Part 9

Though this suggestion had the effect of drying Dorothy’s tears, it was some time before she could be persuaded to act upon it. When they again presented themselves in the line of supplicants, Dorothy hung back, and Peggy acted as spokesman.

"Santa Claus, this little girl made a mistake when she asked you for mittens. What she really wants is a nice doll-carriage, so she can take her dolly out riding."

Santa Claus looked at Dorothy’s pink eyelids, and cheeks still stained with tears, and a sudden attractive change came over him. He looked less like a tired, red-faced man, getting through with the drudgery of his day’s work, and more like the jolly saint of the chimney and fireplace. A twinkle appeared in his eye.

"I think mesilf ’tis a sinsible change," said Santa Claus, still with a surprising richness of accent. "An’ ’twud be no wonder, my little dear, if you got thim both, and a matter o’ small trifles beside." And with the gorgeous indefiniteness of this promise sounding in her ears, it was small wonder that Dorothy went away radiant.

Twenty-six cents is easily spent under certain conditions, and then again, its investment is a matter requiring the most profound deliberation, and accompanied by frequent changes of mind. The amount of time and consideration Dorothy found necessary before reaching a conclusion, passed belief. The good-natured Christmas crowd surged about her as she stood immovable before a counter, gazing dreamily on the articles displayed, and responding to Peggy’s hints with a reproving "Sh! I’m thinking." But at last her funds were expended, and presents provided for the entire family. As Dorothy would not listen to the suggestion that anything should be sent, both she and Peggy had their arms full of knobby packages anything but small, for the size of a Christmas gift bears little relation to the cost.

Once outside, Peggy drew a breath of relief. "That’s over for a year," she congratulated herself. "Dorothy, dear, let’s walk down to the next block. I want to get some Christmas seals."

Dorothy who had borne up surprisingly while her own shopping was in progress, now developed symptoms of weariness. "I’m getting awful tired in the legs, Aunt Peggy."

"We’ll go home in a very few minutes, Dorothy. Won’t grandma be surprised to see all these lovely packages, and won’t she wish she knew what was inside?" Thus skilfully did Peggy divert the thoughts of her small companion, till the tired little feet were trotting jubilantly over the pavements, keeping time to joyful thoughts.

Half way down the block a young man stood before a jeweller’s window, intent on the display. Something in his attitude struck Peggy as familiar. She looked at him very closely, and then her eyes flew to the sign over the door, King and Kennedy.

Peggy came to an abrupt halt. A sudden anger blazed in her eyes. Righteous indignation made her oblivious to everything but its exciting cause. For the young man by the jeweller’s window was Graham Wylie, and Peggy could not doubt that he was racking his brains to decide on a suitable Christmas gift for Maud.

It was not Peggy’s habit to evade responsibility by the thought that a thing was none of her business. She pushed her way through the crowd, and stood at Graham’s elbow. "Good afternoon."

Graham’s start was of course due to a guilty conscience, though the face he turned on Peggy was exasperatingly non-committal and cheerful. "Hello, Peggy. Come over to see the sparklers?"

"I don’t care much about jewellers’ windows," Peggy said with severity. "What’s the use of looking at a lot of things you can’t afford to buy, and then getting to want them, and making yourself miserable?"

Graham chuckled.

"That may be all right for some folks," he replied. "But your remarks don’t apply, of course, to wealthy individuals like myself. I’m thinking of buying up a few of the novelties before I go home, as Christmas remembrances for my friends."

He looked at Peggy smilingly, as if he expected her to appreciate the joke. Meeting the unblinking gravity of her gaze, his face changed slightly.

"I don’t believe any real friend of yours would want a very expensive present from you," exclaimed Peggy, too indignant to realize that she was on dangerous ground. "Because, of course, you can’t afford it."

A little irritation mingled with Graham’s surprise.

"Naturally a fellow just finishing college and dependent on his father for every cent, isn’t going to blow in much for jewelry," he replied with an air of wishing to change the subject. "Some of these designs are great, Peggy, even if we can’t buy them."

"Are they?" Peggy looked resolutely over the display, as if defying temptation.

