody could have. He waited anxiously for her to come back and when she came, her arms were full.

Billy had to laugh. She had a small evergreen tree that she had bought for thirty-five cents. She had two pounds of sunflower seed that had cost twenty cents—oh, ever so much seed comes for that price and it will last a long time, too. She had a shallow grocery box that was long and flat and without any cover. It was about the length of Billy’s window ledge. She had a package that came from the ten cent store. When it was undone, it showed two tin strainers at five cents apiece. Now, what did all this mean?

The doctor’s little girl rolled up her sleeves and put on Billy Williams’ mother’s blue gingham apron. First, she took the shallow grocery box and nailed it to the window ledge. Billy was surprised to see that the doctor’s little girl could drive a long nail almost as well as he himself!

“That’s the bird-shelf,” she explained. “You sprinkle sunflower seed on it every day. The birds can light on its rim. Some days you’ll have as many as twenty at a time. The chickadees are darling and the purple finches are beautiful and they sing too.”

She took a handful of striped gray and white sunflower seed and sprinkled it on Billy’s new bird-shelf. “You’ll have to wait a while till the birds find out about the shelf,” she said, “but it doesn’t take them long.” Then she took the little green fir tree and some stout cord. She tied the wee tree to one side of Billy’s blind. She tied its trunk at top and at bottom with several twists of heavy string. It made the window pretty—almost as if one were looking out over the top of a fir tree. The doctor’s little girl paused after her work and smiled at Billy. “I think that’s nice, don’t you?” she asked.

Billy nodded. “What’s it for?” he inquired.

“You tie bits of suet lumps to its limbs,” she explained. “The birds will light on the branches. Suppose you cut up the suet into two or three-inch lumps. Tie string around each and tie the lumps to the different branches. Can you do it?”

Yes, Billy could. The little girl had to help a bit, but not so very much.

“The strainers are to be tacked up. You put seed into them. When it rains, the seed doesn’t get soaked. Birds don’t like the soaked seed, you know.” The strainers went at the other side of Billy’s blind, opposite the fir tree.

It seemed as if the bird window was all done but it wasn’t! The doctor’s little girl took a good-sized tree-twig that she had brought, and nailed this against the window frame to make a perch. There were three perches made this way. She put them near the two strainers and tied suet to each perch. She said that the woodpeckers would come to these tree-perches; they didn’t come to the fir-tree because—well, woodpeckers couldn’t.

When all this was done, the doctor’s little girl took something else from her pocket. It was what Billy thought—bird-seed. It was a mixture of seed: millet, wheat, rape, cracked corn. She said that one could get it mixed at a grain store—eight cents a pound. If Billy wanted her to, she’d buy some and bring it to him tomorrow, but for today all was done.

It was twilight and almost dark by now, so they shut down the window. The birds must all have gone off to shelter. It was too late to expect anything of the bird window that day, but the doctor’s little girl promised to put a bit of suet on a bush under Billy’s window as she went home. It was to attract the birds and call attention to the window.

That night when mother came home, she thought the bird window a splendid thing. Billy dreamed of it all night. Indeed, he could not wait for morning to come. He woke at four o’clock and kept wondering if any birds would come. Then, because he was so drowsy, he fell asleep. He woke with a sudden start just at sunrise. Was it true?—Yes, yes! Knock—knock—knock! What kind of bird was it? There was a bird at the suet that was tied to the perch at the window. That must be it! Billy sat up in bed and bent forward to look. There on the perch that was highest was a black and white bird with a bright scarlet cap—it was brother woodpecker busy eating a breakfast of suet!

My, how exciting! Billy hardly dared to draw a breath, he was so afraid that the woodpecker would see him and fly away. Billy had hardly been in his chair near the window for more than a few minutes when there was a flutter of wings and a strange little slate-gray bird lit upon another perch and circled it, making queer, cheerful little noises. The bird had a black head and it seemed full of sociable curiosity. Billy wondered what it was. He did not remember ever to have seen a bird like it before! He resolved to ask the doctor’s little girl what it was. And then came wee little birds that called dee—dee—dee. They were the chickadees, little gray birds with black hoods. They seemed very tame. They came in a cluster and besieged the limbs of the little green fir tree. While they were there, came birds like sparrows, too. They were not sparrows though—some of them were rosy red in color. Oh, they must be what the doctor’s little girl had called purple finches! My, how exciting! How they quarreled! What fun! They were all over the bird-shelf, eating the striped sunflower seed in a very hungry way. When a big blue jay came screaming toward a near-by tree, they flew off in a hurry and the blue jay with his crest acock carefully reconnoitered the premises and decided to eat from the bird-shelf too. Oh, wasn’t it gay! When the doctor came, he quite agreed that it was jolly and he brought a bird book from his little girl and a package of the mixed seed that he laughingly called “medicine.”

It must have been medicine, for Billy’s foot, so the doctor claimed, grew well in a wonderfully rapid manner from this time on. And the time passed so quickly at the bird window that really the days went by before Billy had time to be lonely. The birds were great company. The same ones came from day to day—the little Miss Chickadees were the tamest. They really learned to take shelled peanuts from Billy’s fingers and to sit upon his warm hand while they ate. Brother Woodpecker and his wife came early. They needed no alarm clock to wake them. Billy heard the knock—knock before he was in his chair of a morning. Then the curious little nuthatches,—those strange little gray birds with the funny noise that sounded like quack, quack—they came, too, regularly. In snow and sleet and rain and sun, Billy had his bird friends. He had the doctor’s little girl, too, some days. They sat by the window and played games while she told him all she knew about birds. Then, when his foot got so well that the doctor let him go out, Billy’s first trip was to the drugstore to buy more sunflower seed with her.

Everybody came to see Billy’s window and the fame of it spread far and wide. Billy always declared afterwards that it had almost been worth the red lollypop accident, but it was the penny bank that really did it all, you know!

IV Angelina’s Valentine

The ten cent store was the first to show valentines. On the very first day of February, its windows were filled with bright red hearts and wonderful pictures made with lacy gilt papers. Some were of little birds and some were of little boys and little girls, and there was one that showed a sleek gray pussy-cat like the one that belonged to the Parillo family. Twice a day, coming to school and returning home, Maria, Louisa and Angelina passed by the beautiful valentines in that window.

“Maria,” begged Louisa, “let us go in—just a little minute! We need not go right home today!”

“Please,” wheedled Angelina. “Please, Maria, do let us!”

“Valentine’s Day is still a long way off,” returned Maria. “There is work to be done at home. I must see to the fire and wash and iron Angelina’s dress and then get supper. We cannot stop.” This was the way it happened every afternoon that the three little Italian girls passed homeward from school. It was Maria who had taken her mother’s place. She was the mother of the family now. Was it not she who cooked, washed, cleaned? Was it not she who with twelve years of wisdom governed Louisa and Angelina? Did not her father trust her to do the marketing? Maria with her duties at home was superior to valentines. Valentines were meant for children. Maria was duty bound, and so every day the three little Parillos marched past the ten cent store without stopping to go in. They lived in the three rooms of the brown tenement on the outskirts of the town. There was a corner to turn after one had passed by the ten cent store. Often Louisa and little Angelina hung back and peeped in at the valentines, waiting till Maria should reach the corner. Then they dashed after her lest she turn and scold, “Angelina and Louisa, come at once! There is no time to loiter. The fire in the stove will have gone out if you do not hurry. It will take time to build another and the rooms will be cold—come, I say!”

“We saw them,” Louisa would announce, almost out of breath, quite as if Maria were interested. “If I were rich and had money I would buy the valentine that is beautiful with red roses. I would give it to my teacher at school.”

“And I would buy more than one,” Angelina would smile. “There is one of a pussy-cat like ours. I would give it to Marguerite Santos and I would give her many others beside.”

“The idea!” Maria interrupted. “Marguerite Santos! The unmannerly child! She is a class behind you in school and you do not know her. The Santos think themselves better than the Parillos and they will not let her play with you—all because their father has a fruit store with candy and peanuts and a telephone!”

“It is because Angelina has the cross teacher this year that she wants to give valentines to Marguerite,” suggested Louisa. “Her teacher is not nice and Marguerite has a beautiful red plush cloak—”

“She smiles at me,” defended Angelina. “I like her. I would like to know her and play with her. I do not think she is at all unmannerly, Maria.”

But Maria was fitting the key into the home lock and she took her time to reply. As she hung over the kitchen stove to poke the slumbering fire, she gave it more than one dig. “The Santos child is unmannerly and I have seen it,” she insisted. “She did a most unmannerly thing only the other day as she passed by on the road here going homeward after school—”

Angelina’s eyes flashed. “Tell me,” she broke in, “tell me what it was, for I do not believe it!”

“She did! She said shoo, it was just like that: she said it to our good gray cat who was peacefully sleeping in the sun at the doorstone. It was very unmannerly to shoo our cat!”

Angelina sniffed. “That was nothing,” she defended, “I shoo cats, too. Marguerite likes cats even as I do, but I often say shoo, shoo! I do it to see the cat blink its eyes and look at me. Some cats will jump and run. One does not know what they will do—and I have seen Louisa—”

But here Maria put a hand over Angelina’s mouth. “I do not care what Louisa has done,” she admonished. “Go get me the soap that is by the basin in the bedroom so that I may wash the dress. There is no use to start a quarrel. There is no money to buy valentines at all, either for Louisa’s teacher or for Marguerite Santos.”

But if the subject of valentines subsided once in a while, it was sure to start again on the next day when Maria, Louisa and Angelina passed homeward by the wonderful windows of the ten cent store. There was never time to stop. Only a hasty glimpse did Louisa and Angelina snatch. Oh, the joy of going into the store to see the piles of candy on the candy counter! Oh, the happiness of gazing at bright colored ribbons and wonderful toys! And the valentines that lay on the counter in hundreds, what fun to see them, even though one could not spend money to buy any! Alas!

But it happened that Angelina had received a good mark in spelling on the day before Valentine’s Day and Maria wished to reward it. “I promised,” she said. “It is true, Angelina—tomorrow, on Valentine’s Day, you and Louisa may stop at the store and go in while I go home. You may stay till the sun sets, but no longer. Today I must hurry home and I need you to help with the sweeping.”

The gray cat was on the doorstep in the sun as they reached the brown tenement by the roadside. Angelina lifted it in her arms and Maria turned the key in the lock. They were home again. Tomorrow would be the great day to visit the store and see all of its splendor. That night she dreamed of beautiful valentines and of Marguerite Santos’ red plush cloak.

The morning of Valentine’s Day dawned with pink and gold happiness of sunlight. On the way to school, Louisa and Angelina sang and when school was out they dashed into worn brown cloaks and caps to wait for Maria, who took her time gathering books and pencils for home-work at night. “Hurry, hurry!” they implored. “It is four o’clock. The sun will set by half past four and there will be no time to see the valentines!” And so Maria hurried. At the ten cent store they left her—joy!

Hand in hand they pressed into the crowd. “See, Louisa!” and “Look, Angelina!” they called to each other every minute. But it was Angelina who caught the first glimpse of the valentines. There at the counter was the beautiful red plush cloak of Marguerite Santos bending over the valentines!

Together they pressed past the other children who stood behind that beautiful red plush cloak and they craned their necks to see the valentines as Marguerite Santos, absorbed in the selection of the most beautiful one to be had, turned them over one by one. But there was no envy in the heart of Louisa and Angelina as they watched. It was happiness that was there—of course, if one had been rich like Marguerite Santos—but how nice it was to be where they were! How gay the music of the pianola sounded! Wasn’t it amusing to watch Marguerite Santos buy valentines! But right here she took up the one of the gray pussy-cat!

Angelina nudged Louisa. “See, see!” she whispered. “She likes the pussy-cat. It is not true what Maria said. She is not unmannerly at all. I would like to speak to her and ask her to come to play with me—she has smiled at me many times when I have met her—”

But Louisa shook her head hard. “You must not speak,” she insisted. “Maybe she would not like to have you see what it was that she bought.”

So, when Marguerite Santos wedged her way out of the crowd, she saw neither Angelina nor Louisa. She held her valentine of the pussy-cat tight in its big white envelope—tight upon the front of her red plush cloak. She was concerned with the care of it, lest some rude person bump into her and injure it.

Louisa and Angelina waited a moment and then drifted out of the door after her. The sky was all red and gold with the sunset. It was like some wonderfully bright valentine card, so beautiful! As they turned the corner in the dusky twilight and came upon the doorstone of the brown house that was home, there knelt the beautiful red plush cloak of Marguerite Santos! She was laying the valentine upon the step and was about to knock and run away!

It was Angelina who caught her as she turned. Louisa was lagging behind, with her eyes on the first evening star that flamed white in the sky.

“Is it really for me?” asked Angelina. With an arm around the beautiful red plush cloak of Marguerite Santos, she smiled at the big white envelope that lay unopened on the stone. “I guess that it is a picture of a pussy-cat like ours,” she beamed. “I have no valentine to give you but I have always liked you, Marguerite, and I have wanted you to like me. Could I not give you a share of our gray cat as a valentine, maybe? I know that you, too, like cats, though you have none.”

But here, Louisa caught up and the door opened.

“It was very mannerly of you to bring Angelina the valentine,” spoke Maria. “I thank you. Will you not come in and play for a while? It must be lonely to have no brothers and sisters. We would like you for our friend, even though we have no candy or peanuts or telephone. Angelina has for a long time wanted to know you, Marguerite Santos.”

V Buttinski, Peacemaker

Nobody would have expected it of them. They were the very best of friends, and Miss Allen, who was the grade teacher, used to call them David and Jonathan.

When mental arithmetic and English classes had head and foot, Laura and Mary made it a point not to know answers of questions that came to them. So they kept together at the foot of the class, side by side. Miss Allen never said a word to them or to anybody else, but she understood. Then the classes stopped having head and foot. But she let them sit side by side. Even their desks were together.

Mary was always ready to laugh at a joke. Laura couldn’t even see one a mile off. That was how the trouble started and how little Betty Peters started to play peacemaker. Everybody called Betty Peters “Buttinski” because she was always as interested in other people’s affairs as she was in her own—perhaps a little too much interested. She would interrupt conversations and ask “What’re you talking about?” Some of the girls resented it.

