Part 1

Transcriber’s Note Italic text displayed as: _italic_

LITTLE MERRY CHRISTMAS

_By_

WINIFRED ARNOLD

Little Merry Christmas

Illustrated, 12mo, boards, net 60c.

From the moment she alights, one wintry night, at the snow-piled station of Oatka Center, little Merry Christmas begins to carry sunshine and happiness into the frosty homes, and still frostier hearts, of its inhabitants. How Lem Perkins, her crusty old uncle, together with the entire village, is led into the delectable kingdom of Peace and Goodwill by the guiding hand of a child, is here told in a sweet and jolly little story.

Mis’ Bassett’s Matrimony Bureau

Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, net $1.00.

Si, Ezry and Zekle, Cynthy, Elviny, and Mirandy, with many another character whose name suggests the humorous and homely phraseology of “way down East,” disport themselves to the “everlastin’” delight of the reader.

“There is a good deal of homely philosophy in Mis’ Bassett’s observations expressed in her delightful way.”

—_Rochester Herald._

LITTLE MERRY CHRISTMAS

By WINIFRED ARNOLD Author of “Mis’ Bassett’s Matrimony Bureau”

_ILLUSTRATED_

NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO Fleming H. Revell Company LONDON AND EDINBURGH

Copyright, 1913 by STREET & SMITH

Copyright, 1914, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 125 N. Wabash Ave. Toronto: 25 Richmond St., W. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street

CONTENTS

I. THE SURPRISE PACKAGE 9

II. PANCAKES FOR TWO 14

III. THE NEW HOUSEKEEPER 23

IV. HUNTING FOR THE PIE-MAKER 31

V. THE TURNOVER GOES TO SCHOOL 43

VI. MRS. EM. TO THE RESCUE 53

VII. EXIT “OLD GROUCHY GRUFF” 61

VIII. UNCLE LEM’S CHRISTMAS PARTY 73

IX. MERRY CHRISTMAS FINDS THE HAPPY NEW YEAR 87

ILLUSTRATIONS

“Mr. Perkins found himself fumbling with the buttons on a small, blue gingham back” _Frontispiece_

FACING PAGE

“Where’s the bundle Sim Coles left?” he demanded of the group around the stove 10

“How do you do! Does my uncle, Mr. Lemuel Perkins, live here?” 14

“Oh, goody!” she cried. “I was so afraid you’d be late, and I didn’t want you to miss anything” 78

I

THE SURPRISE PACKAGE

“Here’s a package for you, Hime,” yelled the burly conductor. “Brown, with a red label on top. I’ll just set it here till you haul down the mail bags.”

The station-master’s lantern stopped bobbing for a moment.

“All right. Set it down inside,” he shouted, over his shoulder. “Snow’s so deep to-night I might lose it on the platform.”

The little girl in the brown coat and the hat with the big red bow on top, giggled delightedly.

“He’ll think it’s lost sure enough,” she said. “’Twould be a fine April Fool if it wasn’t so near Christmas, wouldn’t it?”

“A-number-one,” agreed the big conductor, appreciatively. “Well, good-bye, sissy; the train’s moving. Hope you’ll have a fine time.”

“Oh, I shall,” responded the little girl confidently. “I always do. Good-bye. Oh, look! He’s coming!”

Down the platform bobbed the station-master’s lantern, the centre of a moving vortex of big, fluffy snowflakes. After the darkness outside, even the dimly lighted little waiting room seemed dazzling as he stepped inside, dragging the mail bags behind him.

“Where’s the bundle Sim Coles left?” he demanded of the little group assembled around the tall, whitewashed stove, slinging his burden at the feet of the village bus driver, who stood with one foot on the ledge around the bottom of the stove, while he slapped his wet mittens against its glowing sides.

“Sim Coles never came in here,” answered a tall man with a black beard. “He was talkin’ outside with a little gal.”

“Likely he’s hove it into a snowdrift,” grumbled the station-master, turning back toward the door. “Should think he might uv——”

A little brown figure sprang out of the shadows.

“No, he didn’t,” she contradicted gleefully. “I’m the brown package, you know, and the bow on my hat is the red label. He said it for a joke.”

For a moment the group around the stove stared—then they joined in the merry peal of laughter that was shaking the red label.

“So you’re the package, be ye?” inquired the station-master. “Waal, where are you bound for, sissy? Come on up and let’s read that fancy tag of yourn.”