"It’s an enterprising firm," continued Graham, mystified by her unusual manner. "They’re great on advertising. The first ad. I got from them nearly took me off my feet. It was gotten up like a letter."

"What!" Peggy’s sudden accession of breathless interest was as incomprehensible as her previous air of disapproval. "A letter? Tell me about it, Graham."

"Why, there isn’t much to tell. It reads like a note of thanks for different presents you’ve sent. It brings in the name of the firm once or twice, and puffs ’em up in an accidental way. The mother of one of the fellows read his, and thought it was the real thing. He had no end of trouble explaining."

This time Peggy joined in Graham’s laughter, and she was thankful that Ruth’s unconscious brother did not guess the tension of feeling beneath her merriment. Peggy only wished she had wings to fly to Ruth, and tell her that all was well. She fought against an alarming impulse to cry on the spot, to relieve her own overcharged heart. But as it happened, the fates had provided another outlet. There was no immediate danger of Peggy’s losing her head from joy.

"Where’s Dorothy?"

She flung the frightened question full in Graham’s face. The young fellow stood staring.

"Dorothy? Was she with you?"

"Yes. She was right here. She can’t have gotten far away. O, how could I forget her? How could I?"

They pushed through the crowd to the curb, looking wildly in both directions. Standing at Graham’s elbow, Peggy babbled on almost incoherently.

"Red coat, Graham, and a red hood. It was only a minute ago. O, why did I do it? Can’t you see a little girl all in red? O, what will mother say?"

"Look here, Peggy, you want to keep your head." The sharpness of Graham’s tone was like a dash of cold water, disagreeable but effective. "Dorothy won’t be hurt because she’s out of your sight for a minute. But if you’re going to be any help, you must stop this."

Peggy gasped a little, and followed meekly, pale and trembling, but controlling herself by a mighty effort. The policeman at the corner had not seen any little girl in red wandering off by herself, but he took a reassuring view of the situation.

"If you haven’t found her in twenty minutes call up the Stark Street station. They’re getting ’em there just now at the rate of twenty a day."

Twenty minutes! It was long before Peggy could hear that measure of eternity named, without thinking immediately of a seemingly interminable and altogether miserable stretch of time, in which she seemed to experience enough contrition and agonized foreboding for a half-dozen lives. "Isn’t it time to telephone, Graham?" she asked again and again, and each time Graham answered with amazing patience. "Not yet, Peggy. Don’t be scared. Everything will be all right."

In twenty minutes they had had time to search both sides of the street through the crowded shopping district, scanning the kalaidoscopic crowd in search of a little girl in a red coat and hood, their faces lighting up at every glimpse of that cheery color, and falling again as a closer look failed to reveal the object of their search.

At length the endless twenty minutes were up, and Graham went to telephone. Peggy waited for him at the corner, and on Graham’s return she clapped her hands over her ears. Later Graham wondered why, but at the time he was only thankful that it was not necessary for him to tell the bad news. Peggy lifted her eyes to his face, and on the instant read the truth.

"She isn’t there," she gasped. "O, Graham!"

Ruth’s brother took her by the arm. "Brace up, Peggy," he urged kindly. "I guess we didn’t give them quite time enough. I’ll call ’em up again in another ten minutes. Suppose we--"

He never got any further, for at the moment someone pulled Peggy’s sleeve, and Peggy, turning, looked down into a beautiful face. Strictly speaking, it perhaps lacked the elements of which beauty is supposed to consist. Under the carroty hair, innumerable freckles stood out in bold relief against the layers of grime, while the absence of a front tooth sacrificed in a fight, gave a peculiar impressiveness to the smile. But to Peggy the countenance was beyond criticism, for it was the face of Jimmy Dunn and he had Dorothy by the hand.

"She’s a great kid, she is," exclaimed Jimmy Dunn with his hoarse chuckle. "There was a Santy Claws with a banner, a-avertisin’ a sale o’ Christmas trees, down on Block street, and she up and trots after him. I seed her, and I knowed she b’longed to you, so I fetched her along back. Ef I hadn’t found you ’round here, I was going to take her home."

