CHAPTER XI.

OFF TO THE NORTH POLE

The amazed hush that followed Santa Claus’s hospitable declaration was lifted by a gleeful chuckle from Miss Susanna. With the appearance into the room of the fabled Kris Kringle she had hastily set Ruffle from her lap to the floor and risen to her feet. Ruffle placidly took advantage of the situation to gain the coveted chair.

Leila and Vera were hardly less diverted over the sight of Santa Claus than was the last of the Hamiltons. Neither of them knew home as Marjorie, Robin, Muriel and their intimates knew its fond meaning. Leila’s Celtic love of the mystic, fanciful and fictional, had been shared by Vera during their years of comradeship at Hamilton College.

“I’m that little girl. I’m Susie Hamilton.” Miss Susanna walked slowly toward Santa Claus with a droll assumption of shyness.

“You don’t say so? How are you, Susie?” Santa gave the supposed little girl a gripping handshake. “I heard you had been very good. I hope these other little girls have.” He turned very blue, very suspicious eyes upon Muriel, who merely beamed at him familiarly and inquired: “Where’s your friend?”

“I see trouble ahead for one of these infants,” remarked a voice from Santa’s beard that sounded strangely like that of Jerry Macy. Immediately recovering his high-pitched voice Santa announced: “My friend, the King of the North Pole is outside. As my reindeer are all very busy tonight he is going to give me a lift.”

The King of the North Pole evidently yearned for an introduction. A head covered with a peaked, close-fitting hood of glistening, glittering white, followed by a pair of broad shoulders, draped in the same glittering, frost-like material, appeared in the window frame. The reigning monarch of the North Pole, after a brief struggle in passage with a voluminous white cape, landed triumphantly among the admiring company.

A conspicuous bulge in the right side of his glittering cape disappeared as he drew forth a fluffy white worsted coat and held it open for Miss Susanna to slip on. Next moment he had picked her up, carried her across the room, swung her through the window and to her feet on the porch floor. Gathering his cape closely about him, he launched through the open frame after her. Again he caught her up, laughing and unresisting, and ran down the walk with her to where a little, old-fashioned cutter, painted bright red and with furry white lap robes awaited her. A large, mild-eyed white horse was harnessed to the cutter, his harness gay with scarlet ribbon rosettes. The King lifted Miss Susanna into the cutter, tucked the furs about her then stood looking laughingly down at her. Nor would he utter a sound. He merely waved a re-assuring hand toward Santa Claus, who had dashed out the front door and was now running down the walk at a kind of wild gallop.

“You’re next,” Santa shrieked over a plump shoulder at the knot of pursuing girls. Reaching the sleigh the juvenile patron saint made a lively leap into it beside Miss Susanna, gathered up the reins, clucked to the horse and whirled away with the Lady of the Arms.

“No time like the present.” The King of the North Pole found his voice. “Either get into my chariot, or be bundled in,” he threatened with smiles. The chariot had been parked behind the sleigh. It greatly resembled Jerry’s limousine.

“I’m not ready to go to the North Pole, your Majesty,” blithely petitioned Marjorie. “I haven’t yet locked up my castle.”

“Delia was at the back door when I came in the window. Want to be bundled in?” The King sent significant glances from the car to Marjorie and back again. He had already gallantly assisted the other girls into the limousine.

“No, indeed.” Marjorie followed her companions into the back of the machine. There they found a collection of Jerry’s wraps placed to meet the emergency. Marjorie smiled to herself as she draped a wide fleecy scarf over her silk-clad shoulders. As the King of the North Pole, Hal had the old, teasing school-boy manner she liked best in him. She hoped he would keep to it throughout her stay in Sanford.

It presently developed that the King of the North Pole had decided to move his icy domain over Christmas to the Macy’s ball room. There it was that Santa also had his headquarters. Miss Susanna was whisked to the top of the Macy’s big house in an elevator and escorted into the ball room, now festally decorated from end to end with fragrant balsam boughs, long trails of sturdy green ground pine and glossy-leaved flaming-berried holly. From the central electric chandelier depended a bunch of pearly mistletoe berries.