It was in beginning German that Betty Peters sat next to Mary. Laura took French and wasn’t in the class at all. She did not know one word of German from another. It used to be one of Mary’s jokes to pretend that she could speak fluently so she would rattle off a long string of vocabulary with conversational intonations to make Laura believe she knew a great deal. Of course, Laura only half believed, though she didn’t understand the joke. Sometimes she really thought that it was a German conversation and she didn’t like to have Mary talk German to her because she did not study it and couldn’t understand. Betty Peters always helped Mary. She used to enjoy the fun.

But one day, it ceased to be fun. Laura always was a little jealous of Betty Peters. She used to wait at the door of the German room with Mary’s lunch-box because she herself had a study-hour just before recess and she could be there as soon as Mary’s class was dismissed. Then Mary would always call out to Betty Peters a long list of German words that meant nothing and Betty Peters would reply. On the memorable Friday when this stopped being amusing, Laura was there waiting when the two came out. Mary had been full of mischief that day. “Promise not to tell—I’m going to have a joke,” she whispered as the class filed out into the hall, Betty behind her.

Laura caught the words and saw Betty’s nod of promise. Then Mary launched out, “Die, der, der, die; das, des, dem, das,” she jabbered to Betty. Of course, everybody knows that this is feminine and neuter declension of the definite article, but Laura thought it was something confidential and jumped to the conclusion that it was a personal remark about her.

She turned upon her heel and walked straight off downstairs. Mary simply hooted with laughter and ran after her, but the harder she and Betty Peters laughed, the more indignant Laura grew. She put Mary’s lunch-box down upon a bench and left it and pushed Mary’s hand off her shoulder. Mary fell back to get the box. “You’ve done it!” declared Betty Peters.

“Nonsense!” replied Mary. “She ought to know I was just joking. Maybe she’s merely pretending to be angry.” But she wasn’t at all sure.

“I think she is really angry,” insisted Betty Peters.

“Well, what could she think I said?” inquired Mary. “I didn’t say anything at all.”

“Perhaps she thought you said something about her—”

“She ought to know me better,” declared Mary. Then she carried her lunch-box to the lunch-room with Betty Peters. There was a crowd there. At first they did not see Laura but when they did, there was no chance to reach her in the crowd. “She did that on purpose,” suggested Betty Peters. Mary called to her, but either Laura didn’t hear or pretended not to, even though some of the other girls spoke to her and Betty Peters was sure Laura must have been aware of the calls. Such a thing as a quarrel between Mary and Laura had never before happened. Nobody knew what to make of it. Mary was mortified and determined to reach Laura so as to explain and make it all right, but when Betty Peters and Mary reached her, Laura walked right in the opposite direction. Mary called after her that it was only a joke, but Laura was icy. So at last, Mary decided that Laura would have to find out for herself what “Die, der, der, die and das, des, dem, das” meant. “Two can play at that game,” she snapped, as Laura disappeared. “If she won’t speak to me, neither will I speak to her!” Betty Peters ate her lunch in the lunch-room but Mary took hers out into the garden. It was snowy there and she was all alone. It couldn’t have been a very nice place to eat lunch! Where Laura went, nobody knew. She was busy studying all the last part of the recreation period. When Mary came in as the bell rang, she never moved. Her back was twisted around toward Mary’s seat. Everybody in the class noticed it, but Miss Allen said nothing. Perhaps she thought that it would pass off by and by.

But the next week they did not speak either! It was worse. Mary had to rub the chalk off the blackboard with her handkerchief because Laura, who was next to her, had the blackboard eraser; and Laura kept it on her side and Mary wouldn’t ask her for it. Miss Allen took Mary’s book to give to a visitor who came into history class, but Laura wouldn’t pass half of hers over to Mary. When Miss Allen saw that she said, “Laura!” in a sharp voice. So Laura put the book upon the desk between them and it stayed there. Nobody turned its pages.

At lunch hour, Mary avoided Betty Peters. Laura disappeared and Sallie Overton found her eating her lunch off on the studio stairs—away from everything. Mary ate hers alone in the cold garden. It must have been that Miss Allen realized how silly they were behaving, for she tried to set matters right. She found out from Betty where Mary was and she put on her long blue cloak and went into the garden after her. What happened in the garden, nobody knew, though some of the girls watched out of the windows and saw Miss Allen talking and Mary using a handkerchief. They came in together. Sallie Overton told Miss Allen where Laura was and the class thought Miss Allen had talked to her, too. It was circulated that Miss Allen had asked them to meet each other and shake hands. But neither of them seemed to have done it, for in class things went on as on previous days. It seemed worse than a Chinese puzzle to solve the difficulty. Some of the girls talked to Mary and some talked to Laura and begged them to make it up. Both declared the other wrong and refused to take the first step. “Please,” begged Betty Peters, the Buttinski. “Please, Laura.” But still nothing happened. Both seemed to feel dreadfully. Both were about as blue as Blue Monday. Miss Allen took time from study hour and talked to the class about friendship and what it meant in terms of self-sacrifice, generosity and loyalty. Both Mary and Laura wept, but still, after dismission, they did not shake hands or speak. And both walked home alone every day.

Miss Allen was correcting papers at her desk as Betty Peters walked down the aisle to go home. Betty Peters seemed as depressed as Miss Allen. Indeed, she almost acted as if she had been to blame for the whole thing and she tried and tried to get Mary to let her tell Laura what “Die, der, der, die and das, des, dem, das” meant. Mary wouldn’t let her tell. She said that Laura could find out herself.

“Well, Betty?” smiled Miss Allen, looking up from the papers she was correcting. It seemed to Betty almost as if Miss Allen were thinking of Laura and Mary. It sounded so.

“It seems a dreadfully hard problem to solve, if two halves are separated,” suggested Betty Peters, thoughtfully. She stopped beside Miss Allen’s desk and watched the blue pencil that was marking a cross upon Laura’s written work.

“Do you mean David and Jonathan?” inquired Miss Allen, with a twinkle in her eye as she looked at Betty.

Betty nodded.

“How did they go home?”

“On different sides of the street.”

“Oh.”

“It’s really dreadful, isn’t it—and they were such friends!”

“I asked them to overlook the mistake and make it up without explanations—and with them, if need be.”

“But they won’t do it. The girls have tried to help and I’m sure I have, too!”

“Well,” smiled Miss Allen. “What’s at the bottom of it, do you know, Betty?”

Betty nodded. Then Miss Allen pushed aside the papers, “Frankly,” she said, “I don’t know what to do. They’re both such splendid girls but neither one of them will be the first to make an apology. They’re very childish, aren’t they?”

“It’s just a misunderstanding,” explained Betty. “I can tell you. It was all because Mary made a joke and Laura thought it was a personal one. Mary said ‘die, der, der, die and das, des, dem, das.’ Laura thought she said something about her to me. Mary wouldn’t let me explain. She said if Laura thought that, she’d have to find out what the words meant herself.”

“What sillies!” declared Miss Allen. “I suppose they’ll keep this up eternally. I’ve tried all manner of ways to stop it; have you anything to suggest, Betty?”

Betty pondered. “I was wondering,” she mused, “whether if you counted three and told them both to speak when you came to that, they’d speak?”

“I never thought of that,” laughed Miss Allen. “We’ll try it.”

Next day, she did. She made both of the girls stand and she told each one to say, “I’m sorry” when she counted three and came to the end. It really was a disgrace to the class to have the quarrel go on and on. The girls thought it horrid. But when Miss Allen said, “Three,” all was silence. The two stood up in the class and neither said a word! The plan did not work! “Speak!” ordered Miss Allen—but there was nothing but silence.

But Miss Allen was not going to give up, “Mary,” said she, “you may decline for me the feminine and neuter of the definite article in German.”

Mary looked surprised but she said it, “‘die, der, der, die, das, des, dem, das.’”

“Did you ever hear anything like that before?” asked Miss Allen of Betty Peters.

“Yes,” replied Betty.

“Did you?” asked Miss Allen of Laura.

Laura said she thought so.

“Was that what Mary said on the memorable day when she came out of German class?”

“I think so,” replied Laura, a little ashamed.

“Was it, Mary?”

“Yes,” said Mary, loudly. She was glad to say it, too. Some of the girls giggled.

“Take out your English books for grammar, oral,” commanded Miss Allen. “Betty Peters, you may conjugate the verb ‘to love.’”

So Betty began: “Present tense, indicative mood: I love; thou lovest; he loves; we love; you love,” and then with her eyes upon Mary and Laura she ended, “they love.”

Everybody in the class laughed for there was Laura with her arm around Mary and both of them were laughing and crying, too.

“Buttinski did it,” smiled Miss Allen. “I hope nobody else in this class will have a quarrel. Now, we’re going to forget that there ever was such a thing, aren’t we, Laura and Mary?”

Together they both said, “Yes, I’m sorry!”

VI Angelina’s Bird-Flower

Where the little brown bird came from, neither Maria nor Louisa nor Angelina knew, but he doubtless lived near, for he came every day to the window of the old brown house where the little Italian girls lived, lonely without their mother. It was a year since she had died and the days were long for Maria, Louisa and Angelina after their father left for work at six in the morning.

Maria was always up at five. In the early winter, mornings are dark and it takes courage to get up in a cold room and light the lamp and make the fire and cook breakfast. Maria was but twelve. She took her mother’s place as best she could. She helped her father. She tended Louisa and Angelina and if it had not been that the aunts took the two babies, she would have cared for them gladly too.

Angelina and Louisa were, for the time, Maria’s “babies.” She let them play and she did the work herself. She had little time for amusement; it was always either school or housekeeping for her. There was breakfast and clearing up in the morning; washing and cleaning after school; dinner-getting and cleaning again at night, beside a hundred and one little things that a mother must see to, mending, tidying, straightening all things. At seven, the father came home tired. Then there was bed in the cold rooms and a new day of responsibility. Louisa and Angelina wore washed and ironed hair-ribbons and well done-up gingham dresses, mended as best Maria could. They took off their shoes and stockings when at home, to save the wear, and did in general as Maria told them except for the little brown bird. They would save their crusts for him in spite of Maria’s scoldings.

He came first on one of the lonely mornings before school time, when Maria was busy with housework and Louisa and Angelina were thawing the frosted window pane with their warm breath to look out at the chilly snow-bound road that led past the old brown house. Louisa had thrown out a crust because she had not wanted to eat it and there—why, there was a little brown bird tugging at it in the snow!

“What’re you two laughing at so?” demanded Maria, looking up from dishwashing. “Take a-hold somebody and help here! I can’t take time to stand by the window an’ laugh at nothing when there’s work to be done!” But, dish-rag in hand, curiosity got the better of scolding and she peeped over Louisa’s shoulder and saw the little brown bird and his breakfast.

At first she smiled, too, then she frowned. “Louisa,” said she, “you are bad. It is you who threw out the crust of bread!”

There was no denial.

“And when bread costs money—and we cannot get enough to buy Angelina new shoes!”

“I would rather the bird had the crust,” defended Angelina. “The holes are not yet very big.”

But even as mother would have done, Maria watched the family purse, and Louisa ate crusts under her elder sister’s vigilant eye each meal time. But there were always very big crumbs at Angelina’s plate and medium sized ones at Louisa’s. When it came time to clear the table, Louisa and Angelina, with a glance at each other, picked these up quickly and threw them out on the snow. It was exciting. Nobody knew when Maria would call either little sister to account: “Louisa, give me those crumbs. I will save them and make a pudding.” Always there seemed to be breakfast for the little brown bird in spite of this. He came regularly. Sometimes Louisa and Angelina had to pick the crumbs from the coal-hod where Maria’s over hasty housekeeping threw little ones; but always, always, always, they kept watch for the little brown bird. And the mornings before school time were less lonely because of his cheer. Indeed, as the days went by, he became very tame—tame enough to hop close to the pane as Louisa and Angelina breathlessly watched.

The mornings gradually grew lighter and the days passed on to the latter part of February. Louisa and Angelina talked much of their pet. Where did the little brown bird live? Could they make him so tame he would come upon their hands? Would he learn to eat from their fingers? Perhaps there might be a nest with little bits of brown birds somewhere near the house next spring! Then, Angelina and Louisa might tame these perhaps! Maria, busy with housework, had no time to answer such questions. She merely sniffed.

“You two are forever talking about that little brown bird,” she said, “I have to think of other things: I think whether there is wood for the fire and whether there is enough food in the house. You, too, Louisa and Angelina, you have mouths to feed!”

It was true. There was not always enough. Louisa and Angelina knew it. They could well understand the little brown bird’s joy at finding plenty to eat. It was good to have a hearty meal. Then one day, before it was time to go to school, Louisa and Angelina missed the little brown bird! “Did you see him this morning?” they asked each other. “Maybe he has gone away and is making a nest.”

But the next day came and no little brown bird appeared. Another morning passed and still no little brown bird! On their way home from school that day Louisa whispered to Angelina that she was going to hunt for him. And when Maria was busy, they crept out of the door and, barefoot in the cold mud, they searched for nests by the roadside bushes.

They found none.

The search led them hither and thither on and on up the hill near the brown house and toward a cluster of cottages where the Irish immigrants had formed a colony. Maria, shaking her finger violently, as she did when she wished to enforce a command, insisted always that neither Angelina nor Louisa should make friends or play with the Irish children there. “They throw stones—they are badly brought up,” she declared.

Up to this time, good little Angelina and Louisa had never come so close to these other tenements. But they wandered closer in their search for the little brown bird. It was Angelina who first spoke to the little boys that they met flinging stones there. “Have you seen a little brown bird?” she asked. “It might be our little bird that we have lost. Have you seen one anywhere, perhaps?”

But the little boys simply made up faces and stuck out their tongues. No, they had not seen any brown birds to tell of—nor did they care. They would have thrown stones, had not a little smile from Angelina prevented it. Angelina felt sorry for the bad little boys who were rude.

Louisa drew her away. “Come, Ange, we will look in another place,” she urged. “If he has been hurt we will find him, maybe. I do not think they have hurt him,” she comforted. But in her heart she feared it.

