A strained silence followed this announcement. Yes, Peter had gone into the barn. It seemed night would come before he could possibly secure the old horse, and get to the roadway to give the necessary pull to the stalledFire Bird. They waited, eagerly watching the barn door. Finally it opened. Yes, Peter was coming, leading the horse.
“Now!” said Peter, standing with an emergency rope ready, “if only he gets past the house——”
He stopped. The door of the snow-covered cottage opened, and there stood the unapproachable Sanders.
“Oh!” gasped Mabel. “Now we are in for it!”
“Then,” said Dorothy, “let us be ready for it. I’ll prepare the defence,” and before they realized what she was about to do she had selected one of the very choicest Christmas trees, and with it on her fur-covered shoulder, actually started up the box-wood lined walk to where the much-dreaded Sanders was standing, ready to mete out vengeance on the man who had dared to enter his barn, and take from it his horse.
“Oh Mr. Sanders!” called Dorothy. “Have you that dear little grand-daughter with you? The pretty one we had at the church affair last year?”
“You mean Emily?” he drawled. “Yep, she’s here, but——”
“Then, you wonder why we have taken your horse? And why we were stalled here?” The others could hear her from the roadway. They could see, also, that Sanders had stopped to listen. “Now we want Emily to have a Christmas tree, all her own,” went on Dorothy, “and Peter is good enough to donate it. But our machine—those cars are not like horses,” she almost shouted, as Sanders being deaf, and watching the inexorable Peter leading his horse away, had cause to be aroused from his natural surprise. “After all,” persisted Dorothy, “a horse is the best.”
By this time Peter was outside the big gate. Sanders made a move as if to follow, when Dorothy almost dropped the clumsy tree.
“Oh, please take it!” she begged. “I want to see Emily while they are towing the machine out. It’s a lucky thing it happened just here, and that you are kind enough to let us have your horse.”
“Well what do you think of that!” exclaimed Ted, in a voice loud enough for those near him to hear. “Of all the clever tricks!”
“Oh, depend on Doro for cleverness,” replied Nat, proudly. “You just do your part, Ted, and make this rope fast.”
Mabel stood looking on in speechless surprise. She saw now that Dorothy and old Sanders were entering the cottage. Dorothy was first, and the man, with the Christmas tree, followed close behind her. The boys with Peter were busy with rope, horse and auto. Soon they had the necessary connection made, with Nat at the wheel, and all were tugging with might and main to get theFire Birdfree from the ditch.
If there is anything more nerve-racking than such an attempt, it must be some other attempt at a balking auto. Would it move, or would it sink deeper into the mud that lay hidden beneath the newly-fallen snow?
Nat turned the wheel first this way and then that. Ted had his weight pressed against the rear wheel of the machine, while Peter coaxed and led the horse. Suddenly the old horse, as if desperate, gave a jerk and pulled theFire Birdclear out into the roadway!
SUDDENLY THE OLD HORSE, AS IF DESPERATE, GAVE A JERK AND PULLED THE FIRE BIRD CLEAR.SUDDENLY THE OLD HORSE, AS IF DESPERATE, GAVE A JERK AND PULLED THE FIRE BIRD CLEAR.
SUDDENLY THE OLD HORSE, AS IF DESPERATE, GAVE A JERK AND PULLED THE FIRE BIRD CLEAR.
“Hurrah!” yelled Ted, bounding through the snow.
“Great stunt!” corroborated Nat. “Peter, you are all right!”
“Peter did some,” replied the old man, freeing the horse from the rope that held him to the machine; “but that young lady—if she hadn’t kept Sanders busy—we might all have been arrested for horse-stealing.”
“She knew his weak spot,” agreed Nat. “That little Emily seems to be the one weak and soft spot in old Sanders’s life.”
“I had better go up and see what’s going on,” suggested Mabel, as everything seemed about in readiness to start off again.
“Good idea,” assented her brother, “he might be eating her up.”
Mabel rather timidly found her way up to the cottage. It was already dusk, but the light of a dim lamp showed her the way, as it gleamed through a gloomy window, onto the glistening snow.
