CHAPTER IX
At Christmas
The next day Eleanor was able to go over to her Aunt Nellie's, for the sun was shining brightly, and the pavements were cleared of snow. Florence and her other cousins greeted her warmly. They were all much excited over the approach of Christmas, and Eleanor was piloted up to the nursery, "Because," said Florence, "there is so much going on downstairs, and some of sister's friends will be down in our room. Mamma has gone out, but she will be back directly." And they proceeded to establish themselves and set to work industriously to finish some embroidery which each had to have ready for Christmas. They had hardly begun to work, however, when Mrs. Graham appeared, and Eleanor scurried her bit of linen out of sight, but Florence arose to the occasion with: "Mamma, Dimple and I have been talking about the Christmas party that we always have. We were wondering how we could manage it this year when we all have the whooping-cough. We have a lovely plan, though."
"Have you?" said her mother, sitting down and drawing off her gloves. "Let us hear it."
"Why," answered Florence, looking very wise as she threaded her needle, "we think it would be nice to have a whooping party."
Her mother laughed. "That's a queer sort of party. Do you mean to play Indian?"
"No, I mean we can have all the little girls and boys that are having the whooping-cough and that can't go to school or anywhere."
"And how many do you suppose that will be?"
"I don't know. I know four or five. May we have it, mamma?"
"Why, I don't know. I shall have to think about it. I suppose I should have to furnish lozenges and cough syrup for refreshments."
Florence laughed; it struck her as a very funny sort of refreshment, but she knew her mother was joking, although she added quite seriously, "We should have to be careful not to have anything very rich, you know. I think, after all, you'd best think of something else, for, a room full of children whooping and choking one after another, would be rather an unpleasant scene. Don't you think something else would be more amusing? You and Dimple put your thinking-caps on and we'll see what can be done to amuse you during the holidays."
Florence agreed to this and the two little girls proceeded with their work while they tried to think very hard, looking very sober as they stitched away. They were interrupted by the entrance of Florence's little sister Gertrude, who had been down town with her mother and who came in full of importance at having had presents provided for her to bestow at Christmas. "I've got sumpsin for ev'ybody," she said, "but I'm not going to tell."
Florence hugged her up close to her. "Won't you tell me?" she asked coaxingly.
"No," Gertrude shook her head, "I tan't tell."
"What color is the one you have for me?" Florence asked.
"It's white, an' it sumpsin to wipe your nose on. Now, I won't tell you one sing more," and she pursed up her lips tight, looking very wise while the others laughed heartily but pretended to be much mystified. These were very mysterious times, anyhow. Some one was always skurrying something under a chair or poking something into a closet whenever certain persons entered the room, and there were unfamiliar snippings of lace and silk and cambric to be seen on the floor in the nursery, so that Florence was wrought up to a pitch of curiosity rather unusual for her.
"You are to come over here right after breakfast, Christmas morning," she told Eleanor; "you and Rock. I wish you could stay here all night so that we could hang up our stockings together. I do so wish you could."
Eleanor looked a little doubtful; she did not want to neglect her Aunt Dora and her Uncle Heath, not to mention Rock. "I am afraid I couldn't do that," she said. "You know Rock will be at home and it would seem mean to leave them all on Christmas morning."
"Rock could come too; it would be such fun to have you," continued Florence, all hospitality, but Eleanor declared that would never do, and so they had to give up the plan. But, after all, it did turn out that Eleanor spent Christmas eve with her cousins, for Florence's mother decided that the children should have their Christmas tree at that time, that they might all go to Mrs. Heath Dallas' on Christmas night and see the tree that was to be prepared for Rock and Eleanor.
"Aunt Dora won't tell me anything about the tree," Eleanor told Florence, "so there's some sort of surprise, I know. Isn't it just fine that we can all be here together? I should have been so miserable at home."
"I don't see how you could have stood Cousin Ellen and have been nice to her," said Florence.