So they pattered back toward home through the black chilly mud, searching the roadside. Quite suddenly Louisa came upon him lying limp and cold under a tree by the way. He would never twitter or chirp again. He would never come to the window or eat from their fingers or build a nest in spring. The two little sisters sat there by the roadside and cried and then they carried the little brown bird home and cried some more. Maria stopped her work and tried to be comforting. There was little to say. She did not scold very hard about the trip abroad in bare feet.

They put him in the beautiful box that was Maria’s treasure—a box with a picture on its cover, a beautiful picture all red roses. They took him to a sunny spot near the roadside and gathered last autumn’s leaves to cover him. One could see the place from the window.

The mornings that came after the little brown bird went away, Ange and Louisa tried to enthuse over paper dolls that father had brought them, cut from a Sunday newspaper—but somehow they always drifted toward the window, even though they knew he would never come again.

And so time passed, long mornings, school and home-coming. It began to be spring. Grass came by the roadside bushes that showed wee buds to break into soft colors. Maria left the kitchen door open of a morning and Angelina sat on the stone before the doorway, thinking. Her eyes rested for a moment upon the place where they had placed the little brown bird under the leaves. She called to Louisa, “Oh, come—come! Let us see what the bird-flower is! We put him under the leaves in the earth, and there is grown from him a flower! It is a bird-flower—a bird-flower, Louisa!”

They ran out to look at the little flower that grew over the spot where the little brown bird had been. “Is it so, Ange?” asked Louisa, willing to believe.

Full of excitement, they ran back to busy Maria. “Our little brown bird is grown to be a bird-flower,” they cried. “Come, Maria, come quickly and see! It is such a pretty flower, all like a star and white!”

Maria shook her head. “There are no bird-flowers,” she declared. But she followed them out to the sunny spot where the grass was growing green over the dead leaves and she thought it a beautiful flower. She let Louisa and Angelina talk of their bird-flower, but she smiled to herself.

But why should not little birds who have been stoned waken, with the flowers, in the spring sunlight? Louisa and Angelina believed in their bird-flower and they wondered, too, if all spring flowers came from little birds. At night when their father came home, they asked him. At first he laughed and did not understand. Maria explained.

“They are children,” she smiled, “and they think a bird is like a bulb or seed. They cannot understand the difference. They watched the little brown bird all winter, and Louisa gave it crusts that she ought to have eaten. And they found it by the roadside where the rude children up the hill had killed it. We put the little bird under the leaves there and now that a flower has come in the place, they call it their bird-flower, father!”

Then he put a hand on each little head. “My little girls,” he said, “is it true—then call it your bird-flower if it comforts you. I will tell you what I think: they say that there are no little birds in heaven, for their souls do not live, they say. Yet I know there are children up there and that wherever the children are there must be birds to sing to them—even the angel children would want them. And I know that your mother would miss them, too, were they not there.”

In the stillness they heard a song sparrow trill from the bushes on the hillside.

“I would like to have our little brown bird sing to our mother,” Angelina suggested softly.

“He might sing of us,” whispered Louisa.

But Maria was still.

“There are many birds left, my children. You too should sing and not be sad, for that is what is best. We will make happiness and brightness, you, my Angelina, and you, my Louisa. We will make a garden there in the place where you have found your star flower! I will get seeds. We will take Maria from her kitchen to help and there will be plenty to do in the early mornings before school then. Such weeds as you will have to watch for, to care for the beautiful flowers that I will plant! Ah, then your mornings will be so glad among the flowers!”

The three little girls smiled.

And the garden that grew up around Ange’s bird-flower all three of them called the garden of the little brown bird.

VII Marjorie’s Mystery

Upon Marjorie’s list of good resolutions, not-to-be-too-curious was a failing hard to remember and conquer. In the first place, Marjorie was very wide awake. She always saw everything that was happening. In the second place and in the third place as well as the tenth and thirteenth place, Marjorie couldn’t bear not to know everything that she wanted to know. Sometimes, she went quite too far in her attempts to find out. At any rate, Daddy and Mother and Mark and Dotty made fun of the failing and Marjorie, when she stopped to think twice—which wasn’t so very often—tried hard to overcome unnecessary curiosity. Sometimes it is a fine thing to be curious and again, it’s bad. But upon a very memorable day in May, once upon a time, something mysterious came to pass at Marjorie’s home and this is to be the story of The Great Mystery of Curiosity, Unanswered.

It happened this way: Daddy was away; Mark had gone off since Friday to make a visit at a boy friend’s just out of town a little way; Dotty had also gone away. She spent the night with the little girl next door and had not yet come home. It was a Monday morning and May Day.

Marjorie had prepared a May Day basket for her special friend, Mabel. She had been out in the woods on Sunday afternoon and as soon as she was through breakfast, the bowl of May Day flowers came out—and in arranging them they scattered all over the floor as Marjorie selected the unwilted ones to put into Mabel’s basket.

“Look out,” warned Mother. “Somebody came last night when you were abed. Somebody may be down to breakfast by and by—better pick up, Marjorie! We don’t want a disorderly floor.”

“Oh, did Daddy come home?” questioned Marjorie.

“No, not Daddy.”

“Who?”

“Oh, just somebody who wants to keep quiet this morning and rest.”

Wasn’t that enough to make a person curious! Of course it was! Who? Who could it be? “Is it uncle or aunt?” she insisted. “Who’s ‘company’?”

But Mother only smiled. “You’ll find out sometime,” she said. “Not now. If I told you, you’d run right up to Mark’s room and the person who came last night felt sick and mustn’t be disturbed.”

Hump! The flowers were pushed into the paper May basket and she began to pick up the leaves and buds that had fallen on the floor. “I think you might tell me,” she begged. “I want to know who came.”

But Marjorie got no answer. She knew it wasn’t much use to continue to tease, but she resolved to find out who it was.

At school the question still pursued Marjorie. Would Mark come home and want his room and, if he did, would he know who was there? After school she dashed home and burst through the back door and up the back stairs. Mark’s door was closed. There was a paper pinned upon it. It was Mother’s writing and it said, “Please don’t disturb.”

So Marjorie passed by the door. She went into Mother’s room and found Mother sewing. “Isn’t company ever going to wake up?” she asked. “Am I never to know who is there?”

But she received no answer only a smile.

Dotty was home now. Dotty didn’t know who was in Mark’s room, but she wasn’t curious about things. She was occupied in cutting out paper dolls, sitting on the floor in the sun beside the window.

“What happened at luncheon?” asked Marjorie of Dotty who went to kindergarten and came home at noon. “Did anybody talk in Mark’s room when Mother took up the tray? Did you hear anything?”

Dotty shook her head.

Deary me! Oh, dear! And the door was closed! Marjorie decided to walk by it again. She waited and she listened. She heard nothing at all—no, not a sound, not a sound! Then the telephone bell rang and she ran down to answer it. The telephone call was from Mabel. Mabel had been at school and she wanted to know if Marjorie had solved the mystery.

“Who came? Who is it?” she asked.

But Marjorie did not know. Mabel suggested that it must be Marjorie’s aunt who came from the West. “Probably that’s it,” she said. “Why don’t you make a May basket and go tie it on the door and—and say something. You could tell from the voice, if it answered you, whether it was your aunt or not.” That was a good thought. Marjorie set about making a paper May basket. She heard Mother go up the front stairs and cross to the back where Mark’s door was. Then, having made the basket, she decided to try Mabel’s suggestion. Mother went into Mark’s room, came out and went downstairs again. Marjorie waited.

Then she went upstairs softly. Mother was in the living-room with Dotty now, playing and helping her cut the dolls out of a big magazine sheet. They seemed occupied.

May basket in hand, Marjorie tiptoed toward Mark’s door and saw that the paper had been taken off it. She hung the May basket on the knob and knocked. There was no answer. “May I come and bring you a May Day gift?” she softly suggested to the closed door.

But right here, who should appear but Mother! “I’ll take the basket in for you, dear,” she smiled. Marjorie was quite aware of the wicked twinkle in her eye. “Dotty wants you to help her downstairs,” she said.

So downstairs went Marjorie. She stopped half way as Mother opened the mysterious door and passed in with the May basket. She saw nothing. She heard nothing. Now, wasn’t that just dreadful! Marjorie’s curiosity was much bigger than ever but she went down to help darling little sister, Dotty, cut paper dolls out of the fashion sheet.

But while she cut for Dotty, she kept wondering and wondering and wondering. She decided that she’d write a note upon some paper and slip it under the door and say on the paper:

Who are you, mysterious stranger? Please answer? Are you Auntie? If you are Auntie, let me know, please. I want to see you. If you are Mother’s friend, Miss Phelps, please tell me? Mother says you want to be quiet, so I can’t come in, but I want to know who you are—please, please put an answer under your door for me.

Marjorie.

That was what she did do as soon as the last doll had been cut out. At the time, Mother was busy in the kitchen, getting tea. Dotty was still playing with the dolls. Marjorie slipped upstairs and tucked the paper beneath the crack. As she came to the end of the paper, she gave it a wiggle to attract attention. She hadn’t dared to speak again as Mother said the mysterious person must not be troubled.

As the paper disappeared under the door Mother appeared! She came bringing a napkin and tray with something hot upon it. She was going to take this into Mark’s room.

“Marjorie,” she reproved. “Are you still so curious? Well, run away now.”

Marjorie waited in the hall and heard Mother speaking—but nothing else! She was almost ashamed to pursue the mystery so openly but when Mother at last came out bringing the tray and the empty dishes, she laughingly handed Marjorie an answer to the letter. It said in strange scrawls that betrayed nothing of who had written them:

Please, I feel sick. You’ll see me sometime when I am better. I just want to sleep now.

The Mysterious Mystery.

Marjorie laughed and then she frowned. Now, why couldn’t that person-whoever-it-was have signed a name! Why not!

“How long before the person in Mark’s room will be well?” she asked.

“Oh, soon,” replied Mother. “I hope very soon.”

“What time? Will I know who it is by tea-time?”

“Maybe.”

“Oh, deary me!” Marjorie sighed. “Well, I’ve tried every way I can to find out,” she said. “Perhaps I’d better forget about it. I’m going to do my home-work for school so I can forget about it.” And she sat down at the library table with pencil, paper and books. But still, nothing happened!

Then it grew twilight and the light was lit in the dining-room. Marjorie rose and set the supper-table as usual. “How many places shall I set, Mother?” she inquired. “I don’t really mean to be curious any more—but you see, I must know. Mark will be home tonight and there will be Daddy—he’ll be here—and there’s you and there’s me and, I suppose The Mystery will be down, will it?”

“The Mystery will be down,” answered Mother, “but we’ll only need four places.”

But right here into the room came Mark. “Hello,” he greeted Marjorie. “Say, that’s one on you for curiosity, Marj! But the May basket was a peach! I’d have called to you only Mother said I mustn’t else you’d be in and talk to me and I felt pretty sick, I tell you! I got sick at Jimmie’s house and they telephoned home here the night I went away after you were asleep. Mother thought I’d better come right home, if I was going to be sick, so they sent me home late at night in their car—it’s a joke on you, Marjorie. How about a Mysterious Stranger?”

Mother laughed. And so, too, did Marjorie.

VIII The Two Little Bates Girls

They were not at all alike and they were not even sisters—those two little Bates girls. One had curly light hair and the other had bobbed-off black hair. One was slender and the other was plump. One had blue eyes and the other had brown ones and both were as different as different could be, though the names of both came upon Miss Kennedy’s school roll one after the other; first Mamie and then Mary.

Mary had light curls that bobbed in a lively way even in arithmetic class, where everything was rather subdued by hard problems that Miss Kennedy set. Mamie Bates had bobbed black hair that had a way of falling over her forehead when she was bending over work—in brief, Mary Bates was lively and Mamie Bates was not. Mamie Bates acknowledged that arithmetic was about the hardest thing in school but Mary Bates said it was easy, even though Miss Kennedy’s blue pencil went over her paper and made big blue crosses that meant “Wrong” as often as they crossed the papers of Mamie in the same way.

It ought not to have been so. Nevertheless the first quarterly report that Miss Kennedy made out for Mamie and Mary Bates ranked them side by side—seventy-six percent! That’s not a high mark; Miss Kennedy shook her head over both marks. It was surely nothing to be proud of!

Mary Bates refused to show her report.

Mamie Bates hung her head woefully and explained that she had tried the best she knew how—which was right. Both of them decided to try even harder next quarter. And they did try. Mamie Bates mounted up to eighty percent, and in one examination, she achieved eighty-three! “Next time,” urged Miss Kennedy, “see if you can’t make it eighty-five!” Mary Bates did not tell her mark. It may have been that she was ashamed of it or it may have been that she did not want to brag. Nobody knew which.

But when Mamie Bates went home, she told her daddy all about that eighty-three percent and her daddy smiled and said, “Well, if you’ll make the next one ninety instead of eighty-five, and if you’ll keep all the other marks above eighty-three after that, by the end of the next quarter you shall have—What do you want most?”

“A pony and a cart,” laughed Mamie.

“A pony and a cart,” repeated daddy. “A real live pony and a basket cart!”

Hooray! Think of it! Think of it—a pony and a pony cart! That was the way things stood with Mamie Bates during the last quarter of the year in Miss Kennedy’s room. The black bobbed hair fell over her eyes more industriously than ever as she bent over her problems in arithmetic. In the margins of Mamie Bates’s examination and test papers each Friday there began to appear such delectable written words as, “Well done, Mamie.” But the big blue crosses didn’t quite disappear—oh, no!

Mary Bates continued to keep her marks to herself. Very rarely did she show any. Those that she did show weren’t so bad as some of the other girls’ papers. But there never seemed to be “Well done, Mary,” on any one of them. Even though there was nothing of this kind, Mary Bates seemed contented with them. She said she had received ninety-five in deportment and that was about the best mark that anybody could ever receive. Miss Kennedy would never give a higher deportment mark. Even Sallie Roberts who was noted throughout the whole class room for being “awfully good” never received a higher mark than ninety-five—but then, only the very bad scholars received less. Mary Bates also said that she had a splendid report in spelling. She didn’t say what, but everybody knew that she could spell. So could Mamie.