“Won’t it be perfectly lovely, Emily?” she heard Doro saying, as she saw her with her arms about a little red-haired girl, both sitting on a sofa, while Sanders attempted to prop the Christmas tree up in a corner, bracing it with a wooden chair. Mabel raised the latch without going through the formality of knocking. As she entered the room, all but Dorothy started in surprise.
“This is my friend,” Dorothy hurried to explain, “it is she who is going to help me trim the tree up for Emily. We will come to-morrow,” and she rose to leave. “Mabel will fetch the doll, Emily. That is, of course, if we can persuade Santa Claus to give us just the kind we want,” she tried to correct.
“A baby dolly—with long hair and a white dress,” Emily ordered. “And I want eyelashes.”
“Perticular,” said Sanders, with a proud look at the child, who, as the boys had said, made up the one tender spot in his life. “If her ma’s cold is better, she is coming up herself.”
“Is she sick?” Emily ventured, glad to be able to say something intelligent.
“Yep,” replied the old man, sadly. “She’s been sick a long time. I fetched Emily over this afternoon in the sleigh.”
“Well, we are so much obliged,” remarked Dorothy. “And good-bye, Emily. You’ll have everything ready for Santa Claus; won’t you?”
“I’ve got my parlor set from last year,” said the child, “and mamma says Santa Claus always likes to see the other things, to know we took care of them.”
“Thanks, Sanders,” called Peter, at the window. “The horse is as good as ever. Don’t sell him without giving me a chance. I could do something if I owned a mare like that.”
“All right,” called back Sanders, whose pride was being played upon. “He might be worse. Did you put her in the far stall?”
“Just where I got her. And I tell you, Sanders, even a horse can play at Christmas. Only for him I never could get those trees to town.”
“And only for Peter,” put in Dorothy, “we could not have gotten Emily her tree. Now that’s how a horse can turn Santa Claus. Good-bye, Mr. Sanders, you may expect us before Christmas.”
And then the two girls followed the chuckling Peter back to theFire Bird, where the boys impatiently awaited them, to complete the delayed party bound for home, and for the Christmas holidays.
“This is some,” remarked Bob Niles, before he knew what he was talking about. They had just been ensconsed in Daddy Brennen’s sleigh. Tavia was beside him—that is, she was as close beside him as she was beside Daddy Brennen, but the real fact was, that in this sleigh, no one could be beside anyone else—it was ever a game of toss and catch. But that was not Daddy’s fault. He never stopped calling to his horse, or pulling at the reins. It must have been the roads, yet everyone paid taxes in Dalton Township.
“Don’t boast,” Tavia answered, adjusting herself anew to the last jolt, “this never was a sleigh to boast of, and it seems to be worse than ever now. There!” she gasped, as she almost fell over the low board that outlined the edge, “one more like that, and I will be mixed up with the gutter.”
“Perhaps this is a safer place,” Bob ventured. “I seem to stay put pretty well. Won’t you change with me?”
“No, thanks,” Tavia answered, good-humoredly. “When Daddy assigns one to a seat one must keep it.”
“Nice clean storm,” Daddy called back from the front. “I always like a white Christmas.”
“Yes,” Tavia said, “looks as if this is going to be white enough. But what are you turning into the lane for, Daddy?”
“Promised Neil Blair I’d take his milk in for him. He can’t get out much in storms—rheumatism.”
“Oh,” Tavia ejaculated. Then to Bob: “How we are going to ride with milk cans is more than I can see.”
“The more the merrier,” Bob replied, laughing. “I never had a better time in my life. This beats a straw ride.”
“Oh, we have had them too, with Daddy,” she told him. “Doro and our crowd used to have good times when she lived in Dalton.”
“No doubt. This is the farmhouse, I guess,” Bob added, as the sleigh pulled up to a hill.
“Yes, this is Neil’s place,” Tavia said. “And there comes Mrs. Blair with a heavy milk can.”
“Oh, I must help her with that,” offered the young man. “I suppose our driver has to take care of his speedy horse.”
Disentangling himself from the heavy blankets, Bob managed to alight in time to take the milk can from the woman, who stood with it at the top of the hill.
“Oh, thank you, sir!” she panted. “The cans seem to get heavier, else I am getting lazy. But Neil had such a twinge, from this storm, that I wouldn’t let him out.”