Eleanor was silent for a moment and took several stitches in the doily she was embroidering in outline stitch for her Aunt Nellie. "Well, I wasn't very nice to her," she admitted after a time. "I meant to be in the beginning, but when Don was so hateful and they treated Bubbles so mean, I just didn't care and I said anything that came into my head. Sometimes, when I got real mad, I was the sauciest girl you ever heard."
"Are you going to tell your mother?" Florence asked solemnly.
"I—I don't know. Maybe. Yes, I always tell mamma everything; somehow, it comes out whether I want it to or not. Yes, I'll tell her, but I couldn't be meek and lowly; I just couldn't. I never knew I could feel so very, very mad at any one before, but, you see, now that I am not there, I don't feel so mad, and I'm going to send the Christmas gifts, you know. I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll write to Cousin Ellen, and tell her I am sorry I was saucy, but I'll not say I am sorry about Donald, for I'm not." And Florence agreed that she could hardly be expected to.
The letter was written that very day and was tucked in the box with the Christmas gifts. It ran:
"Dear Cousin Ellen:"I hope you will have a happy Christmas. I am having a lovely time, and Bubbles is getting along finely. Every one at the hospital likes her and she is just as nice as she was when mamma was at home. I thought you would be glad to know that she is not so much hurt as we were afraid of because you sent her away and you would feel very bad if you thought you had made her get hurt very bad. I send you all a little Christmas gift. I hope you will like what I send. Were you ever impudent when you were a little girl? I am sorry I was."Yours"Eleanor Dallas."
"Dear Cousin Ellen:
"I hope you will have a happy Christmas. I am having a lovely time, and Bubbles is getting along finely. Every one at the hospital likes her and she is just as nice as she was when mamma was at home. I thought you would be glad to know that she is not so much hurt as we were afraid of because you sent her away and you would feel very bad if you thought you had made her get hurt very bad. I send you all a little Christmas gift. I hope you will like what I send. Were you ever impudent when you were a little girl? I am sorry I was.
"Yours"Eleanor Dallas."
Eleanor submitted the letter to her Aunt Nellie who read it and laughing, said: "You have said just the right thing, Dimple, and if Cousin Ellen can remember as far back as a certain occasion when she was a little girl I think she could answer, 'yes,' to your last question."
"Was she a nice little girl? Did you know her then, Aunt Nellie?"
"Yes, I knew her very well. She was my cousin, you know, but I don't believe your mother and I were as fond of her as you are of Florence. She hasn't changed so very much, I fancy."
"Then she couldn't have been so very nice," Eleanor concluded.
It was the day upon which they expected Rock to return home, and Eleanor was in a high state of excitement. There must be other arrivals to be looked for, too, for Aunt Dora was having the largest guest room made ready and one or two telegrams had arrived. "Are you expecting somebody else?" she ventured to ask.
"Yes," Aunt Dora answered smiling.
Eleanor's wistful eyes asked the question before her lips said, "Not papa and mamma?"
Aunt Dora stooped and kissed her. "No, dear, I wish I could say it was they for whom I am looking, but I'll tell you this much: they are strangers to me."
Eleanor puzzled over this. It seemed funny for Aunt Dora to entertain strangers at Christmas time, and she was rather disappointed that it should be so; it seemed as if it made a more formal day of it than she could enjoy. She determined to ask Rock about it so soon as she should have a chance, but he knew no more about it than she did and could not coax the secret from his mother. Rock had grown, Eleanor discovered, and although he was quite a rough and tumble boy, liking to be out of doors and to play all sorts of games requiring muscle, he was as kind and polite and gentle when he was in the house, as he ever had been, and Eleanor did not feel that her old comrade had lost anything by going to boarding-school. He was about a year older than Eleanor and she had known him when his mother was a widow and before she had married Eleanor's Uncle Heath.
"It's too bad that you can't go down town with me to buy my presents," Rock said to her the day he arrived. "But, I say, Dimple it's jolly to have you here. I was so glad when I heard you were coming."
"You weren't as glad as I was," she returned. "And isn't it fine that you don't have to go back to that hateful school?"
