Part 3

“And old Grouchy Gruff heard of it.”

Miss Porter’s gentle correction passed unheeded.

“Old Grouchy Gruff heard of it, and said he paid most taxes, and he wouldn’t let ’em.”

“Said ’twas a waste of fire and lights.”

“Mean old thing!”

“And my father said he’d give the wood.”

“And mine the oil.”

“And then he wouldn’t let ’em use the schoolhouse.”

“’Cause he hates Christmas!”

“I hate _him_!”

“Mean old thing!”

“Children, children!” chided Miss Porter. “You mustn’t talk that way. I’ll have to ring the bell. We’re late already. Won’t you stay and visit us a little while, Merry Christmas?”

But Merry Christmas shook her head.

“I can’t just now,” she answered gravely. “Maybe I will this afternoon. Good-bye!”

The little boys stared in amazement at the quiet little figure that slipped past them with only a perfunctory response to their friendly grins.

“What’d teacher do to ye?” demanded Jimmy Harrison, the one-time front of the flying wedge. “Shall I plug her in the eye with a spitball for ye? I can do it,” he added darkly.

Merry Christmas came to herself.

“Oh, no, don’t! She’s awfully nice,” she whispered anxiously. “It’s something else—about Christmas,” she added. “The teacher didn’t do it.”

For poor Merry Christmas was struggling with a paralyzing glimpse of human perfidy, and her rose-coloured spectacles were searching in vain for a sunny spot to relieve the awful gloom. Could Christian America shelter such an ogre—a man who hated Christmas so that he was going to prevent a party and a tree—and popcorn—and presents—on Christmas Eve itself? And did that man live in Oatka Centre—the very warmest corner in the heart of that same Christian America? It was so incredible that the rose-coloured spectacles began to see a ray of hope in that very fact.

“Why, he’d be worse than a heathen!” she murmured. “And of course there aren’t any heathen in America, where everybody knows about Christ and His birthday. There’s some mistake, that’s all; and I’ll get uncle to fix it right.”

VI

MRS. EM. TO THE RESCUE

It was over two years now since the Widow Em Cottle had left Lemuel Perkins’ house in a rage at some last straw of household tyranny, and then had widened the breach to a chasm by marrying his hereditary enemy and neighbour, Deacon Caldwell. In all that time the chasm had never been bridged by one friendly word, and never, both had declared, would they utter a syllable to each other, if it were to save their lives.

Fortunately, human beings are rarely as bad or as foolish as their own rash vows; and when Mrs. Emma Caldwell stepped out of the Emporium that morning and ran into Lem Perkins, unmistakably headed for home and dinner, she recognized a “leadin’ plain as the nose on her face,” as she afterward explained to the deacon. And Mrs. Caldwell was far too good a woman to disobey a “leading.”

“Mornin’, Lem,” she began boldly, casting the usual polite fly upon the conversational waters. “Much obliged for the pears. They was as tasty as yours always is.”

Mr. Perkins nodded.

“The little gal wanted I should send ’em,” he explained gruffly. “She’s a great hand for neighbourin’, sissy is.”

The bull having turned his forehead in her direction, Mrs. Caldwell promptly seized him by the horns.

“It’s her I want to talk about,” she announced. “She’s a takin’ young one as I’ve seen in a month o’ Sundays, but blind as a bat—or an angel,” she added softly. “Land only knows how she’s managed it, but she’s took all sorts of a shine to her ‘dear Uncle Lemuel,’ as she calls you—thinks you’re the salt of the earth—and good—and kind. Law me, Lem, if you could hear her talk, you’d go home and look in the glass, and say: ‘Mercy me, who be I, anyway?’”

“Waal,” grunted “dear Uncle Lemuel,” turning aside to hide the pleased smile that would twitch at the corners of his mouth in spite of his strenuous efforts, “what’s to hender, Mis’ Caldwell? Blood is thicker’n water—ain’t it?”

“Yourn hain’t,” retorted Mrs. Caldwell promptly. “It’s hern that’s got to provide all the thickenin’ for two. And as to what’s to hender, you are, most likely. I’m worried to death this minute over how soon that little gal’s heart is a-goin’ to be stove to flinders, a-findin’ out how fur you be from an’ angel dropped. She’s been up there to my house this mornin’ slavin’ away over the cook stove a-making pies for a surprise for you, and a-fetchin’ of ’em home so careful! Land, I just had to laugh to see her a-carryin’ ’em home one to a time—three trips she made of it—usin’ both hands, and a-tiptoein’ along as if she was Undertaker Pearse a-startin’ for a funeral. And now I s’pose she’s waitin’ there, all nerved up to see how you’ll relish ’em—not knowin’ that you’re just about as likely to say a word o’ praise as a rhinoceros in a circus. But if you don’t, it’ll break her little heart; that’s all I’ve got to say.”