The little girl bubbled appreciatively.

“I’ve come to visit my uncle,” she explained. “That is, he’s mother’s uncle, Mr. Lemuel Perkins.”

“Is Lem expectin’ of you?” inquired the ’bus driver, leisurely picking up a mail bag from the floor.

“Oh, no. Isn’t it fun? I’m a real Christmas surprise, you know, sent early, so as not to overload the mail.”

She laughed again.

“Well, I guess you’d better ride along up with me, then. Lem lives just a little piece beyond the post-office.”

“Oh, goody!” exclaimed the delighted passenger, with a breezy little rush across the room to the other door. “This will be my second sleigh ride, and I can drop right down on him out of a snowstorm, just the way a Christmas surprise ought to. May I sit on the front seat with you, Mr.—er——”

“Bennett,” supplied that gentleman genially. “Drove the Oatka Centre ’bus ever since there was a deepo to drive to. Say, who was your mother, sissy? Did she ever live here?”

“Not exactly. Her name was Ellen Rumball, till she married father and went to India to live. She used to visit Uncle Lemuel and Aunt Nancy, before Aunt Nancy died.”

“Why, pshaw now! She ain’t the Ellen Rumball that married a missionary named Christian, is she?”

“Christie,” corrected the small person. “We’re all missionaries, and live in India. Father and mother and me and the children. Only I’m in boarding school now—Crescent Hill, you know—the _loveliest_ school! But scarlet fever broke out, so school closed two weeks early, and the girl I was going to visit has the fever, so I decided to come right down and spend Christmas with Uncle Lemuel. Won’t he be surprised?”

The driver peered out through the soft darkness.

“He will that,” he drawled. “Lem ain’t so gol darned used to children as some.”

The little girl’s laugh tinkled gleefully.

“Oh, I’m not a child,” she explained. “I guess you didn’t see me very well; the station was so dark. Why, I’m thirteen and a half years old, and I’ve been grown up for a long time. I had to be, you see, to take care of the children. Mother had her hands so full with the people and the schools and father’s meetings and all that. Being a missionary is the most absorbing work there is,” she ended impressively.

“Oh, I see,” chuckled Mr. Bennett. “Quite an old lady, and a missionary to boot. That’s lucky, now. Lem’s been lookin’ for a housekeeper for quite a spell, they say—ever since the Widder Em left him. A missionary, now, will come in real handy. I’ll drive ye right over first, and stop to the office on the way back. Can you see that light down there? That’s Lem’s kitchen. Want I should come in with ye, sissy?”

The little girl pondered for a minute. “No, I believe not,” she answered. “It would make you seem more like Santa Claus, I think, if you just dropped me and rode away.”

Mr. Bennett chuckled.

“Mebbe it would, sissy, mebbe it would. I hain’t seen Sandy Claus in so long that I’ve pretty nigh forgot how he does act. Whoa, there, you reindeers! Hold on while I drop a Christmas passel down through Lem Perkins’ chimley. Good-bye now, sissy. Good luck to ye. Giddap thar, you reindeers! Giddap!”

II

PANCAKES FOR TWO

In the kitchen wing of the old-fashioned brown house an old man was just beginning to get supper, a choleric old man, if one could judge by the bushy fierceness of the shaggy eyebrows above the sharp blue eyes, and the aggressive slant of the gray chin whisker. Mr. Lemuel Perkins had come in rather late from a particularly heated meeting of the village debating society, in grocery store assembled, and you will have to admit that it is not a soothing experience for a hungry man to find the kitchen in dire confusion, the fire in the cook stove nothing but a mass of embers, and not a sign of supper in sight unless the attenuated remains of a solitary dinner answer that description.

A fire was blazing in the stove now, however; and, girdled in a blue gingham apron, Mr. Perkins was adding to the general confusion on the kitchen table by trying to “stir up” something for supper, with the aid of a “ring-streaked and spotted” recipe book. Intent upon discovering whether a certain eleven was really eleven or only a one and a fly speck, Mr. Perkins totally disregarded the sound of “some one gently tapping, tapping” at his kitchen door, and did not even realize that it had been pushed open till a brisk young voice inquired:

“How do you do! Does my uncle, Mr. Lemuel Perkins, live here?”

“Huh?” demanded Mr. Perkins, whirling about, recipe book in hand, and eyeing the intruder fiercely.