Rock looked sober. "Yes, it is," he replied. "Some of the fellows, who have been to other schools say they aren't half bad, but you see, this one has all new teachers this year, and though it used to be fine a few years ago, it's not so any more. You see father thought it was the same or he wouldn't have sent me there." One thing that Eleanor liked about Rock was his loyalty to her Uncle Heath.
The days passed quickly enough and when Christmas eve came around Eleanor, Rock, Mr. and Mrs. Heath Dallas were to see the tree at Aunt Nellie's. A fine affair it was, and it made a great show in the dining-room where it stood. Florence had several brothers and sisters and it seemed a big family to Eleanor, for, first, there was Kitty, the eldest daughter who was sixteen, and then came Marian, and next Florence, who was not quite ten, and then the three younger children, Lee and Gertrude, and Ted, the baby. This youngest member of the family was not old enough to do much more than laugh and coo at the shining tree, but Lee and Gertrude were just of the age to most appreciate the glittering glories of stars and rings and balls and glistening baubles.
The presents were not to be given till the next morning, although little Gertrude insisted upon making every one guess what she had for him or her, and in most cases managed to convey the information as to what it was. And then, because Rock said he was not going to hang up his stocking because he was too big to do such babyish things, his mother yielded to Florence's pleading for Eleanor's company for over night, promising that she should not even be asked to stay to breakfast if she could but be on hand to hang up her stocking with the rest.
"Don't you dare to stay too long," said Rock. "We're going to have our presents right after breakfast, aren't you, mamma?"
Mrs. Dallas looked at her husband. "Unless you and Eleanor can wait till evening when we have the tree."
"Oh, pshaw! that's too long to wait," Rock declared. Then seeing his mother's expression, he asked, "Is there any particular reason for it, mother?"
"Yes, I must confess, there is."
"Then I'll wait, if Dimple will, but it's a good deal to ask of a fellow."
"I'll wait," said Dimple cheerfully.
"Then I'll come over for you some time after breakfast," Rock told her, "and I'll see the presents over here and have the fun of that."
"I think Rock was just dear to do that," said Florence after he had gone. "I did so want you to stay with me to-night. Come, let's go right to bed, Dimple."
"We want to hang up our stockings first."
"Oh, of course. Mamma has some white ones, real big long ones, that she keeps on purpose. You know every one of the family has a stocking on Christmas morning."
"I am always going to hang up mine," Eleanor declared; "even after I am grown up and am married. I hope we shall live near each other then, don't you?"
Florence replied that she did and they hurried off to bed after seeing the stockings securely hung up by the nursery chimney-piece.
Although they were so filled with excitement that they kept awake much longer than usual, they dropped to sleep at last and awoke at the sound of the man attending to the furnace in the cellar.
"It's morning," whispered Florence. "Get up, Dimple, we must go and get our stockings, and then we'll come back to bed and look at them."
"It is so dark," said Eleanor, also in a whisper, "are you sure it is morning?"
"Yes, I hear John at the furnace, so I know. Put something round you, or you may get cold. Oh dear, I believe I am going to cough, and I don't want to wake up Gertrude and sister and the others." She buried her face in the pillow and managed to choke down the paroxysm to some extent, and then they wrapped themselves up warmly and tiptoed through the silent hall to the nursery where the row of stockings hung.
"Here is mine," said Florence in a whisper, after feeling around for a moment, "and here is yours. Don't they feel lovely and bumpy? Let's fly back with them before any one hears us." But this was not accomplished for Lee's quick ears heard them and he scrambled out of bed and downstairs he came to get his stocking. Then came more scrambling and whispering and giggling till all the stockings were in the possession of their rightful owners, and the owners then proceeded to snuggle back beneath the covers to examine their treasures.
Florence and Eleanor found the usual supply of cakes and candies and such things; away down in the toe they discovered a bright penny and on top of each stuffed stocking was placed a pretty little doll about three inches long. These were dressed in long clothes and wore, each, a tiny cap and cloak.