And so the time went by each week nearer and nearer to Mamie Bates’s excited anticipation of that pony! The marks, so far, had been all right. Daddy would have to keep the promise! Toward the end of the quarter every girl in the class was wondering if she were going to pass herself. It all depended upon the final tests. Even Mary Bates admitted that she was a little shaky but not much. She thought she knew it all.

Mercy! How Miss Kennedy’s class did drill! Over the old, old stumbling blocks they went with long pieces of yellow scratch paper. It did seem as if everybody must pass the arithmetic test! Then the week of examinations came and with it the worst dreaded of all, arithmetic examination!

Over this, Mary Bates shook her curls soberly. Mamie Bates struggled with black hair falling over her forehead. And then the time was up and papers had to be handed in. Mamie Bates gave in her paper reluctantly. Her cheeks were flushed. As soon as it had gone, she asked if she might look at it again, just for a minute. Miss Kennedy smiled. She didn’t let her. “Time’s up, Mamie,” she admonished. “What’s done must stay—it isn’t fair to the rest, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” returned Mamie, “but you see the pony and pony cart depend upon it. The others aren’t working for so much.” But Miss Kennedy passed on. Everybody in the class knew of daddy’s promise and hoped Mamie would win that percent in her arithmetic—everybody.

Mary Bates brought her paper to Miss Kennedy’s desk without even waiting for it to be collected. “I’m sure I got everything right,” she chirped. “It was easy! I think I’ll get ninety-five! There’s only one thing that might be wrong.”

Sallie Overton nudged her neighbor. “I don’t believe it,” she whispered. “She always thinks that she knows everything. I think it was hard, don’t you?”

Oh, dear! Everybody seemed depressed as they left for home that afternoon—everybody but Mary Bates who was quite sure of herself always. Everybody compared notes with everybody else on the way home but nobody seemed sure. One had to wait till the reports came in. It was dreadful to wait—at least dreadful for little Mamie Bates who was thinking about daddy’s promise and the pony. One always made more mistakes than one knew of, somehow, yet she had tried ever so hard. She hoped she was right. She had tried not to get excited. She had tried to stop and think over rules and she thought she ought to have done something she hadn’t done, of course. It was fearfully hard to wait till Monday. On Monday the report cards were to be given out. Almost everybody was expecting some kind of a surprise that day, but the surprise that Miss Kennedy’s class anticipated was one of percents, not of teachers. When the class assembled, there in Miss Kennedy’s chair and right at her desk making out the report cards sat—a substitute teacher! She would tell nobody what the marks were and she just snapped. Really, Miss Kennedy would have told Mamie Bates, at least. She knew about the pony. But the substitute teacher only said that there was no hurry, they’d know fast enough. She didn’t like to be asked questions at all. She said Miss Kennedy might not come back at all—no, of course not! Why should she? (At this everybody looked more worried than ever. All the class loved Miss Kennedy. Sallie Overton had openly said that she didn’t want to pass because if she did, next year, she’d have to leave Miss Kennedy’s room.) But at the end of the study period, before being finally dismissed, the report cards were given out, at last!

Mamie Bates grasped hers. She hardly dared to look, but when she did, tears sprang to her eyes and she had to shake the brown bobbed hair over them. There it was seventy-six percent! The schoolroom blurred—only seventy-six percent! And how hard she had tried to please daddy—and how she did want that pony! Yet all hope was gone now because the final mark had fallen below! Mechanically she stood to be dismissed. Mechanically she went to the cloak room, and mechanically she walked toward home.

Seventy-six—not even eighty-three! And the pony—the pony!

Daddy didn’t ask about reports. Mamie Bates decided to wait and give the bad news out when she herself was a little more used to it. Perhaps next day, she could do it. Of course, seventy-six would promote one into the next grade, but it wouldn’t give the pony! If Miss Kennedy had been there, she would have explained to Mamie Bates all about her mistakes, but the substitute kept the papers. She didn’t seem to think much of anybody’s mark—but substitutes never do seem to care. Mamie hoped Miss Kennedy would come back next day. She’d explain everything.

And the next day, sure enough, there was Miss Kennedy at her desk, smiling. As Mamie came in and passed her, she smiled. “Mamie,” she smiled, “I’m glad about your arithmetic. Are you?”

Mamie hung her head. “It wasn’t good, Miss Kennedy,” she stated, trying hard not to cry. “I thought I was doing it right but I must have been careless. I really knew about everything!”

“Let’s see your paper,” asked Miss Kennedy—but the substitute had the paper. Miss Kennedy didn’t know of any very bad trouble. “Let’s see your card, then,” she asked.

Mamie took it out of her book where it was hidden, unsigned as yet by daddy. “It’s too bad,” she sighed. “There can’t be any pony at all now!”

“No pony? Why not?” And then Miss Kennedy saw the seventy-six percent upon the report card! “Why, why, Mamie Bates!” exclaimed Miss Kennedy. “Your mark is ninety-six, not seventy-six! I’ve just seen it in the teacher’s book. That must be a mistake! Wait a minute and I’ll see.” Off she dashed to get the examination papers in the next room. Mamie Bates’s heart went pit-pat. She was sure Miss Kennedy was right—oh, the pony!

Yes, of course, it was a mistake—a mistake made by the substitute. She had mixed the marks of the two little Bates girls, who were no more alike than their arithmetic marks!

Mary Bates said she didn’t care so long as she passed, so perhaps the change of her mark didn’t matter so much. It was really Mamie Bates who had worked hardest, anyhow.

But the really lovely thing that happened, happened at the close of school that day. When Mamie Bates came out of school, there was a pony and a pony cart waiting by the curb and daddy was in the cart! He—how did he know about the arithmetic reports being all right? But it didn’t take Mamie Bates long to claim the pony! She wanted to know if he had a name and when daddy said he didn’t think so, he was called Arithmetic right then and there. Miss Kennedy came out to see him and had the first ride behind him.

IX Arne’s Fourth of July Battle

Arne drove the white horse, Christopher, into Danville every morning to take the milk to the creamery. He started from the farm as soon as the milk was in the cans, just as Lyman or Leslie—whichever it might happen to be—took the cows to the wood pasture. It was a long drive over the Prairie Road into Danville Creamery. Most usually it was uneventful. And every day, now that the last of June had come, grew warmer and warmer. Some days it was decidedly hot on the Prairie Road, even though Arne and Christopher started so early of a morning.

There were almost always errands to do in Danville, after having been to the creamery. Afterwards, Arne and Christopher had to hurry back to the farm because there was work to do there, too. The men needed Christopher in the fields, and Arne, too. There never was any time to idle along the road. It seemed to Arne that work never ended. He wanted some fun—that’s what he wanted. The other boys didn’t have to work all the time in summer—but then, it wasn’t all of them that owned thrift cards. Arne did. He already had earned ten stamps. When he thought of that, then he was rather glad he had the work to do for his father. His father gave him a thrift stamp every week that work was well and satisfactorily done—and without shirking. So far, Arne had only missed getting his stamp once. That was when he slipped off one day to go to the swimming-hole with Jimmy Smith when he was supposed to be working in the hay-field, raking. That was last week.

As Arne reflected upon these things and Christopher jogged into Danville that day that was the very last day of June, he slapped the reins and decided that he would lose no more thrift stamps. He wore his knot of red, white and blue ribbon pinned on his blue shirt and he was “doing his bit” quite as much as anybody, even though the other boys did have more chance to have fun. Then he looked up and saw—the circus poster!

Right then and there, he stopped Christopher and sat gazing at it. The circus was coming to Danville on the Fourth of July—twenty-five cents admission. The picture showed all manner of lovely ladies dancing on the backs of black horses. It showed elephants that played hoop; it pictured funny clowns and monkeys riding dogs—in short, everything that a circus ought to be seemed suggested by the big circus poster. “I’m a-goin’,” Arne resolved aloud. “Sure, I’m a-goin’ to it, somehow!” Then he clucked to Christopher and the wagon rattled onward toward the creamery. Just that one afternoon was the circus coming. It was a splendid kind of Fourth of July treat. “I guess my father’ll let me go,” he mused. “I guess so.”

When he reached Danville, all the lads who were waiting for cans to be emptied had gathered in a knot near the creamery door. Everybody was talking about the circus. Everybody was going.

Harold Sniffin’s cans were ready first. He and Arne came the same road so he waited to go home with him. They tied Christopher to the back of Harold’s cart and the two sat together and talked as they rode home over the Prairie Road. Harold’s father let him buy his own thrift stamps. Harold was going without his weekly stamp and was going to buy his circus ticket with the twenty-five cents. As Arne had no money, Harold suggested this method of getting a ticket. Fourth of July did not always bring a circus. This year there had been no spring circus at all. Circuses couldn’t travel well on account of the railroads needing the cars now. This circus, it seemed, had gone from town to town upon its own feet and in its own circus wagons.

They had decided to go together and start early when the road of Harold’s turning came. Then they unhitched Christopher and Arne whipped up and came clattering into the red barn at home. “There’s a circus coming to Danville on the Fourth,” he laughed. “Guess that’s a fine way to celebrate a Safe an’ Sane day!”

Only four more days to wait! Hooray! All that afternoon, Arne sang happily as he ran around the farm doing chores. He reflected, as he hoed his patch late in the afternoon, that farm work was really patriotic work and that he, right there hoeing, was doing his bit as much as if he were buying a thrift stamp. Of course he was!

That night when he was coming from the barn, after having fed the calves their bran mixture, he met his father. He explained about the circus. He wanted the money instead of the stamp, he said.

“All right,” said father. There the matter dropped. He did not ask about the circus at all.

But Arne talked a great deal about it to his mother. He talked about it to Lyman and Leslie, who were helpers at the farm. When it was dark and chores were done, he sat on the flat stone at the doorstep and watched the stars come out while he thought about it some more—only four more days!

The morning of the first of July, Christopher trotted into Danville at a pretty rapid pace. Indeed, he was rather white around the collar when they at last reached the circus poster on the road to Danville. But he earned his rest, for there Arne stopped and gazed at all the wonderful things. The circus poster promised many, many more than were pictured there. It said a thousand thrills would be felt by everyone who witnessed the daring tight-rope walking. It spoke of the Wild West and Indians that were a feature of the performance. It was only a big poster but one felt after looking at it, that one could hardly wait three days more before the Fourth should come! And going home from Danville, Arne again sat beside Harold while Christopher jogged behind. Again they talked. Again they planned. Again they undid Christopher from the rear of Harold’s cart. Again at the crossroads, they parted till the morrow. And again on the morrow, the very same thing occurred.

Only one day more before the Fourth! In the country few have firecrackers. Arne was thinking chiefly about that circus. He and Harold planned to go in time to see the parade in the morning. Only one day more—

Then the next day it rained. It rained unexpectedly in the afternoon when the hay was all ready to pitch. They had to hurry out, even in the rain, and stack it. Arne went with the others. He was wet through when he came in but his spirits were undampened by the shower. Only one night more—and then, Fourth of July and circus! Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! Tomorrow! Tomorrow!

After he had fixed the bran mixture for the calves that night, Arne hung around the barn where Lyman and Leslie were milking. He liked to hear them talk and joke together. Tonight, he himself felt that there was only one big subject of conversation and he broached this as he came through with the empty pails that had held the calves’ supper. “I’m goin’ to the Danville circus tomorrow,” he chirped. “Be you goin’ too?”

“You’re lucky, kid,” replied Leslie. “How’d you get the money?”

“My week’s wages,” answered Arne. “The thrift stamp money.” When he said it, somehow, it sounded queer. It sounded—yes, it sounded unpatriotic. But Arne felt it only a second. He lifted himself with a jump to the side of the hay-cart that stood near-by and dangled his bare feet from denim overalls, “I’m goin’ with Harold,” he amplified. “We’re goin’ to hitch by the creamery an’ see the parade.” He swung his legs and whistled. The tune was The Star-Spangled Banner.

“I used to think more of firecrackers an’ that kind of thing when I was a kid,” said Leslie. “But I guess all them firecracker jiggers went over the other side when the war come. ’Tain’t patriotic to spend money for ’em now, these days. There’ll be bangin’ enough to suit everybody this July Fourth, I reckon, without firecrackers. We’re fightin’ for freedom in the same old way but our firecrackers are bigger’n they used to be an’ it takes our boys in the trenches to handle ’em. Just as soon as I’m old enough, I’m goin’ over there to help, I am!”

“Me too,” said Lyman. “It’s all right doin’ one’s bit here on a farm but I’m goin’ to help ’em win the war!”

Leslie laughed. “Sounds as if you was goin’ to do the whole of it,” he chuckled.

Arne laughed. “Wish I could go, too,” he smiled. “I’d like it—oh, I’d like to be in a big battle an’ hear the noise an’ see the guns an’ get right at the enemy an’ plant a flag where it’d wave for victory! It’d be great! I’d rather fight in this war than any other that ever was—more’n Bunker Hill or Lexington, I would.” He stopped. Across his mind there flashed the phrase he had so often seen, “Help win the war.” It was on so many posters that the government used, and weren’t the thrift stamps helping to win the war? Surely they were!

Lyman broke in upon these thoughts. “You couldn’t go for a long time, kid,” he teased. “You’re just a colt. You don’t have to work in the field a-gettin’ that hay fixed tomorrow! There’s circuses for you yet. It’s work for us men, though, double-time work, too. We’ll be doin’ our bit in the field on Fourth of July. It mayn’t seem glorious as a celebration but it’s all we can do till we’re at camp for trainin’.”

No circus for Lyman and Leslie! Work in the field on Fourth of July! Arne stopped swinging his feet and looked thoughtful. Maybe he wasn’t living up to the colors, after all! How about the money for that thrift stamp? Suppose every boy and girl should buy a circus ticket instead of a thrift stamp—how about Uncle Sam’s helping to win the war with that money?

Nobody knew that there was a battle going on. Nobody heard it. Nobody saw it. The battle was between Uncle Sam’s need and Arne’s love of fun. It was a hot battle. Sometimes it went a little in favor of Arne’s love of fun and then, again, it came back to Uncle Sam’s need. Arne slid down from the hay-wagon quietly and slipped off to the house. He was quiet at supper time. At sunset, he went out to take in the flag. It always waved from the white flag-pole in front of the house. As the colors touched his hands, Arne knew which had won. It was Uncle Sam, of course!