“And did you do all the milking?” Tavia asked, as Bob managed to place the can in the spot seemingly made for it, beside Daddy.
“Certainly. Oh, how do you do, Tavia? How fine you look; I’m glad to see you home for Christmas,” Mrs. Blair assured the girl.
“Thank you. I’m glad to get home.”
“Fetchin’ company?” with a glance at young Niles.
“No, he’s going farther on,” and Tavia wondered why it was so difficult for her to make such a trifling remark.
“Well, I’m glad he came this way, at any rate,” the woman continued. “But Daddy will be goin’ without the other can,” and she turned off again in the direction of the barn.
“Are there more?” Bob asked Tavia, cautiously.
“I’m afraid so,” she replied. “But I guess she can manage them.”
“My mother would disown me if she knew I let her,” Bob asserted, bravely. “This is an experience not in the itinerary,” and he scampered up the hill, and made for the barn after Mrs. Blair.
Tavia could not help but admire him. After all, she thought, a good-looking lad could be useful, if only for carrying milk cans.
“And has that young gent gone after the can?” asked Daddy, as if just awaking from some dream.
“Yes,” Tavia replied, rather sharply. “He wouldn’t let Mrs. Blair carry such a heavy thing.”
“Well, she’s used to it,” Daddy declared. At the same time he did disturb himself sufficiently to get out and prepare to put the second can in its place.
A college boy, in a travelling suit, carrying a huge milk can through the snow, Tavia thought rather a novel sight, but Bob showed his training, and managed it admirably.
“I’ll put her in,” offered Daddy, “I didn’t know you went after it.”
“So kind of him,” remarked Mrs. Blair, “but he would have it. Thank you, Daddy, for stopping. Neil’ll make it all right with you.”
Daddy was standing up in the sleigh, the can in his hands, “I think,” he faltered, “I’ll have to set this down by you, Miss Travers,” he decided.
“All right,” Tavia agreed, making room at her feet.
He lifted the can high enough to get it over the back of the seat. It was heavy, and awkward, and he leaned on the rickety seat trying to support himself. The weight was too much for the board, and before Bob could get in to help him, and before Tavia could get herself out of the way, the can tilted and the milk poured from it in a torrent over the head, neck and shoulders of Tavia!
“Oh, mercy!” she yelled. “My new furs!”
“Save the milk,” growled Daddy.
“Jump up!” Bob commanded Tavia. “Let it run off if it will.”
But Tavia was either too disgusted, or too surprised, to “jump up.” Instead she sat there, fixing a frozen look at the unfortunate Daddy.
“My milk!” screamed Mrs. Blair. “A whole can full!”
“Was it ordered?” Bob asked, who by this time had gotten Tavia from under the shower.
“No,” she said hesitatingly, “but someone would have took it for Christmas bakin’.”
“Then let us have it,” offered Bob, generously. “If I had kept my seat perhaps it would not have happened.”
“Nonsense,” objected Tavia, “it was entirely Daddy’s fault.”
But Daddy did not hear—he was busy trying to save the dregs in the milk can.
“What’s it worth?” persisted Bob.
“Two dollars,” replied Mrs. Blair, promptly.
Bob put his hand in his pocket and took out two bills. He handed them to the woman.
“There,” he said, “it will be partly a Christmas present. I only hope my—friend’s furs will not be ruined.”
“Milk don’t hurt,” Mrs. Blair said, without reason. “Thank you, sir,” she added to Bob. “This is better than ten that’s comin’. And land knows we needed it to-night.”
“I’ve lost time enough,” growled Daddy. “And that robe is spoiled. Next time I carry milk cans I’ll get a freight car.”
“And the next time I take a milk beauty bath,” said Tavia, “I’ll wear old clothes.” But as Bob climbed in again, and Tavia assured him her furs were not injured, she thought of Dorothy’s prediction that she, Tavia, was about to have an adventure when she met Bob Niles.
“I’ll have something to tell Dorothy,” she remarked aloud.
“And I’ll have news for Nat,” slily said Bob.
“Well, what do you think of that!”
“Well, what do you think of this!”
It was Nat who spoke first, and Dorothy who echoed. They were both looking at letters—from Tavia and from Bob.
“I knew Bob would find her interesting,” said Nat, with some irony in his tone.