"Jimmy, old man," Graham exclaimed, "you’re all right." He slapped the boy’s shoulder with a good fellowship which meant more to Jimmy Dunn than a dollar bill. Meanwhile Peggy was crying over Dorothy, who in her eagerness to impart a great discovery of her own, was quite indifferent to the emotions of her relative.

"Aunt Peggy," she cried breathlessly, "What do you think? There’s two of Santa Claus. Two of him, Aunt Peggy."

Graham took them home, telling Peggy good-naturedly that she wasn’t fit to be trusted, and Peggy was too thankful to be taken care of, to resent the implication. The car was crowded, and Peggy was glad of the opportunity this gave her to hold Dorothy on her lap, and indulge in surreptitious hugs. Graham sat across the aisle and laughed at them both with the vast superiority of a collegian.

"He was a nice Santa Claus, Aunt Peggy," was Dorothy’s only defence when reproached for her abrupt departure. "I asked him for lots of things, a dolly, and another dolly and a naughty-mobeel and a gold watch and a new house and a picture book. O dear! Aunt Peggy, I wish I’d told him another dolly beside."

Graham left his charges at Peggy’s door as the early winter dusk was veiling the sky. He was half across the street when Peggy called after him:

"Graham! O, Graham! Please tell Ruth to come over here as quick as she possibly can."

"All right," Graham responded and smiled to himself. Peggy wanted to tell Ruth all about Dorothy’s disappearance, of course, and her rescue, as if it were an affair of thrilling moment. "Knew she’d turn up, all right," thought Graham, puffing out his chest, and congratulating himself on being superior to the weakness of girls, even the best of them.

He little guessed the real importance of the news Peggy had to tell, or the difference it was to make in his sister’s Christmas. When Ruth came back presently, moist around her lashes, and stooped to kiss him, as he sat poring over the evening paper, he was far from suspecting that in that kiss there was penitence, as well as the love of which he was so sure.

Dorothy had been asleep an hour when Mrs. Raymond bethought herself of a question which the exciting character of Peggy’s return had temporarily banished from her thoughts. "By the way, Peggy, where are Dorothy’s Christmas presents?"

Peggy sat up straight, stared at her mother, and let her work drop to the floor. "Mother Raymond!"

"Well, what is it, child?"

"Mother, they’re lost."

"Lost? You don’t mean all of them?"

"I’m--I’m afraid so." Peggy looked shamed-facedly at the carpet. "We both had our arms full, and I’m sure neither of us had a bundle coming home in the car. I suppose when I found Dorothy was lost, I let everything drop."

"And when Dorothy saw the Santa Claus she probably did the same," said Mrs. Raymond, laughing a little. "It isn’t a great loss as far as their value is concerned, but I’m afraid she will be dreadfully disappointed."

"I can slip down town to-morrow, mother, and get duplicates of everything. But I guess I’ll go alone. I don’t feel equal to taking Dorothy shopping again till Christmas is over."

Peggy stole into Dorothy’s room as she went upstairs to bed, just to make sure she was really there. The little face against the pillow was charmingly angelic. Dorothy asleep showed no traces of the mischief and elfishness which rendered the Dorothy awake a care as well as a delight. As Peggy stood looking down on her, Dorothy moved restlessly, and murmured the wonderful contribution that day had made to her fund of knowledge.

"There’s two--of Santa Claus."

*CHAPTER XIII*

*CHRISTMAS CELEBRATIONS*

"Hello, Central. That was the wrong number. I want White 6492, please. No, White. Yes, please."

It was the day before Christmas. At the telephone exchanges the girls, half beside themselves between the people inquiring anxiously as to the fate of packages not yet delivered, and others bent on extending the compliments of the season to their friends, were making connections with the haste which results in waste. Peggy, who was trying to telephone Elaine, and had twice received the wrong number, rolled her eyes impatiently in her mother’s direction.

"Reminds me of the telephones we used to make out of tin boxes and linen thread. When we couldn’t hear over the ’phone we’d run to the window and shout across the street. I could have gone to the Marshalls twice over, while I’ve been saving time by telephoning. Hello! Is that you, Mrs. Marshall? May I speak to Elaine a minute?"