“Humph!” grunted Uncle Lemuel. “Well, so that’s all you got to say, Neighbour Caldwell, I’m willin’.”

“No, ’tain’t,” retorted Mrs. Caldwell hotly. “’Tain’t by a long shot! Another thing that blessed child’s all worked up about is that Christmas business over to school. I sent her over on an errand to the teacher this mornin’, and they got to talkin’ over there about how you set down on their Christmas doin’s in the trustee meetin’. They didn’t use your name—called you some kind of a nickname or other, the young ones did—and she never dreamed who ’twas, but come back all keyed up and plannin’ to git her Uncle Lem to go to the other old what’s-his-name and fix things up. And how she’s ever goin’ to stand it when she finds that that dear Uncle Lem of hers is the old curmudgeon they was talkin’ about, I dunno. It’s a sin and a shame, Lem Perkins, how that child’s cottoned to you—that’s what I call it.”

She stopped suddenly with a gulp, and wiped away a tear with the corner of her white apron as she turned away.

Uncle Lem stepped after her.

“Em Cottle,” he said abruptly, “you’re a truthful woman, as fur as I know—and I’ve known ye quite a spell. Do you reely b’lieve that young one is so—so—that is——” He paused and cleared his throat. “Does she lot on me as much as she makes out, or is she jest—doin’ it—to git my money, mebbe?”

A blaze of anger dried the tears in Em Cottle’s eyes.

“Well,” she remarked scathingly, “blindness runs in your family, sure enough—only with some it’s for bad and with some it’s for good—that’s all! There ain’t no use wastin’ no more time on you; that’s sure as preachin’.”

With a capable hitch of her green plaid shawl, she turned her plump shoulders full upon him, and started briskly up the road.

Uncle Lemuel glanced furtively about him. The village square was empty; not even Marthy Ann Watkins’ eye was visible at the post-office window.

“Em! Oh, Em!” he called loudly, and then, as the brisk figure in front seemed to hesitate for a moment, he scuttled after it.

“Don’t be in such a brash, Em,” he gasped, as he caught up with her. “We hain’t had a dish o’ talk in so long that I guess we can afford to spend a minute or so a-doin’ it. You didn’t jest ketch my meanin’ then, Em. I didn’t reely think that sissy, there, had plans herself, but I didn’t know but mebbe Ellen——”

“If Ellen Rumball had had her eye on your old money bags, she wouldn’t ’a’ broke with you to go off to Injy with that missionary feller, would she?”

Uncle Lem glowered with the remembrance of past injuries.

“Ellen Rumball pretended to like me, too,” he muttered; “and then she deserted me in my old age for that good-for-nothin’ missionary chap.”

“Pretended?” exploded Mrs. Em; “pretended? If ’tain’t real likin’ that would make a woman swaller down all the things you said, and the way you acted, and bring up her young ones to think you was the finest uncle goin’, well, then it’s real grace; that’s all I’ve got to say! And here I be, a-quarrelin’ with you the same as ever, and I’d made up my mind butter shouldn’t melt in my mouth.”

But Uncle Lemuel was absorbed in struggling against the softening of his grim old face.

“Ellen _has_ fetched sissy up fair to middlin’ well,” he admitted. “She’s kind of smart for her years—handy round the house, I mean, ain’t she, Em? And folksy—it does beat all! They couldn’t nobody around town talk of nothin’ this mornin’ but ‘my little gal,’ as they called her. She started out yestiddy arternoon to do her Christmas tradin’, and she must ’a’ got acquainted with everybody in sight. She promised Marthy Watkins some postcards from Injy. And then the minister comes along, and she got him so interested he asked me if I’d let her speak about missions to the Children’s Band. And Nate Waters—you know I hain’t been in Waters’s store for a matter of a year or so, since he sold me that busted plough—but out come Mis’ Waters this morning, to see if I’d mind her savin’ sissy a little red chain she had there. Sissy took to it uncommon, but she didn’t have money enough to get it, she’d bought so much truck for other folks, and Mis’ Waters wanted to give it to her for Christmas.”

“Well, I hope to the land you let her!” cried Mrs. Caldwell. “She was goin’ to spend a whole fifty cents a-buyin’ you a handsome china cup, Lem, good enough for a president. And, though Nate may be tricky sometimes, Mis’ Waters is a real nice woman.”