“And I knew she would finally like him,” said Dorothy, significantly.
“Bob has a way with girls,” went on Nat, “he always takes them slowly—it’s the surest way.”
“But don’t you think Tavia is very pretty? Everyone at school raves about her,” Dorothy declared with unstinted pride, for Tavia’s golden brown hair, and matchless complexion, were ever a source of pride to her chum.
“Of course she’s pretty,” Nat agreed. “Wasn’t it I who discovered her?”
Dorothy laughed, and gave a lock of her cousin’s own brown hair a twist. She, as well as all their mutual friends, knew that Nat and Tavia were the sort of chums who grow up together and cement their friendship with the test of time.
“Come to think of it,” she replied, “you always did like red-headed girls.”
“Now there’s Mabel,” he digressed, “Mabel has hair that seems a misfit—she has blue eyes and black hair. Isn’t that an error?”
“Indeed,” replied Dorothy, “that is considered one of the very best combinations. Rare beauty, in fact.”
“Well, I hope she is on time for the Christmas-tree affair out at Sanders’s, whatever shade her hair. I don’t see, Doro, why you insist on going away out there to put things on that tree. Why not ask the Sunday School people to trim it? We gave the tree.”
“Because I promised, Nat,” replied Dorothy, firmly, “and because I just like to do it for little Emily. I got the very doll she ordered, and Aunt Winnie got me a lot of pretty things this morning.”
“Wish momsey would devote her charity to her poor little son,” said the young man, drily. “He is the one who needs it most!”
“Never mind, dear,” and Dorothy put her arms around him, “you shall have a dolly, too.”
“Here’s Ned,” he interrupted, “I wonder if he got my skates sharpened? I asked him, but I’ll wager he forgot.”
The other brother, a few years Nat’s senior, pulled off his furlined coat, and entered the library, where the cousins were chatting.
“Getting colder every minute,” he declared. “We had better take the cutter out to Sanders’s—that is, if Doro insists upon going.”
“Of course I do,” Dorothy cried. “I wouldn’t disappoint little Emily for anything. Funny how you boys have suddenly taken a dislike to going out there.”
“Now don’t get peevish,” teased Ned. “We will take you, Coz, if we freeze by the wayside.”
“Did you get my skates?” Nat asked.
“Not done,” the brother replied. “Old Tom is busy enough for ten grinders. Expect we will have a fine race.”
“And I can’t get in shape. Well, I wish I had taken them out to Wakefield’s. He would have had them done days ago. But if we are going to Sanders’s, better get started. I’ll call William to put the cutter up.”
“Here come Ted and Mabel now. They’re sleighing, too,” exclaimed Dorothy. “Won’t we have a jolly party!”
“That’s a neat little cutter,” remarked Ned, glancing out of the window. “And Mabel does look pretty in a red—what do you call that Scotch cap?”
“Tam o’Shanter,” Dorothy helped out. “Yes, it is very becoming. But Neddie, dear?” and her voice questioned.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he replied indifferently. “Mabel was always kind of—witchy. I like that type.”
“And Ted is—so considerate,” Dorothy added with a mock sigh. “I do wonder how Bob and Tavia are getting along?”
“Probably planning suicide by this time—I say planning, you know, not executing. It would be so nice for a boy as good as Bob to be coerced into some wild prank by the wily Tavia.”
“She did not happen, however, to lead you into any,” retorted Dorothy, “and I take it you are a ‘good boy’.”
“Oh, but how hard she tried,” and he feigned regret. “Tavia would have taught me to feed out of her hand, had I not been—so well brought up.”
This bantering occupied the moments between the time Ted’s sleigh glided into view, and its arrival at the door of the Cedars.
“’Lo, ’lo!” exclaimed Mabel, her cheeks matching the scarlet of her Tam o’Shanter.
“Low, low! Sweet and Low!” responded Nat. “Also so low!”
“No—but Milo!” said Ned, with a complimentary look at Mabel. “The Venus mended.”
“‘High low,’” went on Ted. “That’s what it is. A high—low and the game! To go out there to-night in this freeze!”
“Strange thing,” Dorothy murmured, “how young men freeze up—sort of antagonistic convulsion.”