Santa Claus’s eight reindeer had reached home ahead of their master. Jerry’s four “dorms,” Ronny’s two, Lucy and Kathie, had chosen this detail. Their costumes had been planned for them by Jerry and carried out by Mrs. Dean and Mrs. Macy several days before the arrival at Sanford of the celebrated reindeer themselves. Their brown cotton flannel suits of bloomers and close-fitting knee coats, together with brown hose and sneakers were quite realistic when topped by brown cotton flannel antlered hoods. The antlers were triumphs of pasteboard ingenuity. Their only drawback was their tendency to wabble at times, thereby giving their wearers an appearance of recklessness not attributed to the famous Santa Claus eight. Harnesses strung with little bells completed their costumes.

At the far end of the room in one corner stood an immense Christmas tree, resplendent with its glitter of gilt, silver and gorgeous-hued ornaments. At the foot of the tree was stacked a wealth of festively wrapped, ribbon-bound bundles. The eight reindeer escorted Santa Claus and Miss Susanna gaily up the hall to where a deep, garnet velvet Sleepy Hollow chair stood awaiting an occupant. She had hardly been established in it when the King of the North Pole and his party arrived.

“My reindeer will entertain you with a song and dance,” Santa Claus piped up, when the first buzz of voices and echoing laughter had died out in the big room. “After that my fiddler will furnish music and we will all have a dance. I will lead with my little friend, Susie. Please don’t all try to dance at once with the King of the North Pole.”

“No one except Jeremiah Macy would offer such simple advice,” Muriel pleasantly told the king himself. “Too bad you have no gentleman friends besides Santa Claus.”

“Oh, but I have,” was the king’s cheering disclosure.

“Really?” Muriel showed deep interest. “Where do you keep them?”

“That’s a secret.” The king put on an aggravatingly wise expression. “There are lots of good hiding places at the North Pole.”

“Just as I thought!” Muriel exclaimed in triumph. “I knew you and Jeremiah couldn’t stay away from home all day at the picnic and do this decorating between dinner time and eight o’clock. You had help—h-e-l-p!”

“Certainly I had,” the king admitted. “General and Captain were here and helped the Governor and Mother trim the tree. So did Delia. But they’ve gone home now to trim Marjorie’s tree.” He regarded Muriel with an innocent candor which the sparkle in his eyes contradicted.

“You can’t fool me, Mister King of the North Pole Macy,” she said as the eight reindeer trotted out upon the waxed floor to do their bit toward entertaining. Before they had time to begin their song Muriel’s fingers flashed to her lips. Twice she sounded the sharp clear whistle which she and Jerry had long ago made Hal teach them how to blow on the fingers.

“Now you have done it!” The king laughed nevertheless as the ball room door swung open and a troop of joyfully grinning young men filed in, led by Danny Seabrooke. “Who told you the signal?” he demanded.

“I knew if Danny Seabrooke was within hearing of it, he’d come at that whistle. And he did,” laughed Muriel. “You had Danny and his crowd tucked away in the garret next to the ball room.”

“You should have seen them work after we brought the decorations up here from the wagon. We had only about an hour and a half for the job and I had to leave before it was finished and go with Jerry—Santa Claus, I should say.” Hal exhibited boyish pride in the success of the decorating. “I’d have invited the fellows anyway, on my own say-so. Think Danny and I are crazy to be the only fellows in such an aggregation of girls?”

At sight of the troop of joyful intruders panic overtook two of the reindeer and they fled to the safety of Miss Susanna’s protection. One of them was Lucy Warner, who was noted for her bashful fear of young men. The other was Neva Worden, an equally timid dormitory girl. Neither would consent to perform for the benefit of the newcomers. Jerry and Ronny, in giggling distraction over this unexpected hitch in the program finally posed them, one on either side of Miss Susanna’s chair, ostensibly as ornaments, while their six unabashed companions sang a jolly English roundelay, at the same time executing a lively little dance around the Lady of the Arms, waving their antlers and jingling their bells.