It was not a very long wait this time. "Hello!" said a languid voice, not a Christmasy voice, by any means.

"Hello, Elaine. Going to be dreadfully busy this afternoon?"

"O, I guess not." Still the voice had a wilted sound. One knew instinctively that the mouth of the speaker drooped at the corners.

"I’ve got something to take over to the Dunns. I thought perhaps you’d go with me. And maybe you’d like to slip some little thing into the basket, a ribbon for one of the girls, or a package of nuts or something of that sort."

"All right," said Elaine, with a sufficiently long pause before her reply to give the impression that in point of fact it was all wrong. "I don’t mind."

"We’ll start about half-past three, I think. Then we’ll be back before it begins to be dark. Thank you ever so much." Peggy was smiling as she hung up the receiver, and then, catching her mother’s eye, her inward satisfaction boiled over in a chuckle.

"A little Christmas missionary work?" asked Mrs. Raymond, smiling too, for Peggy’s pleasure in her diplomacy was infectious.

Peggy nodded. "Mother, you don’t know how Elaine talks about Christmas. She says she wishes she could sleep right through it, and never wake up till everything was over. You see it is so different from every other Christmas Day she can remember."

"Of course it is, poor child."

"And I think," Peggy continued wisely, "that going to see the Dunns is pretty likely to give one a thankful feeling. If it wasn’t anything but getting back where things were clean, it would be quite a merry Christmas all by itself. Besides, the other girls are up to their neck in work, and Elaine isn’t going to give any presents to speak of, so she can spare the time better than anybody else."

When Elaine slipped through the opening in snow-covered hedge that afternoon, her appearance carried out the impression her voice had given in the brief conversation over the ’phone. She moved slowly, heavily, as if some unseen burden, resting on her young shoulders, claimed all her strength. Her face had the blankness of one whose thoughts are far away from her surroundings. When Peggy flung open the door to welcome her, the contrast between the two was almost painful, the one girl glowing, bubbling over with cheery vitality, the other wearily indifferent.

The sight of the big basket waiting in the hall was successful in rousing Elaine from her apathy. "What, all that?" she cried.

Peggy laughed.

"One’s the Christmas dinner. And the other has toys for the children. O, you needn’t look so surprised. I haven’t been extravagant. I’ve only taken up a collection in a few families where there are children, and got a lot of play-things they were tired of. Dick and I worked like Trojans, mending up things. Dick’s a genius when it comes to glue and that sort of thing."

Peggy pulled off the cover of the basket in her pride. "See those picture books! I made the covers of paste-board, with calico pasted over them. The insides were almost as good as new. Isabel’s doll has a new head from the ten cent store, and Estelle’s has a wig that belonged to another doll first. Francesca is too old for dolls, I suppose, so there’s a little bead necklace for her. And Jimmy and John--"

Elaine interrupted. "Isn’t it funny that the girls should have such dressy names, and the boys such every-day ones?"

"Mrs. Dunn names the girls, and Mr. Dunn the boys, that’s why. I’ve got a pocket-knife for Jimmy, and a Noah’s ark and things like that for the little boys. I guess it’ll seem like quite a Christmas to them, even if the toys are second hand."

Each with a basket on her arm, the two started away toward Glen Echo Avenue. The day was crisp and cool, with a clear sky overhead, and snow, still white and sparkling, underfoot. There were holly wreaths in the windows of almost every house they passed, and something electric tingled in the air, as if the Christmas spirit had broken bounds, and escaping from happy hearts, had charged the very atmosphere. Unconsciously Elaine’s step quickened, her face brightened, and her voice, instead of reminding one of drooping flowers, was rather suggestive of bright crisp evergreen.

Over on Glen Echo Avenue the holiday spirit was in evidence. The goat whose acquaintance Peggy had made on previous visits, had a piece of evergreen tied to one horn, and to a vivid imagination it might have seemed that he was trying to enact the role of one of Santa Clans’ reindeer. The faces of the children wore an expression of joyful anticipation which made Peggy a little anxious for fear that disappointment lay in wait for some of them. "I hope they’ll look as happy to-morrow," she said to Elaine with a sigh. "Dear! I wish I had baskets for every house instead of just one."