He jogged into Danville creamery on the morning of the Fourth of July with Christopher’s reins flapping hard as they passed by the big poster. He met Harold. He told him. “I guess this year I won’t go to the circus, after all,” he explained. “I want to help Uncle Sam win this war—’tain’t much I can do but I can give the money for the stamp.”

And when he rattled into the big red barn afterwards, he was whistling The Star Spangled Banner. “I’ll bet we win this war!” he shouted to Lyman who was bringing in a load of hay. “I’m goin’ to work with you men today—I’m not a-goin’ to any kid circus, I ain’t!”

X The Blackberry Adventure

They came upon the old house one day when they were out blackberrying in vacation time. It was the kind of house that people used to build long ago. It had a long, sloping roof behind and the roof ran down almost to the ground. The house was very weather-beaten and out of repair. It looked battered and forlorn. Of course, it had long been deserted. Weeds grew rank in its front yard. It was far away from any neighbors. Solita and Sue had wandered far from the village. They hardly knew just how they had reached the place where so many berries grew, but they knew it was far from where they were boarding that summer.

Nobody seemed to have lived in the house for ever so long. Creepers covered the fence and what was once a roadway, leading toward the rear, was all overgrown. There were blackberry bushes thick everywhere.

At first Solita and Sue didn’t think much about the house, though it was rather a surprise to have come upon it suddenly. They had explored the different roads in the country near White Farm but never a deserted house had they found yet. At first both Solita and Sue did not observe it because they were all-absorbed in berry-picking. It was wonderful how fast the pails filled up with big, juicy, ripe fruit!

Solita had her pail full and was picking more berries to fill her white canvas hat. She didn’t stop to think that the berries would ruin it—she just wanted to get as many berries as possible! The hat was all she had to use. Sue was racing with her and her basket was nearly full. There must have been at least three quarts. It was much more roomy than the tin pail or Solita’s hat.

The rest of the children who had started from White Farm with Sue and Solita were lagging along the roadside in the rear. Just how far away they were, the two leaders did not bother to consider. There was Albert, the baby, and he was bound to go slowly with Matilda. Probably some of the children were just fooling in the brook or sitting by the wayside. It was not everybody who was as energetic as Sue and Solita that hot day!

So Solita and Sue, proud to outdo all the others, picked fast and furiously and did not stop. Step by step they had progressed to this wonderful, wonderful berry patch beside the old house. All of a sudden, Solita shouted, “I’ve won!” She made her way with difficulty through the tangle, holding her hat, piled high. The tin pail hung upon her arm and dropped berries at every step.

“Let’s see?” Sue questioned. “I don’t believe it; you come here an’ we’ll compare.”

So the two floundered around in the high growth of weeds and made for the first clear space that there seemed to be. They met at the stone doorstep of the old house and put their load of berries down there upon its broad, flat tableland.

My! But they were a sight! Solita’s pink gingham dress was torn in several places and her arms were a sight to behold—all red scratches. Her fingers were stained and grimy and her cap, too, was a sight. As for Sue, her green chambray was purple with berry juice, although she seemed to have escaped the rents from thorny creepers. But the two were happy and they didn’t care much how they looked. They simply dumped all the berries on the doorstep and compared the two piles. These seemed even, so the two thought they would rest for a while and then start back to tell the lagging children behind and urge them to hurry up.

But Solita decided that it was no use to go away back on the road to call the others. They might be a mile or more back, she said. “No, don’t let’s do that! Let’s try to pick all there are and then go home and surprise everybody.”

“But, Solita,” Sue suggested, “we haven’t anything to put all the berries in. How could we do that?”

“I could gather up my skirt,” Solita volunteered. “We could pick into that. It’s already all ruined so I don’t mind using it—it’s an old last year’s frock.”

“Mercy me, Solita! What would your mother say to that!” Sue exclaimed, aghast. “The very idea! No, we’ll have to find something else.”

“Do you suppose there’d be anything to hold them if we were to look around here?” questioned Solita. “Maybe we might find something—an old pail or cooking pan that has been thrown away.”

“There might be something inside the house,” Sue mused. “That’s very likely, but I don’t know if we could get in or not. We can try. I’m going to push the door. Do you suppose we can get in?” They had prowled around the house to what must have been the back door. But that back door wouldn’t give at all. It was tight.

The windows seemed shut fast, too. Sue said it made her feel like a burglar to try them, but since the house had been without a tenant for so long, of course it was not burglaring, she said.

After they had investigated many nooks and found nothing in the near-by shed, either, Solita suggested that they try the front door. “People always leave things behind when they move,” she declared. “I’m sure, if we could get in, we’d find a box or a pan or a basket. Even an old sack might answer—anything that is like a bag could be used.”

But when the two came to the front doorstone where the two big piles of berries lay, Solita sat down on one side and did not try the door.

“You open the door, Sue,” she said.

“No, you try it!”

“You’re afraid something will jump out at you!”

“No I’m not!” retorted Sue. “What’s there to be afraid of, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” said Solita. “But it’s kind of spooky, I think. Let’s go home.” But with that Solita rose and pretended to try the door. She didn’t push it at all.

“Oh, I can get it open! You’re not pushing,” Sue exclaimed. “We’ll do it together. You turn and I’ll push—what’s the use of backing down? Let’s go in.” So the two together pushed and pulled and the door suddenly yielded. Its latch must have been very old and rusty indeed!

The opening of the door came as a real surprise, and it swung back against the wall inside the house with a loud bang that echoed through all the lonely darkness of the hallway. There was only a little light that came from the slats of broken blinds here and there in the open room that was just off the hall.

Sue took the lead. Solita followed, ready to run back at any minute. It was certainly an adventure, this entering in upon the solitude of that deserted house, long closed. “I don’t think it’s at all nice to go into people’s houses while they’re away,” she urged. “I’m going back. I think we ought not to have come in here at all—it’s ever so dark. I can’t see anything—Where’re you, Sue?”

“I’m not a scare-cat,” replied Sue. “You were the one who wanted to find the basket for the berries. Come ahead! It isn’t dark—this is lots of fun!”

“I’m going to use my dress, anyhow,” protested Solita. “I don’t want any basket.” But for the sake of company chiefly, perhaps, she followed Sue, who was investigating the empty house. Here and there she poked under dusty furniture and into old, vacant closets. There seemed to be no basket—not even an old box or tin pan, rusty from disuse. “Come ahead, Solita,” she kept saying. “Nobody’s going to eat you up. If anybody comes for such a purpose, they can begin and eat up the blackberries that are on the doorstep.” So she kept on hunting. Really, after a while, when they were used to the noise that their feet made and to the echo of their voices in the dim, closed rooms, it was rather interesting. All they found was a rusty hammer downstairs, so Sue decided to go above and look some more.

Everything there was rickety and the stairs squeaked and frightened Solita but she laughed—indeed, she was beginning to get over her timidity and enjoy the quest.

The chambers opened into the hall upstairs so that it looked like one big room except at one end of the rear room where the roof sloped. There was a real little bit of a room that must have belonged to some child. There were two little broken toy dishes in it on the floor. They were all thick with dust, so Sue did not pick them up. Solita was safely in the rear near the stairs. She declared from time to time that there was no basket and that they’d better go home but Sue kept on. It isn’t every day that one can have a real adventure. She enjoyed the creepy feeling that came with exploring dim corners.

“When my great-great-grandfather was a little boy,” she mused, “he must have lived in a house like this. Father told me a story about how he used to slide down the roof and land on the grass below just for fun. Fancy doing a thing like that!”

Solita didn’t appear much interested. But Sue went on, “It was during the American Revolution that he and my great-great-grandmother lived. He fought in it—I mean his father, I guess,” rambled Sue. She hardly knew what she was saying but she was chiefly trying to keep Solita from deserting the quest. “We might find a treasure in one of these closets,” she suggested. “Wouldn’t that be fine?”

“Nobody goes off and leaves a treasure in an old house,” Solita snapped.

“But it might have been hidden here by somebody and left till we came—”

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh, yes, it might!”

“Where—not up here!”

“Oh, maybe down cellar,” replied Sue, who had about finished her explorations upstairs. She had been peeping out of the window of the wee little room at the back of the house and had opened its window wide to let in the sunlight and fresh air. It was only a little window.

“You’re not going to get me to go down cellar with you,” declared Solita. “I’m going home. There wouldn’t be any baskets or treasure there at all and there might be rats and mice or other things—and I won’t go!”

“Then the treasure would be all my own, if I found it,” returned Sue. “Suppose it was a thousand dollars tied up in a bag!”

“If you go a step down cellar, I’m going home,” said Solita stoutly. “I’m going this minute anyhow—good-bye!” She started toward the stairs.

Sue felt rather obstinate. She decided that she would go down cellar even if Solita left her. She tried to close the little window that looked down the long slope of the roof but it was hard to get it closed again. She looked down the long slope and was half determined to slide down it and see how it felt. If her great-great-grandfather had done it, she could, too! Why not! It would be fun to creep out of the window and not follow Solita—just slide down over the shingles to the ground and run around to the front door and hide till Solita came and then jump out and call, boo! But at this minute, she heard Solita scream and the scream was so terrified that Sue jumped toward the stairs. Solita was running toward her. “You can’t go down the stairs—Oh, don’t go that way!” she screamed. “A bear is sitting in the doorway. He growled when he heard me come down the stairs. He is on the doorstone—a big, big bear! What shall we do! We can’t get out! Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Why did we ever come into this house!”

“A real bear?” questioned Sue, grabbing fast to Solita’s torn frock. “Tell me—you just imagined it—you couldn’t have seen one! There aren’t any bears here!”

But Solita struggled to free herself. “Oh, I saw him,” she insisted in a frightened wail. “He may be up here any moment. He’s so big he could push any door in and we’re caught! We’re caught!”

Sue, half believing and against all entreaty, peeped over the winding balustrade rail. Yes. There was a bear! Her heart went pat-pat-pat. A shiver ran down her back. She felt cold all over and ready to sink down in a limp heap upon the floor. But she put a warning finger to her lips and motioned Solita to stop crying. The first thing she thought of was to get Solita quietly into that little back room that had the open window that gave upon the long sloping roof—that was it! They could creep out quietly and then dash off over the back yard and into the woods. Then, perhaps, they could turn down and find the road and warn the other children!

Solita stood there shivering, but Sue dragged her toward the little room and closed the door. Solita was stupefied with the fear of that bear’s coming upstairs after them. At first she did not understand about the window, but Sue made her crawl through it first and told her to run toward the woods when she got down off the roof. “I’ll come right after you,” she urged. “Go right on and I’ll follow. He won’t see us!”

Poor Solita gathered her pink skirt about her and slid miserably and cautiously down. She was almost as afraid of falling suddenly as she was of the bear. Sue, however, made quick work of it, even as the great-great-grandfather must have done, though there were no bears after him. At the very end of the slope, she landed in a blackberry bush tangle, but she pulled herself free and helped Solita. Then the two of them darted toward the woods at the rear without a look back to see if the big bear were following or not. Solita was sure he was coming but Sue denied it. At last, badly out of breath, they reached the road, after plunging through thickets and being badly torn and scratched, after one or two excited tumbles over dead logs and much worry about the bear.

As they turned the corner of the road near the brook, they came upon the children with little Albert. “Run, run!” they screamed, “run, run quick! There’s a bear coming!”

Then, all in a crowd, they hurried on toward the road that led to White Farm. They had not gone very far when there appeared two men coming toward them. They were talking together in excited French. They stopped and asked if anybody had seen a big bear.

“Oui, oui,” nodded Solita and she launched out into a long talk in French that nobody else understood. It seemed that that was really the bear Sue and Solita had run away from and he wasn’t a wild bear but a tame one that would dance with a pole while the men sang French songs. They had stopped to get a drink of water at a farm and the bear had got off someway, when their backs were turned. They were delighted to know where he was and Solita and Sue, reassured, offered to show the way. So again they started toward the funny, old-fashioned house in a crowd together.

They came upon the bear, still eating blackberries on the doorstone—he hadn’t budged! And when the Frenchmen called him, he came meekly. Then all the children stood around in the dooryard while the bear that Solita and Sue had escaped from danced and danced. He turned somersets, too! It was fun.

And then the men took off their caps and turned and went down the overgrown driveway and off up the road. The children were already busy with the blackberries. “I might go down cellar now, Solita,” laughed Sue, “but I don’t believe I want to. Maybe there’d be another bear there. I’ve had enough of one, even a tame one, haven’t you?”

Solita laughed. “Our blackberries are all eaten,” she said. “We’d have to begin to pick again to fill the basket and the pail. I move we all go home, for I think it’s nearly lunch time.”

But everybody wanted to go into the house and slide down the roof, while little Albert made believe he was the bear and said “Grrr-r” on the doorstone. It really was a blackberry adventure for a summer day!

XI Betty Crusoe

All summer Betty had been in the city. Then, the last day of September came an eventful invitation from a school-friend of her mother’s. “Dear Betty,” it ran, “I know your mother can’t be persuaded to leave daddy and the boys, but can’t you pack up and spend the rest of the vacation with me in my big house here at Riverby? I’m all alone for October.” So, in two days, there was Betty in Riverby!

Mrs. Roberts and she took long motor rides, but the rest of the time—and much of the time—Betty had to amuse herself. She was always longing for a boat ride on the lovely blue river that was within sight of the house, but Mrs. Roberts never seemed inclined to go out rowing. It was one day when she was lonely and wishing for somebody her own age to play with that she wandered through the grounds down toward the shore. Some magic must have been at work, for right there upon the sandy beach sat a pink gingham dress much like Betty’s own! It turned as Betty’s white shoes crunched the coarse gravel. “Hello,” she greeted. “I was just wishing I had a girl to talk to and then you came!”

Betty laughed. “I was just wishing, myself,” she smiled. “I’m staying with Mrs. Roberts. Do you live next door?”