“Oh, come on,” drawled Ned, “when a girl wills, she will—and there’s an end on it.”
It did not take the girls long to comply—Dorothy was out with Ted, Mabel, Nat and Ned before the boys had a chance to relent.
“Those bundles?” questioned Ted, as Dorothy surrounded herself with the things for Emily.
“Now did you ever!” exclaimed Dorothy. “It seems to me everything is displeasing to-day.”
“No offence, I’m sure,” Ted hastened to correct, “but the fact is—we boys had a sort of good time framed up for this afternoon. Not but what we are delighted to be of service——”
“Why didn’t you say so?” Dorothy asked.
It seemed for the moment that the girls and boys were not to get along in their usual pleasant manner. But the wonderful sleighing, and the delightful afternoon, soon obliterated the threatening difficulties, and a happy, laughing party in each cutter glided over the road, now evenly packed with mid-winter snow.
The small boys along the way occasionally stole a ride on the back runners of the sleighs, or “got a hitch” with sled or bob, thus saving the walk up hill or the jaunt to the ice pond.
“Oh, there’s Dr. Gray!” Dorothy exclaimed suddenly as a gentleman in fur coat and cap was seen hurrying along. “I wonder why he is walking?”
“For his health, likely,” Ted answered. “Doctors know the sort of medicine to take for their own constitutions.”
By this time they were abreast of the physician. Dorothy called out to him:
“Where’s your horse, Doctor?”
“Laid up,” replied the medical man, with a polite greeting. “He slipped yesterday——”
“Going far?” Ted interrupted, drawing his horse up.
“Out to Sanders’s,” replied the doctor.
“Sanders’s!” repeated Dorothy. “That’s where we’re going. Who’s sick?”
“The baby,” replied the doctor, “and they asked me to hurry.”
“Get in with us,” Ted invited, while Dorothy almost gasped. Little Emily sick! She could scarcely believe it.
Dr. Gray gladly accepted the invitation to ride, and the next cutter with Ned, Nat and Mabel, pulled up along side of Ted’s.
“You may as well turn back,” Dorothy told them. Then she explained that little Emily was sick, and likely would not want her Christmas tree trimmed.
“But I’ll go along,” she said, “I may be able to help, for her mother is sick, even if she is with her.”
After all her preparations, it was a great disappointment to think the child could not enjoy the gifts. Dr. Gray told her, however, that Emily was subject to croup, and that perhaps the spell would not last.
At the house they found everything in confusion. Emily’s sick mother coughed harder at every attempt she made to help the little one, while Mr. Sanders, the child’s grandfather, tried vainly to get water hot on a lukewarm stove.
“Pretty bad, Doc,” he said with a groan, “thought she’d choke to death last night.”
Without waiting to be directed, Dorothy threw aside her heavy coat, drew off her gloves, and was breaking bits of wood in her hands, to hurry the kettle that, being watched, had absolutely refused to boil.
“You can just put that oil on to heat, Miss Dale,” Dr. Gray said, he having bidden the sick woman to keep away from Emily. “We’ll rub her up well with warm oil, and see if we can loosen up that congestion.”
Emily lay on the uneven sofa, her cheeks burning, and her breath jerking in struggles and coughs.
Dorothy found a pan and had the oil hot before the doctor was ready to use it.
“Quite a nurse,” he said, in that pleasant way the country doctor is accustomed to use. “Glad I happened to meet you.”
“I’m glad, too,” Dorothy replied sincerely. “Never mind, Emily, you will have your Christmas tree, as soon as we get the naughty cold cured,” she told the child.
Emily’s eyes brightened a little. The tree still stood in a corner of the room. Outside, Ted was driving up and down the road in evident impatience, but Dorothy was too busy to notice him.
Soon the hot applications took effect, and Emily breathed more freely and regularly. Then the doctor attended to the other patient—the mother. It was a sad Christmas time, and had a depressing effect even on the young spirits of Dorothy. She tried to speak to Emily, but her eyes wandered around at the almost bare room, and noted its untidy appearance. Dishes were piled up on the table, pans stood upon the floor, papers were littered about. How could people live that way? she wondered.
Mrs. Tripp, Emily’s mother, must be a widow, Dorothy thought, and she knew old Mrs. Sanders had died the Winter before.
