III.CHRISTMAS PLANS.
“Well,” said the doctor, “let us hear about the Christmas plans. I feel perfectly certain that I shall have to go to the city and offer assistance to Santa Claus. Every year it turns out that some little boy or girl gets up Christmas morning to an empty stocking and no one wants such a thing to happen.”
“Why, that’s just what we want to do—give a really merry Christmas to some of the sorry ones,” and Dorothy plunged into the subject. “You know last summer there were some children in this neighborhood, ‘Fresh air children,’ they were called. Jeanie brought one of them, a little girl, Maddie Morrison, over here to see if any of my dresses would fit her. We played with her in the garden a long time. She said she wanted to live here always, because it was so quiet, she ‘could hear her own feet walking.’
“Do you know, Maddie had never seen flowers growing out of doors and never had rolled on the grass. It was the way she talked of her home, and the way she lived with her grandmother, that made us plan to have a Christmas time.
“It is just as lovely in the country in the winter as it is in the summer, and so different.”
“The air is just as fresh,” broke in Lois, and they all laughed while Rings drew a little nearer to the crackling grate fire.
“The people who invited the children last summer,” Dorothy, full of her cherished plans, went on, “have invited them this Christmas time. The children are coming one week before Christmas day and stay until after the New Year. We are planning to have two weeks of happy days; snow-balling, sleighing, making snow men and forts, and, oh! all kinds of winter games.
“Every one is going to do something to give them a good time. Mrs. Grant is going to invite them to her house to pop corn, Mrs. Waring is going to show them some beautiful pictures and have a moonlight ride, father says Lois and I may invite them to a candy pull, and give a party Christmas afternoon. We are going to have a Santa Claus hunt.
“There will be a gift hidden about the house for each child and he or she must find it. It’s going to be a happy time for every one.”
“Is there to be a Christmas tree?” asked the doctor.
“Not at the party; Christmas eve and Christmas morning are to belong to their hostess. She is to see about the tree and hanging the stockings and the surprises, and all that, just as if it were her own little boy or girl.”
“The only thing that spoils it a little is,—we can’t find Maddie Morrison,” broke in Lois. “She doesnot live where she used to and we planned to have her with us.”
The doctor leaned suddenly forward, his face all aglow with eagerness, as he exclaimed: “That’s just what I’ve been waiting for, some definite instruction from Santa Claus. I’m going in search of Maddie. She shall have all these good things that have been planned for her.” Then, with an expression of utter bewilderment, he questioned: “Am I to send her by parcel post or just bring her in my suit case, or, will she be able to travel like any ordinary little girl, when she hears of the wonderful two weeks?”
A burst of laughter was their only reply.
“Very well,” he said, “but I shall certainly find Maddie if she is findable.”
“When you find her bring her to us,” said Mr. Douglas, “and we will see that she has proper clothing—that is the arrangement for each child.”
“No!” the doctor declared, “‘finding is keeping.’ I shall fit her out myself. Perhaps Jeanie can be persuaded to come with me and see how well I know what a little girl needs. Why shouldn’t I have a stocking hung up in my chimney, a Christmas tree on my hearth, a Christmas candle in my window?” he demanded smilingly.
“We have worked very hard and long to earn our part for the Christmas surprise for the city children,” continued Dorothy.
“Worked! Earned! Why, what did you work at and how did you earn anything?” the doctor asked, incredulously.
“Do tell us,” father begged. “I knew something was going on, but I have waited to be told about it.”
“Well,” said Dorothy, “you know if we did not put ourselves into it somehow, it would not be a true gift. We are not very big and cannot make many things that would be of any real value, and we have only the money father gives us. We have saved nearly all of that——”
“And,” Lois interrupted, “I put in the five-dollar gold piece Father Douglas gave me, because I routed the ‘think you can’ts,’ and learned to play the scales.”
“Yes, and we’ve found out that the ‘think you can’ts’ are really ‘don’t want tos,’” Dorothy explained earnestly. “Sometimes I don’t even want to want to,” she added pensively. “Jeanie told us she knew just the thing for us to do. Jeanie said, if we would do certain things which meant a great deal more to us and others than money, we could have all we needed and know we had earned it——”
“And,” chimed in Lois, “I just know we earned it.”
“What were some of the things?” asked father.
“Why, the truly smiling, when you wanted to cry; and thinking kindly about people who seem not soverypleasant; trying to understand how they feel; being patient and willing and cheerful and obedient; without any ‘wait a minutes,’ or ‘I’d rather nots,’ or ‘whys,’” both children excitedly explained.
“Jeanie says ‘whys’ are all right, but its wise to remember the ‘musts.’ You know, reading pagesof French, that have no story in them, and playing the exercises that make your fingers strong but have no tune, and learning ‘six times’ so you know it anywhere you begin,” sighed Lois. “Seems to me I earned as much as adollarlearning ‘six times.’”
“I am certain you did,” sympathized father.
“And you know,” went on Dorothy, “it wasn’t the justlookingpleasant, it was thefeelingpleasant.
“I always wanted Jeanie to curl my hair, and Mary can do it just as well, and Jeanie is often busy, so I was sure Mary pulled, and Mary was certain she did not intend to pull, and we were both troubled, until Jeanie said there was a tangle thatIalone could untangle.
“Now I like Mary to curl my hair, and she is so kind and funny. We are going to keep on working, and Jeanie says we will have a big bank account by the end of another year.”
The pause that followed was a thoughtful one. It was broken by the doctor asking: “Has anyone heard Jeanie express any Christmas desires?”
“I asked her what she would like me to give her,” said Dorothy, “and she said, ‘I would like your undivided attention to your sewing about half an hour each day.’ She said, ‘that would be a gift worth having.’
“It’s very hard to sew; I seem to find so much to interest me somewhere else, when I should be sewing—birds and clouds out of the window—and fairy stories in the grate fire.”
“Rings always wants to play when it’s sewing time,” chuckled Lois, “and then my needle gets lost.Seems to me Jeanie will have a Christmas present every day in the year.
The doctor rose, swinging Lois to his shoulder, declaring he must go home and prepare for the morrow’s trip to the city, and murmured something about “offering Jeanie his undivided attention every day in the year.”