The pink hair-ribbon bobbed. “I’m staying with my aunt,” it said. “I just came from the West. I don’t know a soul my own age here and it’s stupid. Now that you’ve come, let’s have some fun together. My name’s Lydia. What’s yours?”

It seemed to the two of them that they had known each other always and, naturally, having so begun, it appeared that the two of them were longing to go out upon the river for a row—and had been longing for that ever since they came to Riverby.

“Don’t I wish we could find a boat!”

“Do you know where there is one?”

“No—and I’ve only rowed on the lake in the park—”

“Well, never mind. You could row out a little way, if we could find a boat! Let’s!”

“We wouldn’t go out very far—”

“No, not very far. I think we can find a boat if we walk along the shore—”

So the two trotted along the sandy rim of the river and, after a while, they did come upon a boat drawn high up. There were oars in it and it appeared to be waiting for the two, just as Lydia had been waiting for Betty a half hour before. They didn’t stop to think. They merely accepted the boat as they had accepted each other. It was part of the adventure, of course. With frantic tugging, they finally launched the boat and Betty took the oars.

As she dipped them, “I’ve got to be back by four,” she said. “Mrs. Roberts asked me to go calling—pity me, Lydia, I’ll have to come back and put on my best dress. I’d rather stay on the river—I hope you’ve a watch with you. I didn’t bring mine.”

“No, I haven’t any watch but I can tell time by the sun,” reassured Lydia. “Do you know, Betty, I’m longing to know what’s just around the bend of the river. We can go that far, can’t we?”

“Sure,” replied Betty, bravely. She did not say that her arms were already rather tired. She waited for Lydia to offer to take the oars.

But when they reached the bend, right there in the very center of the river was a big wooded island. Its shore was overhung with dark pine trees. It was a most fascinating island!

“Oh, row over to the island, Betty,” screamed Lydia. “I do so want to go there! We can stop for a bit and then come back and you’ll be home in time to dress for that call.” So Betty, tired but very willing to prolong the fun, rowed on.

They beached the boat near a rock, but while they were beaching it, out fell an oar! Before anybody could get it, it had floated far out beyond reach! Oh dear! Oh dear! Could anything ever be worse! Oh dear, dear, dear!

They sat upon the beach there under the pines and wondered what was going to happen. What indeed? The island seemed nothing but woods, and the boats that passed by were too far away to hear what Betty and Lydia screamed at them. They evidently took the wild antics of the two pink dresses on the island beach as just so much joyous kind of greeting, nothing more. Neither Lydia or Betty could swim. So there was every reason to believe they would stay upon that island forever.

“My aunt didn’t know I was going off anywhere,” wailed Lydia. “She’d never think of my being here!”

“And Mrs. Roberts is expecting me to be dressed for calling at four!”

“I don’t know what we’re going to do!”

“Neither do I!”

It seemed so utterly hopeless that the two put their arms around each other and cried hard on each other’s pink gingham shoulders. Yet, as crying did not mend matters, Betty decided to make a petticoat flag and wade as far out as possible to hail the next boat. There was a rocky point that might be a good station. So she and Lydia paddled out there, leaving shoes and stockings on the shore.

The sun was gradually sinking toward the West. Lydia insisted that it must be at least half past four or five. She was sure they would have to camp out upon the island all night and was tearfully worrying about bears—“There always are bears in the woods, Betty,” she said. “I don’t want to stay here all night, oh dear! Don’t you suppose that a boat ever will come around the bend and see our signal?” But it was long after that that at last a launch sped by, leaving in its wake a track of white foam. No use to scream! The launch simply did not hear or see and there were but two in it, a lady and a man who was at the rear.

“Mrs. Roberts has a parasol exactly that shade,” wailed Betty. “It might be her out looking for me only she wouldn’t think I had gone out on the river. Since I’ve been here, we never have been boating. She’s probably hunting for me in town or else she’s gone to call without me by this time. Maybe she thinks I forgot the call and went to walk. Then, of course, she’d not be worrying or looking for me till supper time.”

“But I should think they’d have stopped the launch when they heard us scream, ‘Help!’ They must have heard!”

“No,” disagreed Betty. “Maybe they never noticed or they thought we were just a silly picnic party playing Robinson Crusoe.”

Alas!

“Well, we’ve got to stay here, Lydia.”

“It’s our punishment, I suppose.”

“Maybe we deserve it for taking a boat that didn’t belong to us.”

They sat on the rock for a long time wondering what more they could do and then Betty realized that she was fearfully hungry. Lydia, too, at the same time, longed for a couple of sandwiches. “We might go look to see if there are berries in the woods,” they agreed.

There were no berries, of course. There was only wintergreen and that wasn’t satisfying. They found remnants of some picnic’s old boxes—but that was all. The picnic must have been there weeks ago for its boxes were mere pulp now—oh dear!

Betty’s pink dress was torn and scratched by brambly twigs that were in that woods. Lydia’s hair had lost its ribbon and trailed down her back in a loose tangle. The two of them were begrimed like two tramps when, finally, Betty discovered a footprint that looked as if it were newly made. “Friday, Man Friday,” she screamed, “Look! There must be somebody on this island, if we can only find the one to whom this belongs! Hooray, maybe we’ll be rescued yet! Let’s follow in the same direction and see if we do find another picnic party—if they haven’t gone home!”

“Oh, I hope they haven’t—I don’t want to spend the night here with nothing to eat—Oh dear!”

And then they found a path!

There was another footprint upon the path too!

Betty and Lydia hurried on, their hearts beating excitement. When they turned suddenly, the woods ceased abruptly and they found themselves in full view of a summer camp!

With one wild shout, Betty ran forward to its landing. There, there was a launch and in it the two who had passed on the river and beside them, too, were other people. The launch was just about to start when Betty with Lydia at her heels darted upon the dock waving wild arms. “Stop, stop,” they cried. And then Betty saw who the lady was—why, why, it was—it was Mrs. Roberts! It was!

On the way home, Mrs. Roberts said that she hoped Betty wouldn’t decide to play Robinson Crusoe again. She looked very sober. “Our call might have been planned for tomorrow,” she smiled. “The camp would have been closed then and whatever would you and Lydia have done on the island all night!”

“I don’t know,” returned Betty. “I’m ever so sorry. Lydia is too.”

XII The Magical Circle

The family moved into the new house about the first of October. It was the first time that Mark and Marjorie had ever moved and the event was full of novelty. The new house was a big one in the country and the two found much to explore in the first weeks of arrival.

Mark was always romancing. He believed, maybe, if he were to hunt long enough, he might find something interesting that had been left by former tenants. He was sure that there were secret drawers in the old desk that was in the barn and he spent hours trying to find them. Then, too, he went about tapping the walls of the house to see if they emitted a hollow sound. He was sure, he said, that there must be secret panels with things hidden behind them.

Marjorie only laughed at Mark’s romancing. She half believed in it. It was fun, anyway. So she followed Mark’s tapping and listened to the knocks. One day when the paperers were busy, Mark went into a store-closet that adjoined the room and somehow he did find a place that was hollow. It was back of a board shelf in the closet and, when opened, was quite a hiding place. There was nothing in it. Marjorie insisted that it was where the gas pipes had been before electricity was installed. But Mark called it triumphantly the secret panel. He talked a great deal about it and showed it to the neighbor’s children, Eleanore and Mabel and Richard. He even persuaded Mother to hide some silver in the place for safe keeping. And she did it, she said, laughingly, to please him.

One might have thought that Mark would stop romancing, after having discovered a secret panel, but he didn’t rest satisfied. Having read a story about two boys who found a lost will in a trunk in an old attic, Mark became interested in the possibilities of their newly acquired one. There were three rooms up there, two of them used to store the family’s trunks. The third room Mark appropriated and made into what he called his “den.”

The “den” had an old matting upon its floor. The matting had been there when Mark and Marjorie moved into the new home. Mark always accepted it and had never found any romantic suggestions coming from that source till one night, Richard having been allowed to spend a night with him, they carried a mattress up there and slept on the floor, “for fun,” they said. Mark had a lantern and they talked till nearly two o’clock telling stories to each other. It was really great fun. Mark’s stories were full of adventure—some of them even were creepy, as it was nearing Hallowe’en day by day. And what was more fitting than right in the middle of Mark’s last thriller, there should be a strange rattle and a clinking noise! It made Mark hush and it made Richard jump. They looked at each other in frightened silence for a minute.

“What was it?” asked Mark, as soon as he could breathe again calmly.

“Oh, a mouse, I guess,” returned Richard.

“A mouse, forsooth! Nay!” returned Mark, talking in a romantic way. “Me-thinks it is a strange noise, friend. It cometh from under this matting. I will take up the matting and if need be the floor and we shall see—” Here he pulled up an end of old matting.

Richard was willing to have another of Mark’s adventures, so he helped. It wasn’t hard to get it up—but when it was once up the most astonishing thing came to light. Even Richard was amazed. As for Mark, he was in his element of discovery. There upon the floor was a big round circle. The floor was painted but the circle was not!

“What is it?” inquired Richard.

Mark debated. “I don’t know,” he mused. “It’s evidently something!” He measured the circle. It was about three feet in diameter. He was for tearing up the flooring at once, only Richard reminded him that it would make a dreadful noise and wake everybody in the house up. Surely a fortune and a lost will must be under it! Richard silenced Mark’s objection to waiting till daylight and after school by saying that they would never be allowed to sleep in the attic on a mattress again, if the two of them got into trouble. That was true. So they sat up, wrapped in blankets, listening for the sound that seemed to have gone away and also for other sounds that did not come. And they wondered excitedly how a circle like that should come to be upon an attic floor, if not purposely put there to mark something. Richard suggested that it might be an old astrologer’s room and that the circle was one upon which he might have cast horoscopes. That sounded rather fascinating but neither Mark nor Richard knew anything about astrologers or even what they did when they cast horoscopes. So this was rather romantic and they talked a great deal about it, once in a while switching off to goblins and Hallowe’en. Mark and Richard discussed, among other topics, what they should do to make Hallowe’en truly exciting. They were going to dress up like witches and go to call upon some friends. Richard was planning to carry his black cat in a bag and they were going to wear masks. Probably Marjorie would beg to go too—girls always did want to go too—and they’d let her into the secret about the circle on the attic floor too, wouldn’t they?

Richard assented. He and Marjorie were good friends.

“I tell you what!” exclaimed Mark, suddenly. “After we’re dressed up, we’ll all come up here early in the evening. Maybe Mother and Daddy’ll have gone to the pictures. Then we’ll take up the floor and see what’s under the circle!” It seemed a thing quite fit for the night of Hallowe’en.

Having decided this, they again unrolled the mattress, hid themselves in blankets and snored peacefully till dawn.

In the morning, Mark put the matting over the very precious circle and the two went downstairs hinting at wonderful secrets of things they had found and strange noises they had heard. Marjorie said it seemed to her that she had heard a queer noise too—up overhead. She said it sounded like Mark tapping for secret panels. Then everybody laughed because of the memory of how Mark was shut up tight in the harness-closet once upon a time, a victim of his love of mystery and adventure. Then Richard said he thought Mark had heard a mouse.

“Mouse! Does a mouse rattle?” inquired Mark. “I guess you’ll find out!” And the subject strung itself out all through the day and on till Hallowe’en time came. Of course, in between, Mark had visited the attic and everybody had seen the circle. Everybody declared that it was a mystery. Nobody had ever seen anything like it upon an attic floor. Mother laughed. She was used to Mark’s imaginings. She said she didn’t connect it with a little harmless mouse gnawing at a hole.

At the mention of a mouse gnawing, Mark became almost dramatic. “It was no mouse!” he declared. “Don’t I know what a mouse sounds like!”

Hallowe’en came, but even the fun of dressing up like witches lost the usual flavor. Mark, Marjorie and Richard were worked up to a pitch of excitement over the circle on the attic floor. They talked of nothing else. Mark had read up on astrology in the encyclopedia. He hadn’t understood it all but he talked as if he did and Marjorie was wonderingly proud of his knowledge, while Richard was willing to listen, though he corrected Mark’s statements now and then, having read up on the subject at the library himself.

It was lucky that the picture theatre claimed Mother and Daddy that night. And the strange thing was that neither Mark nor Marjorie had begged to be taken too. They had come in at eight o’clock sharp, according to directions that Mother had insisted upon. They kept on their weird garments of sheets and shawls. Mark, lantern in hand, led the way to the dark attic room and the others followed.

Then there began to be a real noise in that room as Mark hammered a chisel into the flooring. It seemed to be a very thick board flooring and it took time to get some nails out. But they yielded finally, and the end of one floor-board that crossed the circle at its centre grew loose enough to be pried up. (Mark had insisted that he choose the centre of the circle. Nobody knew why, though they trusted him. He said that the centre was the middle of a thing and that whatever was there would be exactly under it. This sounded plausible.)

Then Mark had Richard take the chisel and wedge up the board a bit. It wouldn’t give very much, you know. He said Marjorie might hold the lantern and he’d peep into the darkness underneath and see what was there. Really, the moment was very exciting. Nobody knew what Mark might see—they felt that he was brave to take the first look, for it might be ’most anything down there where Mark’s noise had come from!

They were silent while Mark, lying flat down on the attic floor, peered under the lifted end of the board. “I see gold pieces,” he gasped. “Say, give me more light—it must be buried treasure! Didn’t I say I’d find it!”

Marjorie and Richard looked at each other. Was it true? “Let us see,” they urged. Richard did peek. He said he couldn’t see very clearly but that there was something there that he thought looked like money. It was round and there was something that looked like a bag there—maybe a money bag! Marjorie was so excited that she couldn’t keep still long enough to see anything at all well. But she thought she saw something that looked like a piece of paper. Nobody else had seen that, so they all peeped again. “It is a lost will,” declared Mark. And they believed him.