But fierce looks can find no entrance through a pair of rose-colored spectacles that are radiating sunshine and goodwill as hard as ever they can.

“Oh, you are Uncle Lemuel!” cried a happy little voice, while its owner rushed headlong across the kitchen with outstretched arms. “I’m so glad to see you.” With a gay little spring she planted a kiss on the tip of the bristling chin whisker. “I’m your grandniece, Mary, and I’ve come to spend Christmas with you for a surprise. Have you had scarlet fever?”

“Huh?” inquired Mr. Perkins again, a trifle less fierce, but much more bewildered.

“Scarlet fever?” shrieked Mary, deciding at once that of course a proper great-uncle would be deaf. “Have—you—had—scarlet fever? I’ve—been exposed!”

“For the land sakes, little gal, quit your yellin’! I ain’t deef,” retorted Mr. Perkins. “Who’d you say you was?”

“Mary, your niece; but I’m not a little girl. I’m thirteen and a half. Mother says I’m a real little woman.”

“She does, does she? Waal, we’ll see which on us is right about it. Is there one cup of flour in pancakes, or eleven? This blamed receipt book is so messed up I can’t tell.”

“Oh, are you making pancakes?” returned his guest joyfully. “I’m so glad. I was afraid you’d be through supper, and I’m almost starved. You wouldn’t let me make the pancakes, would you, Uncle Lemuel? India’s not a very suitable place for them, mother says, so we never had them much, but she let me make them once or twice, and I just love to hear them go splash on the griddle, and then bob up like a rubber ball, and then flop them over, all brown and lovely. It’s such fun! But probably you love to make them, too. I oughtn’t to ask the first night, I suppose.”

Uncle Lemuel’s visage, being trained to express habitual displeasure, had no difficulty in concealing the feelings of joy that coursed through him at these words. As he himself would have expressed it, he “hated like dumb p’ison to cook a meal of vittles,” but it was against Uncle Lemuel’s principles to display satisfaction with the happenings of the world about him.

“Well,” he responded slowly, “if you’re so set on it, I s’pose you might as well. Only don’t be wasteful now, and stir up a mess we can’t eat.”

He handed over the recipe book with a grudging air that would have deceived the very elect.

“I won’t,” promised his guest happily, whisking off her coat with one hand and her hat with the other, and finally finding a satisfactory place for them on a remote rocking-chair covered with red calico. “What fun, starting in housekeeping with you right away like this! And such a grand fire! Will you set the table, and have you got some real maple sirup? I don’t think they have at school, but mother said you and Aunt Nancy got it right from your own trees. Do you keep them in the back yard, and go out, and draw some when you want it, as if you were milking a cow?”

She was diving into her russet leather handbag as she spoke, and presently she pulled out a blue gingham apron with triumphant glee.

“Here’s my big kitchen apron. Isn’t it the luckiest thing that I brought it in my handbag? I didn’t have a chance to wear it at school, so I left it out of my trunk, and then I ran across it at the last minute, and tucked it in here. Everything does turn out so grandly! Why, see, our aprons match! How funny! We’re twins, aren’t we? Will you button me up in the back, please, and then I’ll tie yours again. Yours is slipping off.”

In another moment the dazed Mr. Perkins found himself fumbling with the buttons on a small blue gingham back; and then, before he could even think of the first letter of Jack Robinson’s name, a capable hand had tightened his own apron strings, and transported by two active little feet was marshalling the various “ingrejunts” that he had already gathered together on the kitchen table.

Muttering something about maple sirup, he retreated to the cellar to collect his wits, though he knew full well that the sirup can, since time immemorial, had occupied the right-hand end of the top “butt’ry” shelf.

By the time he returned the culinary operations had been transferred to the sink bench, and the kitchen table was laid for two. On the stove a shining griddle was smoking in anticipation, while the little cook was giving a last anxious whip to the batter.

“I couldn’t find the napkins, Uncle Lemuel,” she called, as the cellarway door opened. “Will you get them out, please, and put the butter and sirup on the table? Oh, I do _pray_ these cakes will be good! It’s such a responsibility to cook for a grown-up man!”

A silence, heavy with the deepest anxiety, settled almost visibly over the Perkins kitchen from the first slap of the batter upon the smoking griddle, till three cakes had been duly “flopped” by the little cook’s careful hand. These, however, presented to view such beautiful, round, creamy countenances, almost obscured by very becoming brown lace veils, that two huge sighs of relief exhaled together; one of which was speedily transformed into a dry little cough, while Uncle Lemuel turned and tiptoed away in search of the tea caddy and the old brown pot.