Uncle Lem coughed.

“Well, here ’tis, Em,” he replied at last, producing a little packet from his overcoat pocket. “But I guess me and my folks don’t have to be beholden to the Waterses yet for our fixin’s. You know little Loviny was very partial to red, too,” he added, after a moment.

They had now reached the Perkins gate, but Mrs. Caldwell suddenly turned and laid a detaining hand on his arm.

“Why, that’s who ’tis!” she exclaimed softly. “I’ve been a-wonderin’ and a-wonderin’ who that child reminded me of. She don’t take after Ellen Rumball exactly, nor yet Christie, as I remember him, but she’s got the very same disposition as your little Loviny had, laughin’ all day like a brook, and yet as serious and interested as an old woman about things she took a notion to, and the most lovin’ little heart that ever was. I was in the Sixth Reader when she began her A B C’s, but she got to be friends with the whole school afore the first week was out—and I guess there wa’n’t a dry eye to the Centre when we heard tell about the runaway. ‘Of such is the kingdom of heaven’—that was the text to her funeral, wa’n’t it? And I guess ’tis, too, fast enough. And ’twould come a heap sooner on earth, I’m thinkin’, if there was more like her—wouldn’t it? Well, give my love to sissy,” she added quickly, with kindly tact, “and tell her I’ll look for her again in the morning.”

But the old man did not heed her. Across the gulf of over forty years he was looking once more at a gay little figure in red merino, that danced before him, while his little daughter’s voice cried happily:

“Father, father, come kiss Loviny in her Kissmas-coloured d’ess!”

VII

EXIT “OLD GROUCHY GRUFF”

Uncle Lemuel laid down his knife and fork with a sigh of repletion, and turned toward his little housekeeper.

“Well, sissy,” he remarked, softening his growl to a point that he considered positively effeminate, “that ham and eggs was pretty good for fillers, but I wouldn’t mind a little somethin’ in the line of trimmin’s, myself. I s’pose the Widder Em hain’t sent in no more pies?”

Mary met this triumph of diplomacy with a masterpiece in kind.

“Oh, Uncle Lemuel,” she answered, struggling to hold in leash a half dozen riotous dimples that were determined to pop out, “oh, Uncle Lemuel, it was doughnuts she sent in this time. Won’t they do?”

And then she sat with bated breath for fear he should say that they would.

But Uncle Lemuel did not fail her.

“Well, I s’pose I can eat doughnuts,” he growled more naturally; “but what I should reely relish is a good piece of pie.”

At these welcome words, Mary fairly ran into the pantry and out again.

“Would you really, Uncle Lemuel?” she cried, in a state of tense excitement. “Well, here it is! Somebody else brought them in this time. Apple!” Back once more from the pantry. “Mince!” Another trip. “And blueberry!” she ended triumphantly. “Which one shall I cut?”

Uncle Lemuel surveyed the sumptuous array before him.

“Well,” he finally decided, “the blueberry might soak the crust. I dunno but we’d better begin on that. Who’d you say fetched ’em?”

“Oh, a friend of yours,” answered Mary hastily. “She wanted you to guess after you tasted them. Here’s a nice big piece. I do hope it’s good!”

She handed him a generous piece; and then, unmindful of the luscious blue juice oozing temptingly upon her own plate, she sat and watched his every mouthful with an eager anxiety that would have been transparent to a babe in arms.

“Oh, Uncle Lemuel!” she cried, after the lapse of an eternity at least five minutes long. “Oh, why don’t you say something? Don’t you _like_ it?”

“Why don’t you eat your own?” retorted Uncle Lemuel. “I’m just tryin’ to figger out whose bakin’ this is. It’s kind of new to me, I guess.”

“Isn’t it good?” cried Mary breathlessly.

“Uh-humph!” responded Mr. Perkins slowly, struggling to twist his tongue to the unaccustomed language of compliment.

Suddenly a queer little sound across the table made him look up, and, to his amazement, he saw that the usually shining brown eyes were dimmed with tears.

“It’ll break her little heart,” Mrs. Caldwell’s voice seemed to whisper, and with one mighty effort Uncle Lemuel threw discretion to the winds.

“It’s better than the Widder Em’s,” he stated rashly. “And I swan I didn’t believe there was a woman in town that could beat her on makin’ pies.”

Pretty good for a man who hadn’t turned a compliment in Heaven knows how many years? But Heaven knows, too, how miraculously fast these hard old hearts will soften sometimes under the warming sunshine of childish love and trust.