"Aren't they precious little things," said Eleanor, to whom a doll always appealed. "Florence, aren't you dying to know what other presents you have?"
"Yes, I am puzzled, for in the corner of the nursery, where our presents are always put, mamma has set up the largest screen, and so I know there is something big behind it, but I can't guess whom it may be for, and it is so lovely to think it may be for me."
Their curiosity in this direction was soon gratified, for it was really later than it appeared to be, for it was a dark morning and breakfast was announced before they were dressed. To be sure, it did not much matter, for all the children, except Lee, were too excited to eat much, and Mr. Graham said he supposed the contents of the stockings took the place of breakfast.
"We didn't eat anything but two cakes and two pieces of candy," Florence declared. "Lee has eaten half of what he had." But that did not prevent Lee from entirely enjoying his chicken and waffles, and the girls at last insisted that they could not wait all day for him. Therefore a procession was formed with Mr. Graham at the head, and they marched upstairs to the nursery. The screen was swung to one side, and there before the delighted eyes of Florence and Eleanor was displayed a pretty little doll-house, completely furnished from top to bottom. It had three rooms above and three below. In the parlor were a lady and a gentleman doll. The lady was sitting down and held a little boy doll in her lap. In the kitchen was a black cook who was immediately dubbed Sylvy, by Florence.
"Dimple hasn't looked at her own presents yet," said Marian, too much interested herself to see Florence's delight to look at her own gifts.
"Why, where are they?" Eleanor asked.
"There, before the door of the doll-house."
Eleanor looked eagerly around and true enough there stood a cunning little coach, drawn by two prancing horses and inside sat another lady and gentleman with their little son. "Aren't they dear?" cried Eleanor. "Oh, Florence, did you ever dream of having anything so lovely? Such cunning little people and to think we have the two families! can't we have the loveliest times? Oh, Aunt Nellie, I think you are a darling to do this for me. I never had a papa doll before and this one is so fine; he has such a lovely moustache."
Kitty laughed. "If you knew what a time we had to get a gentleman the proper size to fit the little house, you would not wonder that you have never possessed such a rare creature."
"Now, I want to know just who gave everything," said Florence.
"Papa gave the house; mamma furnished it, and I gave the dolls and dressed them, all but cook, and Marian gave that. Lee gave the little piano; he wanted to have a hand in furnishing the house."
"I don't see how you all kept the secret so well; I never dreamed of such a surprise," Florence acknowledged.
"Now, about mine," said Eleanor.
"Your coach is from mamma and the lady and gentleman from me," Kitty told her. "You haven't seen papa's present, have you?"
"No, are there any more?" And Eleanor's heart was further warmed by the gift of a set of books that she had long wanted.
The doll-house was so fascinating that when Rock arrived he could scarcely persuade Eleanor to go back home with him, and, indeed, he was so well pleased with the gift that he said he did not wonder the girls did not want to leave it, and he offered to go tell his mother that Eleanor was having such a good time that she would rather stay the rest of the day if she might. Aunt Dora appreciated the situation and sent word that she might remain, but to be sure to be back by five o'clock, and even then Rock found it hard to persuade her that it was time to go, and that if they didn't hurry they might miss something. Then Eleanor at last tore herself away, leaving her gifts behind her.
"It seems queer not to go to church on Christmas day," she said as she and Rock were on their way home. "Was the church very pretty?"
"Beautiful," Rock answered heartily, "and so was the music. It is too bad that you had to stay away. You ought to have seen Bubbles with her stocking. She was delighted, and she has hardly touched a thing in it because she wants to show it to you."
"And to think," said Eleanor, "I had to stay away from her all Christmas day. I don't believe it has ever happened before."
"She had a good time," Rock assured her, "she has had all the nice things that were good for her, and she knows she is to see you very soon."
"In a week, the doctor said, I did so hope she could come to-day." She gave a little sigh, but Rock began to joke with her, and they reached the corner before she knew it.