The doctor had finished with Mrs. Tripp. He glanced anxiously about him. To whom would he give instructions? Mr. Sanders seemed scarcely capable of giving the sick ones the proper care.
Dorothy saw the look of concern on the doctor’s face and she rightly interpreted it.
“If we only could take them to some other place,” she whispered to him. Then she stopped, as a sudden thought seized her.
“Doesn’t Mr. Wolters always make a Christmas gift to the sanitarium?” she asked Dr. Gray.
“Always,” replied the doctor.
“Then why can’t we ask him to have little Emily and her mother taken to the sanitarium? They surely need just such care,” she said quickly.
The doctor slapped one hand on the other, showing that the suggestion had solved the problem. Then he motioned Dorothy out into the room across the small hall. She shivered as she entered it, for it was without stove, or other means of heating.
“If I only had my horse,” he said, “I would go right over to Wolters’s. He would do a great deal for me, and I want that child cared for to-night.”
“I’ll ask Ted to let us take his sleigh,” Dorothy offered, promptly. “He could go with us to the Corners, and then you could drive.”
“And take you?” asked Dr. Gray. “I am sure you young folks have a lot to do this afternoon.”
“No matter about that,” persisted Dorothy. “If I can help, I am only too glad to do it. And Mr. Wolters is on Aunt Winnie’s executive board. He might listen to my appeal.”
There was neither time nor opportunity for further conversation, so Dorothy hastily got into her things, and soon she was in Ted’s sleigh again, huddled close to Dr. Gray in his big, fur coat.
The plan was unfolded to Ted, and he, anxious to get back to his friends, willingly agreed to walk from the Corners, and there turn the cutter over to the charity workers.
“But Dorothy,” he objected, “I know they will all claim I should have insisted on your coming back with me. They will say you will kill yourself with charity, and all that sort of thing.”
“Then say I will be home within an hour,” Dorothy directed, as Ted jumped on the bob that a number of boys were dragging up the hill. “Good-bye, and thank you for the rig.”
“One hour, mind,” Ted called back. “You can drive Bess, I know.”
“Of course,” Dorothy shouted. Then Bess was headed for The Briars, the country home of the millionaire Wolters.
“Suppose he has already made his gift,” Dorothy demurred, as she wrapped the fur robe closely about her feet, “and says he can’t guarantee any more.”
“Then I guess he will have to make another,” said the doctor. “I would not be responsible for the life of that child out there in that shack.”
“If he agrees, how will you get Mrs. Tripp and Emily out to the sanitarium?” Dorothy asked.
“Have to ’phone to Lakeside, and see if we can get the ambulance,” he replied. “That’s the only way to move them safely.”
It seemed to Dorothy that her plan was more complicated than she had imagined it would be, but it was Christmas time, and doing good for others was in the very atmosphere.
“It will be a new kind of Christmas tree,” observed the doctor. “But she’s a cunning little one—she deserves to be kept alive.”
“Indeed she does,” Dorothy said, “and I’m glad if I can help any.”
“Why I never would have thought of the plan,” said the doctor. “I had been thinking all the time we ought to do something, but Wolters’s Christmas gift never crossed my mind. Here we are. My, but this is a great place!” he finished. And the next moment Dorothy had jumped out of the cutter and was at the door of Mr. Ferdinand Wolters.
Dorothy was scolded. There her own family—father, Joe and Roger, to say nothing of dear Aunt Winnie, and the cousins Ned and Nat—were waiting for her important advice about a lot of Christmas things, and she had ridden off with Dr. Gray, attending to the gloomy task of having a sick child and her mother placed in a sanitarium.
But she succeeded, and when on the following day she visited Emily and her mother, she found the nurses busy in an outer hall, fixing up the Christmas tree that Mr. Sanders had insisted upon bringing all the way from the farmhouse where Dorothy had left it for little Emily.
The very gifts that Dorothy left unopened out there, when she found the child sick, the nurses were placing on the tree, waiting to surprise Emily when she would open her eyes on the real Christmas day.
And there had been added to these a big surprise indeed, for Mr. Wolters was so pleased with the result of his charity, that he added to the hospital donation a personal check for Mrs. Tripp and her daughter. The check was placed in a tiny feed bag, from which a miniature horse (Emily’s pet variety of toy) was to eat his breakfast on Christmas morning.