Then they fell to opening the flooring in a most reckless way. It really was dreadful—but when one is expecting to get at a money bag and a lost will, one does not stop to consider the flooring. The board was whacked beyond recognition. The hammer and chisel fell to work and the flooring yielded to the onslaught. Then—Mark lifted the board! Ah!—Ah-ha!—

Richard held the lantern down so that it shone full upon the treasure; Marjorie gasped; Mark bent forward to see all there was to see. There was a pile of broken glass and some rags, corks—and buttons! Oh, yes, and there was a piece or so of white paper—not very large. The buttons were of metal, round brass buttons, tarnished and old. The paper was old white paper, yellow now. It was not a lost will at all! No, the money bag was just a round wad of cloth and Mark’s noise was—Mark’s noise was evidently a rat running around the rat’s nest that they had found! Alas, alas! There was no more mystery! The three had never seen a rat’s nest before but Richard had heard about them. He said, from the first, he’d said it was a mouse—but everybody knows that a mouse is very different from a rat!

After they had all recovered from the shock of their disappointment, they laughed a little. It really was funny—There they had been planning what they would do with all the money after it had been properly divided! Of course, the lost will would have given the money to the finders, you know.

Mark fingered the buttons, grimy with much dust. “They don’t make buttons like this any more,” he said. “They are very interesting. I am glad I found them.” He said that they had not yet come to the end of the mystery. “Why is there a circle on the attic floor?” he questioned. “Why?”

Nobody could say. Then they heard Mother’s voice downstairs. “You’ll have to tell about the floor,” Marjorie suggested. “We can never get it down again.”

So they did. It was a sorry group that said good-night, even after they had been forgiven.

Next day when Mark returned from school, he heard the carpenter repairing the damaged floor up in his den and he rushed up there.

“Say,” he said, “what do you suppose anybody ever made a circle on the floor like that for unless it was an astrologer?”

The carpenter laughed. “Sonny,” he smiled. “I’ve been in this house when there was a big cistern right here—Know what a cistern is? It’s what the family used to depend upon for water in the house. When they took it down, the floor that was painted all around it showed the circle where the cistern had stood. That’s all. It wasn’t any astrologer that made it.”

After that, somehow, the news about the cistern’s having been Mark’s mysterious circle in dim ages past, leaked out. Richard and Marjorie and Mabel and Eleanore plagued him forever after—but, anyway, Mark says, some day when he does find a fortune and a lost will, they’ll stop laughing at him. Maybe that’s true.

XIII Ermelinda’s Family

Ermelinda entered High School in September. Then, too, she contributed to the High School magazine. Going to and from school she hunted for themes to use in school compositions. She meant to write a story some day! That was Ermelinda’s ambition.

As she looked over magazines at home, she imagined how her name would look printed. Once when she was looking over a big fashion paper, she turned to a department page and found that there was a chance to correspond with an editor lady. So she at once wrote and between the two there grew up a friendly intercourse upon paper. Ermelinda confided her desire to write stories, and though none were awarded prizes in the department, yet Ermelinda regarded the editor lady as a friend. And once she told her how the school had solicited Liberty Bond subscriptions.

The boys and girls had volunteered for the work, going together from house to house. Ermelinda enjoyed the luck of selling nine bonds on subscription and one fifty dollar one outright. It was all very interesting indeed. Ermelinda grew more and more enthusiastic and her patriotism flamed hot. She went over the territory assigned and then, on her own hook, took up new territory. It was in rather a shabby quarter of the town but one of the girls was with her. So they entered a doorway and went into a tenement. She was surprised to see it so gray and destitute.

They knocked at the first landing, but though they met with a fair reception, they sold nothing. At the second landing it was the same. Ermelinda caught glimpses of bare poverty in the rooms as the door opened at her knock. She had always known that such things were, but the vivid picture of them had never been presented. So she mounted to the top floor and knocked. The door opened. It was a thin little ragged boy who opened the door and there were more thin little ragged boys inside—yes, and little girls and a baby and a mother and a father. All of them were so poor and so unhappy! Ermelinda explained her errand but, of course, it was hardly any use! Ermelinda wrote to her editor about it that evening. The editor answered, “Well, wouldn’t it be rather jolly to surprise that family with a basket of good things for Thanksgiving Day?”

Oh, indeed it would! She could get the girls at High School to help! She began to plan what to put into the basket. On the way to school the next day she told everybody she met. Ermelinda had a most engaging way of putting facts in story form. But though some contributed five or ten or twenty-five cents, there were others who drifted off as soon as money was mentioned. Then Stella Wilkins came by and Ermelinda grabbed her.

“Say, Stella,” she began, “don’t you want to help, too? I’m getting up a basket for Thanksgiving for a poor family I found in a tenement, they are—” but right here she stopped short. Stella’s expression was almost frightened. For the first time, Ermelinda noticed that Stella might be classed as “poor.” Ermelinda had never thought much about poverty before or noticed whether the boys and girls who came to classes showed signs of need. She had always liked Stella. “There are some children,” went on Ermelinda. “The little things look sick and hungry. We’re planning to give them a perfectly splendid Thanksgiving—I haven’t a cent to my name but I’m nabbing everybody I see—”

Stella smiled. “Guess you know, Erm, I really can’t, though I’d like to,” she said. “But father lost his work this fall and we’ve all had to do without things. I’m trying ever so hard to get my little sister a winter coat. She hasn’t any and she can’t go to school till she has one—It’s awfully hard, Erm. I’m glad you’re helping them!”

Ermelinda put an arm around Stella. “I’d like to work, too, to get that coat,” she said. “I’ve been lucky all my life and had things done for me but I’d be mighty proud if I could buy my little sister a coat if she needed one!”

They walked toward the class together. Somehow, they had become real friends.

She rushed home the next afternoon early in order to go buy the basket with one of the girls. Oh, Ermelinda’s family was to have the dandiest Thanksgiving that there ever had been!

She put a gay crêpe tissue paper table-set into the basket. It had a tablecloth and napkins with bright colored fruits upon it. Then all the other things were packed tight and the basket was very heavy and very tempting when Ermelinda’s busy fingers had finished. It was put away in the pantry closet to stand there safely till the time should come.

Next day Ermelinda found Kitty Fowler, who volunteered to help. “You see, Kitty, I can’t carry that big basket all alone myself,” she explained. “I do need somebody ever so much.”

“Then I’ll help and I’ll be at the corner waiting for you at four o’clock.”

When she reached the corner with tired arms, Kitty was not there. Ermelinda waited. It was frightfully windy and cold. It seemed as if it might snow for there was penetrating dampness and chill in the air. She thought of Stella trying to buy the coat for a little sister—she wondered if, by now, the little sister had it. She hoped so. She wondered how Stella had earned the money—Still Kitty did not come. It was growing dusk.

Ermelinda decided that Kitty must have forgotten. She was that kind—always ready to help but not responsible. It was too late to go home and get mother—beside that, mother was tired. The boys were out skating. There was no reason why she, Ermelinda, should not go alone. So she tugged the big basket and the bundle onward. Her arms ached and she had to stop more than once to turn ’round about, taking the basket in the other hand and changing the bundle. Somehow she reached the right street and the door that led to her family up there on the top floor. Somehow she reached the landing. She put the basket down and knocked. She had planned how nice it would be just to hand the basket in and say, “Santa Claus came for Thanksgiving and brought you this.” Then she would run away and they would call, “Thank you! Thank you!”

Maybe they had not heard; Ermelinda knocked loudly again. No answer! She knocked again. All was silent! Then a woman in a blue apron came out upon the second floor landing and screamed up at her, “They’ve moved away. What d’you want anyhow? That family went off last week—Nobody’s there!”

At last, Ermelinda understood! But the woman did not know where they had gone. She suggested that Ermelinda ask the janitor on the first floor.

It crossed Ermelinda’s mind that she might give the basket to the woman on the second landing, but as she came down the wide-open door showed a table with food upon it. The janitor didn’t know where that family had gone—he said the man had work and they had gone away. Yes, they had been in hard straits for a while—didn’t pay rent at all, he said. But now there was nothing for Ermelinda to do about it. The bitter disappointment of the expedition made a lump in Ermelinda’s throat—why, if the fairy godmother had come to help Cinderella and had not found her, that is about how the fairy godmother would have felt!

Little Lady Bountiful almost cried but she took up the packages and walked home. She told mother all the story and then she wept. There were all those good things for somebody’s happy Thanksgiving and where should they go?

At last, mother suggested that she herself would buy the things in the basket and that Ermelinda might give the money to some public charity. She wrote her editor and asked what to do. The editor wrote back and said she thought Ermelinda was right: that the boys and girls might be told, perhaps, but that since they had given the money without sacrifice, it ought to be used to help some need. Ermelinda received the letter from the postman just as she started for school. She opened it in the cloak-room and there she met Stella, who was just hanging her tam upon a neighboring hook.

They went into class. Suddenly in the midst of her conjugating of a Latin verb, a thought came to Ermelinda—Oh, how about the coat for Stella’s little sister? She would find out! At noon, she found Stella, eating lunch upon a bench. “Say, Stella,” she began, “we’re friends. Tell me, did you get it—that coat for your little sister?”

Then Stella told her. No! There was no coat. She couldn’t get that work. The little sister had colds and Stella was worried. As they talked, Stella told Ermelinda just how bitterly blue everything was. They parted as the bell rang for classes.

After school, Ermelinda labored over a letter that it was rather fun to write. She worked hard because of the fact that she was trying to disguise her handwriting. The letter was from Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother to Stella and inside the envelope, sealed with a blue bird seal, Ermelinda put the money! Then she sent the letter inside another to her editor in the city and asked her to mail it there. She told her Cinderella’s fairy had asked her to send this letter to somebody who mustn’t know where the Fairy Godmother lived. And the editor mailed the letter in the city. So the deed was done.

It was about three or four days afterwards that Stella came upon Ermelinda studying hard, her head in a book. “I want to tell you, you were so interested,” she beamed. “My little sister’s got the coat, only I didn’t really give it to her myself. The money came in a letter that was mailed in the city. It was ever such a dear letter and signed by Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother. I think it must have been from a real fairy, somehow, but I don’t know who could have known about the coat—I don’t know anybody else who might have sent it, unless it was a real fairy!”

“I’m glad your little sister has the coat,” Ermelinda chuckled.

XIV The Directory Santa Claus

Christmas holidays had begun and school was out. The scholars had spoken Christmas pieces that told of gift-giving and Santa Claus.

Rose Schneider and Lili Fifer, with school-books under their arms, pushed open the heavy oak door of the big city library and trotted with one accord upstairs to join the line of children waiting to get in.

“I got a dandy book,” Lili volunteered as they wedged into the waiting line. “It was all about a little girl that went to see Santa Claus. I’m bringin’ it back now. Say, Rose, you get it on your card. It’s an awfully nice story.”

But Rose shook her head. The thin snub of her nose turned up even higher than ever. It added emphasis to her refusal. “There ain’t any Santa Claus,” she said. “I never had any Christmas presents from him.”

“Well,” Lili insisted, “I ain’t either but I think there is a Santa Claus all right. He don’t know us, maybe, but he’s awfully good to some children. My cousin that goes to Sunday School gets a doll, and a box of candy, and an orange from him every Christmas. He has a long white beard an’ he’s ever so jolly!”

“Salvation Armies, they make Santa Clauses. They’re not real—only anybody dressed up. Most likely your cousin’s Santa Claus was like that,” Rose retorted. “The Salvation Army Santa Clauses they always stand by the street corners to catch Christmas dinner pennies in their pails.”

“No. ’Twasn’t that kind of a Santa Claus! He’s real!”

“Well, you won’t find him in no directory,” Rose argued. “You just go an’ look. All real folks’ names is in it an’ you won’t find Santa Claus. There ain’t any!”

With this parting thrust, Rose squeezed through a sudden opening in the line and escaped into the reading room beyond.

Lili waited for her book to be discharged, then she raised a questioning little hand toward the lady at the library desk.

“Please,” she asked, “where is the directory book?”

“Downstairs,” the librarian answered. And downstairs Lili went.

The directory book was really very, very big indeed. It was almost a pity that it couldn’t be a story book, for one could never have done with a story book that size. There’d always be something new to read in it. When the fat volume was opened on its desk, Lili studied it at random trying to make out what it all meant. She decided to begin at the very beginning, so she commenced with A, turned on to B, and ran her forefinger down page after page. It took a great deal of time and patience. The text was very small and Lili was afraid she might overlook it. Down page after page it travelled till it came to Claus—Oh, there it was: Claus, Adolph, carpenter! No. That couldn’t be Santa Claus—the whole name wasn’t right. And beside that, he wasn’t a carpenter, Lili felt sure.

How many people there were by the name of Claus! Well, with patience, one might find the right one! “Then I shall tell Rose that there is a Santa Claus for sure,” thought Lili. On down the list she went.

There was an S. T. Claus. That was the nearest to it. Who knows what that S. T. might mean in the way of abbreviation? The address was not far from the library. Lili decided to go down the avenue and find out if it were where the real Santa Claus lived.

The long winter twilight was beginning when Lili came out of the library. Already the lights from the grocery and the drugstore on the corner beyond warmed the cold gray stone of the pavement with red light. Further over, past the intersecting street, an arc lamp made a misty star in the dimness. Toward the star of light Lili made her way.

Yes, yes, she was on the right side of the street—she was getting nearer, nearer! Lili’s heart went pit-a-pat. Oh, there it was—There it was! It was a little shop that bore the number. Over its window was a sign, S. T. Claus. Somewhere Lili thought she had seen Santa Claus’ name written that way! It was the very place, no doubt!

In the shop-window was a wee green tinsel-covered tree. Toys were caught in the branches. They overflowed onto the broad base of the display-window—cats, dogs, carts, steam-engines, dolls, baby-carriages, jumping-jacks—Oh!

Lili stood staring, transfixed with wonder, for—for there in the store, visible through the lighted window, was a small, jolly-looking, white-bearded man—exactly like the picture of Santa Claus in the story book! To be sure, his white beard was not quite so long, and he wore a gray knit coat instead of a bright red one with white fur on it. But his occupation of stringing Christmas tree chains was so very Santa-Claus-like, there could be no mistake in identity!

Just here, he came to the window and added a box of gay candles to the display of toys. He looked out at Lili through the frosty panes and smiled. “Hello,” he called by way of cheery greeting.

“Hello,” returned Lili, and, somehow, before she knew it, she was standing in the shop beside the worn counter, looking up into the merry face of Mr. Claus.