“Oh, Uncle, do you mean it?” cried a choked little voice, and, with one bound, Mary had flown around the table and flung her arms about his neck. “Oh, Uncle Lemuel,” she sobbed happily, “I couldn’t ever have borne it if you hadn’t liked it, for I made it myself! You’d never believe it, would you? But you can ask Mrs. Caldwell. She showed me how.”

“You don’t say,” responded Uncle Lemuel, patting her awkwardly on the arm. “Was that what you had your head in the oven for when I came in? I thought ’twas them little wind-bags you give me.”

Mary giggled happily.

“The popovers, you mean? Yes, it was. I always have to sit right down on the floor and watch when I make them, else I don’t get them out the right minute. I had meant those for a surprise, too, but you got here so soon you surprised me, instead.”

“Well, you run around now, sissy, and cut me another good piece of pie. None of your samples, now,” he added, with something that was almost a chuckle. “And you might take a bite or two yourself, now you know it’s safe. There won’t be no extry charge.”

It was a veritable incarnation of Merry Christmas who ran to obey these commands.

“You don’t know what a weight that is off my mind!” she sighed blissfully, settling down at last to “bulwark” her own constitution. “They tasted good to me, and to the teacher, and to Nora O’Neil, but of course you were the one that really counted. But, oh, Uncle Lemuel, that reminds me! Do you know who it is that they call ‘old Grouchy Gruff’?”

“Huh?” demanded Mr. Perkins, with a growl that would have answered the question to any ears less unsuspecting than those of his little niece.

“Old Grouchy Gruff?” inquired Mary, raising her voice. “Mrs. Caldwell said she couldn’t tell me. Do you know him?”

Uncle Lemuel shook his head.

“Don’t you, either?” Mary leaned forward confidentially. “Well, Uncle Lemuel, there is somebody around here that they call that. It seems unbelievable, but there’s a man in town so horrid that he has stopped the Christmas Eve party at the schoolhouse. The biggest taxpayer, they say he was, Uncle Lemuel. Who would that be?”

But Uncle Lemuel was deeply absorbed in blueberry pie and showed no interest in the identity of old Grouchy Gruff.

“Do you know,” continued Mary thoughtfully, “I almost believe there’s some mistake about it somewhere. It doesn’t seem possible that there would be anybody who’d stop the children from being happy on the night when the dear little Baby Jesus was born in the manger, and the angels sang: ‘Peace on earth, good will to men.’ Oh, I just love that part, don’t you? The shepherds, and the soft, dark-blue night, and then the lovely star and the angels singing.” She paused, and a reverent look softened the brown eyes that shone themselves like two little Christmas stars. “Oh, Uncle, it’s so beautiful that it makes little thrills go all over me, and I want to cry and I want to laugh. Mother used to read it to us every Christmas Eve, and then we used to sing, ‘When shepherds watched their flocks by night.’ Oh, I wish they would sing that at the Christmas party!”

“Thought there wa’n’t goin’ to be none,” growled Mr. Perkins.

Mary smiled cheerfully.

“Oh, I think there will be,” she answered confidently. “Mother says things always turn out right when you pray about them, and of course I have; and, besides, it’s really His own birthday party, and it must be right for us to celebrate that.”

“Was you asked to the party?” inquired Uncle Lemuel.

“Of course I’m not asked yet, because there isn’t any; but if we can only get that party for them somehow, they’d invite us both, I’m sure. Oh, wouldn’t that be fun! Oh, Uncle, we’ve just got to! First, you ask everybody all around who old Grouchy Gruff is, and then, when you find out, we’ll go and talk to him and explain. Oh, I’m sure he’d take it back if _you_ explained things to him. Why, _anybody_ would be nice about a thing like that if he only understood.”

Uncle Lemuel coughed uneasily.

“Mebbe he has his reasons, sissy,” he began; “mebbe he has his reasons. They was talkin’ it over to the Emporium the other day, and ’tain’t the party part nor the Christmas part that folks objects to so much. It’s the schoolhouse. ’Tain’t right to the deestrict to tear the schoolhouse to flinders for a thing like that. Why, they’d have to haul up the desks offen the floor, and rack the benches all to pieces, like as not, and move the teacher’s desk and all. They couldn’t have a party with the floor all cluttered up with desks and such.”

Mary pondered.

“And it would be bad for the desks and seats to move them?”

“Tear ’em to flinders,” stated Uncle Lemuel uncompromisingly, following up his advantage. “And, besides, they wanted to make candy and popcorn, and a schoolroom is no place for that. They need a kitchen stove.”