Major Dale did not often interfere with his daughter’s affairs, but this time his sister, Mrs. White, had importuned him, declaring that Dorothy would take up charity work altogether if they did not insist upon her taking her proper position in the social world. It must be admitted that the kind old major believed that more pleasure could be gotten out of Dorothy’s choice than that of his well-meaning, and fashionable, sister. But Winnie, he reflected, had been a mother to Dorothy for a number of years, and women, after all, knew best about such things.
It was only when Dorothy found the major alone in his little den off his sleeping rooms that the loving daughter stole up to the footstool, and, in her own childish way, told him all about it. He listened with pardonable pride, and then told Dorothy that too much charity is bad for the health of growing girls. The reprimand was so absurd that Dorothy hugged his neck until he reminded her that even the breath of a war veteran has its limitations.
So Emily was left to her surprises, and now, on the afternoon of the night before Christmas, we find Dorothy and Mabel, with Ned, Nat and Ted, busy with the decorations of the Cedars. Step ladders knocked each other down, as the enthusiastic boys tried to shift more than one to exactly the same spot in the long library. Kitchen chairs toppled over just as Dorothy or Mabel jumped to save their slippered feet, and the long strings of evergreens, with which all hands were struggling, made the room a thing of terror for Mrs. White and Major Dale.
The scheme was to run the greens in a perfect network across the beamed ceiling, not in the usual “chandelier-corner” fashion, but latticed after the style of the Spanish serenade legend.
At intervals little red paper bells dangled, and a prettier idea for decoration could scarcely be conceived. To say that Dorothy had invented it would not do justice to Mabel, but however that may be, all credit, except stepladder episodes, was accorded the girls.
“Let me hang the big bell,” begged Ted, “if there is one thing I have longed for all my life it was that—to hang a big ‘belle’.”
He aimed his stepladder for the middle of the room, but Nat held the bell.
“She’s my belle,” insisted Nat, “and she’s not going to be hanged—she’ll be hung first,” and he caressed the paper ornament.
“If you boys do not hurry we will never get done,” Dorothy reminded them. “It’s almost dark now.”
“Almost, but not quite,” teased Ted. “Dorothy, between this and dark, there are more things to happen than would fill a hundred stockings. By the way, where do we hang the hose?”
“We don’t,” she replied. “Stockings are picturesque in a kitchen, but absurd in such a bower as this.”
“Right, Coz,” agreed Ned, deliberately sitting down with a wreath of greens about his neck. “Cut out the laundry, ma would not pay my little red chop-suey menu last week, and I may have to wear a kerchief on Yule day.”
“Oh, don’t you think that—sweet!” exulted Mabel, making a true lover’s knot of the end of her long rope of green that Nat had succeeded in intertwining with Dorothy’s ‘cross town line’.
“Delicious,” declared Ned, jumping up and placing his arms about her neck.
“Stop,” she cried. “I meant the bow.”
“Who’s running this show, any way?” asked Ted. “Do you see the time, Frats?”
The mantle clock chimed six. Ned and Nat jumped up, and shook themselves loose from the stickery holly leaves as if they had been so many feathers.
“We must eat,” declared Ned, dramatically, “for to-morrow we die!”
“We cannot have tea until everything is finished,” Dorothy objected. “Do you think we girls can clean up this room?”
“Call the maids in,” Ned advised, foolishly, for the housemaids at the Cedars were not expected to clean up after the “festooners.”
Dorothy frowned her reply, and continued to gather up the ends of everything. Mabel did not desert either, but before the girls realized it, the boys had run off—to the dining room where a hasty meal, none the less enjoyable, was ready to be eaten.
“What do you suppose they are up to?” Mabel asked.
“There is something going on when they are in such a hurry. What do you say if we follow them? It is not dark, and they can’t be going far,” answered Dorothy.
Mabel gladly agreed, and, a half hour later, the two girls cautiously made their way along the white road, almost in the shadow of three jolly youths. Occasionally they could hear the remarks that the boys made.
“They are going to the wedding!” Dorothy exclaimed. “The seven o’clock wedding at Winter’s!”