“As soon as we get six, we can sit down and begin,” called Mary excitedly. “The stove’s so handy I can cook and eat, too. That’s such a nice thing about eating in the kitchen. We could never do that in India, there were always too many servants around, though mother tried to keep it as much like an American home as she could. That’s why she taught me to cook—so we could have American dishes.”

“Can you make pie?” queried Uncle Lemuel, through a mouthful so dripping with maple sirup that even his tones seemed sweetened.

“No, I can’t,” admitted Mary regretfully. “Father didn’t think pie was good for us, so mother never tried to manage that.”

All traces of sirup departed abruptly from Uncle Lemuel’s tones.

“Good for ye?” he growled. “Well, if that ain’t just like some folkses impudence! Good for ye? Humph! Mebbe if I hadn’t et it three times a day I mightn’t have had no more sprawl than to go out to Injy and lay round under a green cotton umbrell’ with a black feller fannin’ the flies off of me. Why, it’s eatin’ pie reg’lar that’s put the United States ahead of all the other nations of the world! It’s the bulwark of the American Constitution, pie is.”

Mary gazed at him with wide and interested eyes. Her mental picture of her own overworked father was so many leagues away from the vision under the green cotton umbrella that, far from resenting Uncle Lemuel’s thrust, she never even recognized it.

“Do you think maybe that’s the matter with our constitutions?” she inquired eagerly. “I had to come over to school because I wasn’t well, and father isn’t a bit strong, either. Mother thought it was the climate.”

Uncle Lem’s growl struggled through another mouthful of sirup.

“Climate! Huh! A man that eats strengthenin’ food enough can stand up against any climate the Almighty ever made. I’ve felt sorter pindlin’ myself since I hain’t had my pie reg’lar, an’ the climate or Oatka Centre is the same as ever, hain’t it?”

Even the intellect of a missionary as old as thirteen and a half is forced to bow before such logic as that.

“Then I must learn how to make pie straight away,” announced Mary solemnly. “Could you teach me, Uncle Lemuel?”

Uncle Lemuel shook his head.

“It takes womenfolks to make pies,” he admitted grudgingly. “I hain’t had a decent pie in the house since the Widder Em left here.”

“Did she make good ones?” inquired Mary sympathetically.

Uncle Lemuel was almost torn in twain between his natural tendency toward disparagement and the soothing effects of the innumerable procession of well-browned griddle cakes that had come his way.

“There is folks,” he compromised, “that thinks she was a master-hand at it. Some say the best in the village. I’ve et worse myself.”

“It’s too bad she moved away,” sighed Mary; “but I guess we can find somebody else. Mother said the people in Oatka Centre were the kindest in the world, and of course they’d do it for you, anyhow.”

A touch of a smile twitched at one corner of the old man’s mouth.

“Oh, yes,” he assented, with grim humour. “Any durned one of ’em would do anythin’ under the canopy for me.”

“That’s because you’d do anything under the canopy for them,” agreed the little girl. “Kind people always find other people kind, mother says. I do wish I could do something for you myself, you’re such a nice uncle, but I’m getting so sleepy I can’t think of a thing. If you’re through, we’d better wash the dishes quickly, else I might,” she ended, with a sleepy little giggle, “tumble—splash—into the dishpan.”

III

THE NEW HOUSEKEEPER

It was still dark when a resounding thump on the door of the “parlour bedroom” wakened the unconscious little missionary, who had plumped into the exact centre of its feather bed the night before, and had never stirred since.

“Be ye goin’ to sleep all day?” growled a voice outside.

The little brown head bounced out of its pillow like a jack-in-a-box.

“Goodness, no!” answered its owner, in a startled voice. “I didn’t know it was daytime. Why, I meant to help you get breakfast! Is it too late?”

“I s’pose I can wait, if you’re set on makin’ some more pancakes,” responded Uncle Lemuel craftily. “But you’d better flax around pretty spry. I’ll get the griddle het up.”

The air of that “parlour bedroom” was certainly conducive to spry “flaxing” if you didn’t want to congeal in a half-dressed condition, and by the time the griddle was well “het,” the new cook appeared on the scene.