Mary was still pondering, but her eyes were suddenly brighter.

“Besides,” added Uncle Lemuel, delighted that his eloquence was proving even more effective here than it had in that memorable session at the Emporium, “the schoolhouse don’t light up very first-class, nor heat neither—for a winter night. We don’t want the young ones a-ketchin’ their deaths,” he finished, with an effective, but unexpected, burst of altruism.

Mary clapped her hands.

“Oh, I knew you and I could fix it all right!” she cried gleefully. “Yes, sir; we can have it right here in this kitchen. I’d rather have it than the other party we planned. And that old Grouchy ogre man won’t have a thing to say. Mrs. Caldwell said you couldn’t do anything about it, but I knew better. And, oh, Uncle Lemuel, this will be just too lovely for words! We’ll put the tree in that corner, and they can make their candy and popcorn on the stove, and still have plenty of room to play games. I knew what you meant the very minute you said kitchen stove, and I do think you are the nicest, dearest, preciousest uncle that ever walked, so I do!” She ran around the table again to bestow an ecstatic hug upon the speechless Mr. Perkins. “And everybody else thinks so, too, for I asked them yesterday, and not a person disagreed.”

“This kitchen is just like a talent, isn’t it, Uncle Lem? I guess you must be the man that had ten of them; you have so many ways to make people happy. I have only one so far—a loving heart; and everybody has that, of course; but mother says, if I keep hard at work with that, I’ll get others to use in time. When do you suppose afternoon recess is, uncle?”

“Huh?” inquired Mr. Perkins, in a voice that betrayed his condition of utter daze.

“Afternoon recess?” repeated Mary, more loudly. “I just can’t wait to go over and tell those poor children that it’s all right. They’ll be so happy. Oh, Uncle, you dear, dear thing! Don’t you want to go, too?”

“I’ve got to go over to Meadsbury this afternoon,” explained Uncle Lemuel hastily. “Thought you might like to go for the ride. There’s room enough in the cutter. You get ready, while I tackle up. We can leave the dishes.”

“Oh, goody! My fourth sleigh ride! I’ll just slip on my hat and coat, and run ahead. You can stop at the schoolhouse for me. Do you know, Uncle Lemuel, I don’t want to find out who old Grouchy Gruff is, after all? So don’t ask, will you? I want to love everybody in Oatka Centre, and I know I never could a man like that.”

Up till that moment, Uncle Lemuel had really meant in the back of his mind to “put a stop to sissy’s foolishness” as soon as he could get his breath, but right then and there a most remarkable thing happened. A poor, starved, rickety old organ down under his left ribs, which he had almost forgotten he owned, and would have been ashamed to mention, anyway, suddenly spoke up in the most surprising manner.

“You’ve starved and choked and neglected me for these many years, Lemuel Perkins,” it said, “and tried your best sometimes to kill me off entirely; but the tonic of that little girl’s love, with the tender memories that it wakens in me, has called me back again to life and strength. You may explain in any way you like to those old loafers at the Emporium, you may growl all you choose to old Topsy out in the barn, but you may _not_ disappoint that little heart that believes in you and loves you, in spite of yourself, nor choke up that little fountain of innocent affection that is filling my very cockles full of youth and love.”

And Uncle Lemuel proved that he was a wise man, after all, by pulling his old cap down low over his ears, and stamping without a word out to the barn to “tackle up.”

Half an hour later he stopped old Topsy in front of the stone schoolhouse, to pick up a small and excited “brown package with a red label,” that certainly said “Merry Christmas” as far as you could see it.

“Oh, Uncle Lemuel,” cried the package, bobbing to his side as if it were full of springs, “why didn’t you come a little sooner? Oh, I wish you had been here! I whispered about it to Miss Porter, and she stopped the classes and let me tell them all myself what you said about the schoolhouse, and that you invited them to come to your house for the Christmas party. At first they thought my uncle was Deacon Caldwell, wasn’t that funny? But when they heard that it was you, they all just clapped and clapped. They like you awfully, don’t they, you dear, dear Uncle Lem? And then they gave three cheers for Merry Christmas—that’s me; and then three more for you. Oh, I wish you could have heard them say: ‘What’s the matter with Mr. Perkins? He’s all right!’ I was so proud, I almost cried when I heard them. Uncle Lemuel, this is going to be the very happiest Christmas that ever was, isn’t it?”

VIII

UNCLE LEM’S CHRISTMAS PARTY