The Second Christmas Megapack. Гарриет Бичер-Стоу
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“It means a bill for you from me!” announced George. His cheeks grew redder, his blue eyes looked squarely at his father. “It’s for this!” He pulled from his pocket a school report card divided into tiny ruled squares, filled with figures for half its length, and flung it down proudly on the table before his parent.
“It’s the Deportment—since September. You said when Miss Skinner sent that last note home about me that if I could get a hundred in Deportment for every month up to Christmas you’d be willing to pay me five dollars. You can see there for yourself, father, the three one hundreds—no, not that line—that’s only fifty-five for spelling; nobody ever knows their spelling! Here is the place to look—in the Deportment column. I’ve tried awful hard to be good, father, to surprise you.”
“The way that child has tried!” burst forth Clytie, her dark eyes drowned in sparkles. “And they’re so unfair at school—giving you a mark if you squeak your chair, or speak, or look at anybody; as if any child could be expected to sit like a stone all the time! I’m sure I love to hear children laughing—and you know yourself how hard it is for George to be quiet! We had a little talk about it together, he and I; and now you see! It’s been such work keeping his card from you each month when you asked for it. One day he thought he had a bad mark and he couldn’t eat any dinner—you thought he was ill; but he went to Miss Skinner the next day and she took it off because he had been trying so hard to be good. Joe, why don’t you speak?”
“George, I’m proud of you!” said Langshaw simply. There was a slight huskiness in his voice; the round face and guileless blue eyes of his little boy, who had tried “awful hard to be good,” seemed to have acquired a new dignity. The father saw in him the grown-up son who could be depended upon to look after his mother if need were. Langshaw held out his hand as man to man; the two pairs of eyes met squarely. “Nothing you could have done would have pleased me more than this, George. I value it more than any Christmas present I could have.”
“Mother said you’d like it,” said the beaming George, ducking his head suddenly and kicking out his legs from behind.
“And you’ll pay the five dollars?” supplemented Clytie anxiously.
“Surely!” said Langshaw. The glances of the parents met in one of the highest pleasures that life affords: the approval together of the good action of their dear child. “George can go out and get this ten-dollar bill changed.”
“If you can’t spare it, father—” suggested the boy with some new sense of manliness, hanging back.
“I’m glad to be able to spare it,” said the father soberly. “It’s a good deal of money,” he added. “I suppose, of course, you’ll put it in the bank, George?”
“Now you mustn’t ask what he’s going to do with it,” said Clytie.
“Oh, isn’t it much!” cried little Mary.
“Dear me, there’s the doorbell,” said Clytie. “Who can it be at this hour? Run, George, and see!”
“It’s a letter for you, mother,” announced George, reappearing. “There’s a man in the hall, waiting for an answer.”
“It looks like a bill,” said Clytie nervously, tearing open the envelope; “but I don’t owe any bill. Why, it’s two and a quarter, from the tailor, for fixing over my old suit last fall! I’m positive I paid it weeks ago. There’s some mistake.”
“He says he’s been here three times, but you were out.”
“Have you any money for it, Clytie?” asked her husband.
Clytie looked as if a thunderbolt had struck her.
“Yes, I have; but—oh, I don’t want to take it for that! I need every penny I’ve got.”
“Well, there’s no need of feeling so badly about it,” said Langshaw resignedly.
“Give the ten-dollar bill to the man, George, and see if he can change it.” He couldn’t resist a slight masculine touch of severity at her incapacity. “I wish you’d tend to these things at the time, Clytie, or let me know about them.” He took the money when George returned. “Here’s your dollar now, Mary—don’t lose it again!—and your five, George. You might as well take another dollar yourself, Clytie, for extras.”
He pocketed the remainder of the change carelessly. After his first pang at the encroachment on the reserve fund the rod had sunk so far out of sight that it was almost as if it had never been. He had, of course, known all along that he would not buy it. Even the sting of the “Amount due” quickly evaporated.
Little Mary gave a jump that bumped her brown curly head against him.
“You don’t know what I’m going to give you for Christmas!” she cried joyously.
II.
Langshaw was one of those men who have an inherited capacity for enjoying Christmas. He lent it his attention with zest, choosing the turkey himself with critical care as he went through the big market in town, from whence he brought also wreaths and branches of holly that seemed to have larger and redder berries than could be bought in the village. On Christmas Eve he put up the greens that decorated the parlour and dining-room—a ceremony that required large preparations with a step-ladder, a hammer, tacks, and string, the removal of his coat, and a lighted pipe in one corner of his mouth; and which proceeded with such painstaking slowness on account of his coming down from the ladder every other moment to view the artistic effect of the arrangements, that it was only by sticking the last branches up any old way at Clytie’s wild appeal that he ever got it finished at all.
Then he helped her fill the stockings, his own fingers carefully giving the crowning effect of orange and cornucopia in each one, and arranging the large packages below, after tiptoeing down the stairs with them so as not to wake the officially sleeping children, who were patently stark awake, thrashing or coughing in their little beds. The sturdy George had never been known to sleep on Christmas Eve, always coming down the next day esthetically pale and with abnormally large eyes, to the feast of rapture.
On this Saturday—Christmas Eve’s eve—when Langshaw finally reached home, laden with all the “last things” and the impossible packages of tortuous shapes left by fond relatives at his office for the children—one pocket of his overcoat weighted with the love-box of really good candy for Clytie—it was evident as soon as he opened the hall door that something unusual was going on upstairs. Wild shrieks of “It’s father! It’s father!” rent the air.
“It’s father!”
“Fardie! Fardie, don’t come up!”
“Father, don’t come up!”
“Father, it’s your present!”
There was hasty scurrying of feet, racing to and fro, and further shrieks. Langshaw waited, smiling.
It was evidently a “boughten” gift, then; the last had been a water pitcher, much needed in the household. He braced himself fondly for immense enthusiasm over this.
An expression of intense excitement was visible on each face when finally he was allowed to enter the upper room. Mary and Baby rushed at him to clasp his leg, while his wife leaned over to kiss him as he whispered:
“I brought out a lot of truck; it’s all in the closet in the hall.”
George, standing with his hands in his pockets, proclaimed loudly, with sparkling eyes:
“You nearly saw your present! It’s from mother and us. Come here, Baby, and pull brother’s leg. Say, father, do you like cut glass?”
“O-oh!” came in ecstatic chorus from the other two, as at a delightful joke.
“It’s a secret!” announced Baby, her yellow hair falling over one round, blue eye.
“I believe it’s a pony,” said the father. “I’m sure I heard a pony up here!”