Phil, as the fiddler, presently came forward to play for the dance Santa Claus had graciously announced. Her usual picturesque style was intensified by a costume consisting of baggy black velvet knickers, a velvet coat of forest green with a skull cap to match. Her white cotton blouse fell away from her firm white throat in a wide rolling collar. Two peacock feathers were thrust through her cap. Black stockings and brown suede sandals lent the last touch of the artistic unusual to her. Her violin swung from her shoulder on a broad green ribbon. Her bright loosened hair under her tiny cap gave her a thoroughly Bohemian appearance.

Tucking her violin under her chin she drew forth the familiar marshalling strains of the Virginia reel. She raised her head a little from her violin and laughed softly as her quick ear caught the sound of another violin besides her own. As she continued to play a slim black-eyed boy with a shock of heavy black hair thrown off his forehead came forward from where he had been concealed behind the Christmas tree. Under his chin was a violin. He was playing the old reel in perfect time with Phil. This was her introduction to Charlie Stevens, now a “big” boy and qualified to play in “a big band.”

Miss Susanna and Santa Claus led off in the reel. The King of the North Pole followed with tiny Vera. Leila accepted Danny Seabrooke as a partner and Robin fell to Miles Burton. Ronny danced it with Mr. Macy, who had come up to “see the fun,” and Mrs. Macy danced with Harry Lenox. The rest of the girls paired off with the remainder of Hal’s delegation of Sanford boys, and the house rang with the laughter and cheer of the occasion.

Marjorie’s partner chanced to be Danny Seabrooke’s brother Donald, a junior at Weston High. As she stood between Leila and Barbara Severn in the merry line of girls awaiting her turn to dance she was reminded of the changes that had taken place since the first time she had danced a Virginia reel in the Macy’s ball room. She sorely missed Connie and Laurie. This was the second Christmas Eve without them. She recalled how she and Laurie and Connie had worked to make a happy Christmas for little Charlie when first she had known Connie and him. Now here was Charlie, a tall, sturdy boy, with not many years between him and manhood.

Three girls were missing tonight from the old happy sextette. Connie, Irma and Susan Atwell. Connie was far away across the ocean. Irma was visiting her aunt in New York and buying her trousseau. The Atwells had moved to San Francisco. Harriet Delaney, the seventh chum the sextette had invited into their close little band, had made a successful New York debut in grand opera. Mary Raymond, her first chum, had long been in distant Colorado. And Mary was going to be married!

They were all dearer to her than ever, she reflected. A warmth of fresh affection for her absent friends surged up in her heart. Followed a sense of tender exultation as she looked up and down the rows of gay, voluable dancers. How very rich in present friends she was! Present and absent, they were all hers; to have and to hold. Surely love, the love of which Hal had wistfully talked to her, could not be more wonderful than friendship.

Involuntarily her eyes strayed to Hal, vividly, romantically handsome in his sparkling white regalia of the frozen zone. “He looks like the hero of a Norse myth,” was her thought. “When we go back to Hamilton, I’m going to ask Leila to write a Norse play and call it—” Marjorie deliberated. Her gaze continued to rest unsentimentally on Hal as he stood at the foot of the line, exchanging humorous sallies with the two fiddlers. “The Knight of the Northern Sun,” she decided inspirationally. “Gussie Forbes can play the part of the knight. Her shoulders are almost as broad as Hal’s.”

Occupied with the fun of the moment, Hal failed to note the admiring, concentrated gaze of the sparkling brown eyes he loved best. He had resolutely steeled himself to play the part for which Marjorie had cast him in the drama of life—that of devoted friend. Nor did Marjorie dream that in visualizing Hal as a magnificent Norse knight she had challenged a romantic side of her nature of which she had not believed herself possessed.