Mabel did not reply. The boys had turned around, and she clutched Dorothy’s arm nervously. Instinctively both girls slowed their pace.
“They did not see us,” Dorothy whispered, presently. “But they are turning into Sodden’s!”
Sodden’s was the home of one of the boys’ chums—Gus Sodden by name. He was younger than the others, and had the reputation of being the most reckless chap in North Birchland.
“But,” mused Mabel, “the wedding is to be at the haunted house! I should be afraid——”
“Mabel!” Dorothy exclaimed, “you do not mean to say that you believe in ghosts!”
“Oh—no,” breathed Mabel, “but you know the idea is so creepy.”
“That is why,” Dorothy said with a light laugh, “we have to creep along now. Look at Ned. He must feel our presence near.”
The boys now were well along the path to the Sodden home. It was situated far down in a grove, to which led a path through the hemlock trees. These trees were heavy with the snow that they seemed to love, for other sorts of foliage had days before shed the fall that had so gently stolen upon them—like a caress from a white world of love.
“My, it is dark!” demurred Mabel, again.
“Mabel Blake!” accused Dorothy. “I do believe you are a coward!”
It was lonely along the way. Everyone being busy with Christmas at home, left the roads deserted.
“What do you suppose they are going in there for?” Mabel finally whispered.
“We will have to wait and find out,” replied Dorothy. “When one starts out spying on boys she must be prepared for all sorts of surprises.”
“Oh, there comes Gus! Look!” Mabel pointed to a figure making tracks through the snow along the path.
“And—there are the others. It did not take them long to make up. They are—Christmas—Imps. Such make-ups!” Dorothy finished, as she beheld the boys, in something that might have been taken, or mistaken, for stray circus baggage.
Even in their disguise it was easy to recognize the boys. Ned wore a kimono—bright red. On his head was the tall sort of cap that clowns and the old-fashioned school dunce wore. Nat was “cute” in somebody’s short skirt and a shorter jacket. He wore also a worsted cap that was really, in the dim light, almost becoming. Ted matched up Nat, the inference being that they were to be Christmas attendants on Santa Claus.
The girls stepped safely behind the hedge as the procession passed. The boys seemed too involved in their purpose to talk.
“Now,” said Dorothy, “we may follow. I knew they were up to something big.”
“Aren’t they too funny!” said Mabel, who had almost giggled disastrously as the boys passed. “I thought I would die!”
There was no time to spare now, for the boys were walking very quickly, and it was not so easy for the girls to keep up with them and at the same time to keep away from them.
Straight they went for what was locally called the “haunted” house. This was a fine old mansion, with big rooms and broad chimneys, which had once been the home of a family of wealth. But there had been a sad tragedy there, and after that it had been said that ghosts held sway at the place. It had been deserted for two years, but now, with the former owner dead, a niece of the family, fresh from college, had insisted upon being married there, and the house had been accordingly put into shape for the ceremony.
It was to be a fashionable wedding, at the hour of six, and people had kept the station agent busy all day inquiring how to reach the scene of the wedding.
Lights already burned brightly in the rooms, that could be seen to be decorated in holiday style. People fluttered around and through the long French windows; the young folks, boys and girls, being hidden in different quarters, could alike see something of what was going on in the haunted house.
“They’re coming!” Dorothy heard Nat exclaim, just as he ducked in by the big outside chimney. The broad flue was at the extreme end of the house, forming the southern part of the library, just off the wide hall that ran through the middle of the place. Dorothy and Mabel had taken refuge in one of the many odd corners of the big, old fashioned porch, which partly encircled this wing, and commanding a wonderful view of the interior of the house, the halls and library, and long, narrow drawing room.
There was a smothered laugh at the corner of the porch where the boys had ducked, and the girls watched in wonder. The latter saw Nat boost Ned up the side of the porch column, and Ted followed nimbly. In tense silence the girls listened to their footsteps cross the porch roof, then as scraping and slipping and much suppressed mirth floated down.
“They’re going down the chimney!” declared Dorothy, in astonishment.
“They surely are!” affirmed Mabel, leaning far over the porch rail.
“But, Doro, what of the fire?”
“They don’t use that chimney. They use the one on the other side of the house, and the one in the kitchen.”