“Good morning, Uncle Lemuel!” she cried gaily, whisking across the kitchen and planting a swift little kiss upon that gentleman’s amazed countenance before she whirled about and presented her blue gingham back to be buttoned. “You certainly are the nicest man in the world to wait so I could cook, and I have planned a perfectly grand surprise for you, too. We’re going to have the jolliest Christmas together that ever was. Is the coffee made yet?”

“Who told you to come here for Christmas?” demanded Mr. Perkins, as he began on his second plate of pancakes.

“Nobody at all,” bubbled his guest gleefully. “That’s the joke of it. It’s a perfect surprise all around. I was going home with Patty Stanwood, you know, because her mother and mine used to be school friends. And then Patty had scarlet fever, and her mother was afraid of me on account of the baby. So then I remembered what fine times mother used to have here when she was a girl, and I knew this would be just the ideal place to spend Christmas. You know, I’ve never seen a real snowy American Christmas before in my life, and I’m just wild about it. The girls at school call me ‘Merry Christmas,’ instead of ‘Mary Christie,’ because I talk so much about it, and I _love_ it for a name! Aren’t you just crazy about Christmas, Uncle Lemuel?”

Crazy about Christmas? Yes, indeed, little Merry! Why, it was only the afternoon before, Job Simpkins, of the village “Emporium,” would have told you, that “Lem Perkins had bellered and tore around as if the very name of Christmas was a red flannin rag waved in front of a bull.”

But when he looked into the shining young eyes before him, even Uncle Lemuel’s frenzy couldn’t fail to be a trifle abated.

“I hain’t much use for it—late years,” he answered gruffly. “Folks make such tarnation fools of themselves.”

“Oh, you are a Christmas reformer,” translated his little guest blithely. “Lots of people are in America, they say. Maybe you are a Spug. Are you a Spug, Uncle Lemuel?”

“No, siree, Republican and Hardshell Baptist, same as I’ve always been. The old ways is good enough for me. What’s Spug, I’d like to know?”

Mary clapped her hands.

“I’m so glad!” she cried gleefully. “It’s a society to make you give useful Christmas presents to people, and I’ve had useful ones all my life—being a missionary family with five children, of course we had to. But I’d rather join a society to prevent them myself, for I like useless ones lots better. Don’t you? I’ve been hoping awfully that somebody would give me a string of red beads or a set of pink hair ribbons. Oh, I didn’t mean that for a hint! Do excuse me, Uncle Lemuel! Of course, I’ll like best whatever you choose. How big a turkey do you usually buy?” she ended hastily.

“Don’t buy none,” grunted Uncle Lemuel, with his nose in his coffee cup.

“Why, of course not! You raise them yourself, don’t you? I _am_ a goose,” she laughed. “Besides, people always invite you when you live alone. I hope they won’t this year. It would be such fun to have a Christmas party of our own, wouldn’t it, right here in this kitchen? Who do you want to invite? I must go right out and get acquainted, so I’ll have some friends of my own to ask. It’s only two weeks off, but you can make a lot of friends in two weeks, can’t you, if you go about it the right way? See what friends we’ve got to be already!”

“The science of self-expression” was quite unknown when Uncle Lemuel went to district school, but it would have demanded a full dramatic course adequately to cope with the torrent of varying emotions that was surging through the time-worn channels of his consciousness. Surprise, disgust, amusement, wonder, disapproval, horror, and a wee touch of pleasure tumbled over one another in rapid succession.

And some way the wee touch of pleasure in the child’s innocent friendliness and liking soared high enough on top of the flood to soften the hard old mouth for a little and keep back for the nonce the bitter words that would shatter her Christmas air castles to fragments. Nobody had really liked Lemuel Perkins in so many years that he couldn’t be blamed for enjoying the sensation, though he felt as queer as must an ice-bound stream when the first little trickle of water creeps warmly through its breast.

“Want I should help ye with the dishes?” he inquired almost kindly. “I’ve got to go over to town of an errand after a spell.”

“Oh, have you got time? I’m so glad! Do you know, that’s the funny thing about dishes? If you do them alone, they are the worst old job that ever was, but when somebody nice wipes for you, they’re just fun. Mother says it’s that way with most kinds of work. Could you stay long enough to help sort things out a little, too? For a man, of course, you’re a very nice housekeeper—you ought to see father!—but with two of us around we may need a little more room, don’t you think so?”