“It was through the directory that I found you,” she smiled. “Rose Schneider, she says there ain’t no real Santa Claus—but I says there is for sure! A lot of children must have passed here an’ not known where Santa Claus lived maybe! But I found you!”

Santa Claus doubled in a hearty chuckle. “And here I am all the time,” he laughed, “just every day.”

“Didn’t anybody know you was the real Santa Claus?” Lili gazed confidently into the old man’s bright eyes. “They had ought to know by the sign,” she suggested.

“How should they?” the little man replied. “Santa Claus—everybody knows he likes to be an ordinary citizen. You won’t tell the kids, will you?”

Lili hesitated. “No, not if you don’t want I should. But there is Rose Schneider an’ she says there ain’t any real Santa Claus. It was through her saying that I found you in the directory. She said there wasn’t no such name there”—

There was a silence.

“I’ve got it,” he announced suddenly. “Just why don’t Rose believe in Santa Claus—because he never brought her any presents or what?”

“I think it’s because you’ve forgot her mostly,” returned Lili. “I says to her you forgot me, too—but you didn’t know about us maybe.”

He thought.

“Where do you two kids live?” he questioned.

She told him.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said he. “I don’t want the other children to find it out that I am the real Santa Claus, so you’d better not tell them. You run home now an’ you keep it quiet. Wait till real Santa Claus time at Christmas! THEN, Rose will believe!”

Ah, yes. And she did! It was a wonderful, wonderful Christmas for Lili and Rose. It was better even than Rose’s cousin’s Christmas, for they shared together a little tree that was left on Christmas Eve “From Santa Claus,” and each little girl had a doll, and some candy, and a game. “It’s from the real Santa Claus an’ I know him but you don’t, Rosie Schneider!” Lili beamed.

And Rose retorted, “I do too believe in the real Santa Claus!”

“I want a story about the real Santa Claus and the little girl,” she demanded of the librarian at the children’s reading room next day. “Lili Fifer, she says it’s an awfully good story and she likes I should know more about him. It’s true for sure, ain’t it?”

And the librarian smiled.

XV Mary Elizabeth’s Soldierly Christmas

Mary Elizabeth looked up from the soldier scarf she was learning to knit. Her mother, in the rocker beside Mary Elizabeth’s hassock, caught a bit of anxious thought that rested between Mary Elizabeth’s brown eyes. “What is it?” she asked, putting her hand down upon Mary Elizabeth’s to stop the knitting needles.

“I was thinking,” Mary Elizabeth sighed, “just thinking, Mother. It’s going to be a very soldierly Christmas this year, isn’t it? But the children—they don’t realize it and they’re thinking and talking about Santa Claus. Are we going to have the tree this year?”

Mary Elizabeth’s mother patted Mary Elizabeth’s hand softly. “We’ve always had one, haven’t we, daughter?” she said. “Can you remember the time when we did not have one?”

“No,” laughed Mary Elizabeth. “I suppose it was when I was too small a baby ever to have a tree or so little that I didn’t know what the lights were and thought I would like to play with their sparkles—but I do remember the tree we had when I was a little bit older. It was before any of the children came. I was about three years old, I think. You told me that the tree was made in honor of the little Christ Child’s birthday and I always thought you meant a little child like myself and expected to see him—”

Mary Elizabeth paused. “Then I grew bigger, and by and by there were all the children and the baby, and I was the oldest and we all thought that a funny friend who was a jolly old man called Santa Claus brought us the toys we found in our stockings. We thought all the play was real—about his coming down the chimney and about his sleigh with the eight reindeer. It used to seem strange that so big a man as Santa Claus could squeeze down our chimney and by and by I suspected it was all a play and you told me that it was just a funny, jolly way to make the very little children enjoy the fun of Christmas surprises. You told me then that I might help toward Christmas myself by trimming the tree. That was to be my part: each year I was to do it all myself and every year I tried to make it some new and lovely kind of a surprise. I always have loved to fix the tree. I always have felt that it must be the kind of a tree that the little Christ Child would love if he came in the way that I used to think you meant when I was still little.”

“Your tree has always been a beautiful tree, Mary Elizabeth,” Mother smiled. “It has always been a tree that shone with happiness. Each year we have loved it so that the children could not bear to part with it at New Years, you know.”

Mary Elizabeth smiled. But her question still remained unanswered. “Will there be a tree this year?” she asked. “I’m afraid the children would be sad without it, Mother.”

“I, too, have been thinking, Mary Elizabeth,” said Mother. “It is indeed a soldierly Christmas. What do you think we had better do?”

“Well,” answered Mary Elizabeth, thoughtfully. “We have the ornaments, though I usually buy some new ones. I would have to get candles. The tree would not cost so very much, only it seems as if every penny ought to go to the little French and Belgian children—and there are the soldiers to send things to—and when everything is the way it is, why it really hardly seems like Christmas!”

“I know,” returned Mother. “But we sent all the money in the children’s bank and all your money and my money, Mary Elizabeth. We have the soldiers’ things all done—almost. I think we ought to have the tree for the children and you can fix it up somehow, can’t you?”

“Yes,” smiled Mary Elizabeth, but she was thinking that she must somehow find a way to make that tree as pretty as usual—even without any money to buy things!

That day and the next, Mary Elizabeth pondered the question. She thought of this and of that but nothing seemed quite right. There was no way to earn any money. And the tree had no star for the top. It had been lost, somehow. It was not with the tree fixings in the box in the attic! How to get a new star, that was one question. How to get the candles was another. And Mary Elizabeth’s tree had always been a tree that people came in to look at and admire. It was not like any other tree. It was always a surprise, somehow. Money was needed to buy things to make it wonderful. Money was needed to make it a bright surprise as usual!

At school, Mary Elizabeth found herself puzzling over this problem as vacation time drew near. It was harder for her than any arithmetic problem, for it could not be solved at all. Twice she saved five cents by walking home and that bought candles. But the problem remained as usual. It was how to get more money.

Then there came the day when the magazine came. It was always something of an event when the magazine came. It had new pictures in it and often it had cut-out pages for the little children. Once there had been a circus with clowns to cut out and ever since that time, Brother somehow got hold of the paper as soon as Mother took it from its wrapper. He was always hoping for more circus, you know. He knew its pages by heart and spelled out the titles and headings of the pictures. When Mary Elizabeth came home one day, he announced that the magazine had come.

“What’s in it?” questioned Mary Elizabeth.

“Pictures,” Brother replied mysteriously, “but not any of a circus. It’s a puzzle page. You have to guess what the pictures are and they’ll give a prize of five dollars to the one who answers and tells what the pictures are.” But Brother was still busy with the magazine and Mary Elizabeth was called away to help Mother with the little sister. She did not see the page, though she thought about it and wondered if she could answer all the questions and get the money that way to trim the Christmas tree. In the evening, after supper, after the little children had gone off to bed and Brother, too, with them, she found the magazine and looked it over. Yes, it was a contest. And the pictures were Mother Goose. It seemed easy to guess them—Mary Elizabeth guessed Simple Simon right away. It was the picture of a funny doll fishing in a little pail with a hook and line. She tried the others. She was not so sure of all but she guessed them with the help of the little children’s Mother Goose to refresh her memory. She was so excited that she felt the prize was already hers. She was sure she must win!

Just think of it: the first prize was five whole dollars and the second prize was two whole dollars and there were eight other prizes each of one whole big dollar—ten chances that Mary Elizabeth might earn some money for her Christmas tree! Her hands shook as she took up pen and put it to paper. She used her very best paper and three times or more she discarded what she had written and tried to do better. She wrote with extreme pains and slowly. It took all the evening just to write the short answer. She put it into its envelope to mail on the way to school next day, but she said nothing about it as she kissed Mother good-night.

Nearer and nearer came Christmas time. The little children talked more than ever about Santa Claus. Brother planned what kind of a stocking he would hang up. They talked about the tree and asked Mary Elizabeth what she supposed Santa Claus would make as a tree surprise this year. At these times, laughingly, Mary Elizabeth suggested that there would be candles on the tree and that perhaps there would be tinsel. She said that, maybe, Santa Claus would send all his Christmas to the little French and Belgian children and not have much to make into a surprise here at home. She told them stories about Santa Claus and the Santa Claus Land. She played with them to keep them amused but she thought all the time of the Mother Goose Contest and as time went on, she felt less sure each day of having won. Once she passed by the ten cent store and found a beautiful gold star and wanted to buy it. Then one day Mary Elizabeth actually found a ten cent piece near a shop upon a busy sidewalk in town. Her heart went thump at the sight of it. She asked several persons if they had lost anything and they replied, “No.” So Mary Elizabeth went straight to the ten cent store and bought a star, right away.

All this time, Mary Elizabeth watched anxiously for the postman. The time set for the close of the contest came and passed. No letter was brought to Mary Elizabeth. She knew that she would have had a letter if she had won any prize, of course. But Mary Elizabeth, with her heart heavy as lead, wondered whether she had really ever believed she would win. She admitted that she had. She was sure her work was right—that is, all answers were correct. The writing was neat. There were no blots. She had done her very best.

Mary Elizabeth was too soldierly to cry. She told nobody. She set about planning how she would cut paper ornaments out of colored wall papers and paste them together. She would make some paper dolls and dress them like fairies with the tissue paper she had. She would make wings with tissue paper, too. She would ask Mother to let her make some gingerbread animals and men to use on the tree. She would gild some nuts and pinecones maybe. There was the star. There was the box of candles. Those were something! But if only she did have money, she would trim her tree with the emblems of all the Allies and have a really soldierly Christmas tree!

Mary Elizabeth went into her room and locked her door tight. She took the key of her lower bureau drawer and sat down upon the floor beside it and drew it out. In it lay all the Christmas tree things with the box of candles and the star. As she looked at the bright Christmas things, a tear dropped upon her lap—oh, it might have been so different!

Why is it that when one is just in the midst of Christmas planning somebody comes to the door and knocks? Did you ever spread all your things out on a bed or a table or on the floor and fail to have somebody come to knock at your door and demand to be let in right away? There came a knock at Mary Elizabeth’s—but first, the latch had been tried. “Let me in, Mary Elizabeth!” cried Brother.

“I can’t,” returned Mary Elizabeth.

“You can.”

Thump-thumpety-thump.

“Go ’way,” admonished Mary Elizabeth. “I shan’t let you in! You can’t come in.”

“Well, you’ll be sorry,” said the muffled voice of Brother. “You’ll be sorry,” but he left off knocking at the door and ran away. Mary Elizabeth wondered if perhaps he suspected about the play of Santa Claus. He was getting to be quite big. Maybe he knew about the tree. Maybe he would have to be let into the fun of Christmas planning next year—but was it fun? Wasn’t it dreadful to worry about the tree and plan how to make it all new? No, it was not worry! No, it was not! Mary Elizabeth denied this stoutly. It was part of the self-sacrifice of Christmas to think about it as she had—and there would be a lovely tree! Yes, there would, somehow; she’d manage to make a grand surprise of it. Oh, yes, she would. Mary Elizabeth smiled and was ashamed of that little hot tear. She put the Christmas tree things back into the drawer one by one and she closed and locked the drawer. Then she went to the window and looked out across the snow. She thought maybe some cotton would look pretty and snowy on the tree like that. She heard Brother at the door again but she wasn’t quite ready to let him in. She wanted to be alone and think. She did not want to tell stories about Santa Claus.

His little voice came plaintively, “Please, Mary Elizabeth, let me in. I’ll tell you something nice, if you’ll let me in.” But Mary Elizabeth was not ready to hear what Brother thought Santa Claus was going to bring. She did not go to the door. Then she heard his soft little footsteps trot away down the hall and she felt sorry. She opened the door to run after him and there, where Brother had left it, there lay a big square envelope with the name of the magazine upon it!

Mary Elizabeth gasped. She tore it open and read:

Dear Mary Elizabeth:

Your good work has merited the reward of the Second Prize of two dollars offered in the Mother Goose Contest. The money is enclosed and we hope that it will bring with it a Very Happy Christmas!

Happy Christmas! Hooray! Oh, how fine! Happy Christmas—why, of course, Happy Christmas! Wasn’t it splendid! Wasn’t it a surprise! Waving the letter, she hugged everybody that she met, Brother, Mother and all the children. Something splendid had happened, they all agreed. Everybody congratulated Mary Elizabeth. But only Mother really guessed why Mary Elizabeth didn’t spend it all right then and there the very first day in buying candy and peanuts. That was what Brother and the little children suggested.

But next day, after vacation had really begun and when the little children and Brother were safely out of the way, Mary Elizabeth with her little red kid purse slipped out of the house and off to buy the flags of the Allies to use for the Christmas tree.

Mary Elizabeth had decided, too, what the Christmas surprise was to be. Yes, it should be a tree covered with flags and Old Glory should be with the star at the top!

And then came tree-trimming! And the tree was—oh, oh, it was ever so much more wonderful than any tree had ever been before. Everybody said so! The little children said so. Brother said so! Mary Elizabeth herself knew it was so! All the little poor children who came to the tree said so!

It was Mother, however, who knew about the very soldierly Santa Claus that had made the tree so lovely. “It honored the little Christ Child’s Birthday, dear,” she said as she kissed Mary Elizabeth good-night. “It is the tree of the soldiers who are fighting for all that Christmas means.”

“The star was there,” replied Mary Elizabeth.

CONCLUSION The Last Leaf of the Surprise Book

The last leaf of Marjorie’s Surprise Book was very, very thin. It did not make Marjorie poke and feel and wonder what was inside its pocket. It was marked to open at the Christmas tree. So the first thing that she did was to pull its Christmas seals off and read what was written inside:

“I made that up,” said Dotty, proudly. “I did it all myself.” Really, I think that Marjorie’s Surprise Book belonged to both little girls, don’t you? But which one do you suppose liked it best? Was it Marjorie or was it Dotty? What do you think? For myself, I think it was the one who made it and gave it and thought it and planned it all. So, maybe, there is somebody that you love to whom, you, too, would like to give a Surprise Book like this of Marjorie’s.

And because I myself love all you children, I am giving you the story of a Surprise Book right here—now!