None of the small Dunns were in evidence on the street, and Peggy and Elaine made their way down the rickety stairs which led to the front door, unannounced. But at the first knock the door flew open with a promptness which suggested that someone of the family had been stationed at the knob to act the part of door-keeper. At the sight of Peggy a cry arose. "Ma, it’s Jimmy’s lady, the pretty one."

Peggy blushed rosily, at hearing herself thus heralded, and went on to the kitchen, her scarlet face under her green hat, looking not unlike an animated sprig of holly. "Merry Christmas, Mrs. Dunn," she cried, "Merry Christmas, children."

Mrs. Dunn who sat in a rocking-chair beside the stove, a woollen scarf tied around her head, seemed rather inclined to resent the tone of the greeting.

"Thank you kindly, Miss I’m sure," she said. "Though breath is cheap and ’Merry Christmas’ ain’t a’going to fill nobody’s stommick." She cast a covetous eye upon the girls’ load, and Peggy set the basket of provisions on the table, smiling encouragingly. "I guess you’ll find something filling here, Mrs. Dunn," she said. "And plenty of good wishes go with it."

"Don’t hardly look sizeable enough to hold a turkey," suggested Mrs. Dunn, eyeing the basket with disfavor.

"No, there isn’t a turkey."

"A chicken’s a long way from turkey," observed Mrs. Dunn, with an apparent effort to conceal her disappointment. "But I s’pose you could call it the next best thing. A real good-sized chicken now, with stuffin’--"

"There isn’t a chicken either, Mrs. Dunn," said Peggy with firmness. "But there’s a nice roast of beef, and plenty of potatoes, and other vegetables, and a mince pie, and, O, yes, a tumbler of jelly."

The lips of the little Dunns were all ajar as if to give visible evidence that their mouths were watering, as Peggy recited the menu of their Christmas dinner, but Mrs. Dunn, evidently feeling that she owed it to herself to regard the traditions of the day, underwent an evident struggle before she could bring herself to the point of magnanimity.

"O, well," she said at last, "roast beef is fillin’, even if ’tain’t what you could call temptin’. I s’pose it’s my complication that makes me peckish about my victuals." She turned sharply upon the children, who were nudging one another, repeating with joyful giggles, "Mince pie!" "Jelly!" Her frown reduced them to instant gravity.

"What ails you, anyway?" demanded Mrs. Dunn. "Act like you never had a Christmas dinner in all your lives."

Peggy steered the conversation from the delicate subject by opening the other basket, and now it would have taken more than Mrs. Dunn’s frown to have suppressed the children’s hilarity. There was a chorus of voices, shrill squeals, which might have expressed almost anything from acute physical anguish to ecstasy, and really did stand for the latter, gurgles of excited laughter, questions that ran into one another, without waiting for answers, a medley of happy voices which perhaps comes the nearest to perfect Christmas music than any since Bethlehem.

"Look, Ma. It’s got shoes and stockings."

"There’s animals in this here house. It’s a zoolog’cal garden."

"See the baby! Don’t he like Christmas, though!"

The baby, indeed, was entering splendidly into the spirit of the occasion. A rattle in one hand, a rubber cow in the other, he regarded his laughing brothers and sisters with a responsive grin, revealing gums guiltless of teeth. "The dear!" said Peggy with a little gulp, for all this artless joy had touched some of those sensitive nerves which lie between pain and pleasure. Peggy was laughing with the rest, but her eyes were dewy.

A mew outside of the door broke in on this hilarity. "It’s Jimmy’s kitty," screamed Estelle, crossing the kitchen with a hop, skip and jump. "She knows Christmas has come and she wants to be in it."

The kitten for whose rescue Jimmy Dunn had fought so valiantly, showed great improvement over her miserable self on the occasion which Peggy so vividly remembered. She could not be called a handsome cat, even now. A fractured tail had been among the injuries sustained in the hardships of her earlier existence, and that member was carried on one side, in a manner suggesting excessive weight. Though no longer muddy, her fur was by no means clean, and the hollowness of her sides reflected on the Dunns’ bounty. Yet she purred, as she entered, arching her back, and craning her neck under Estelle’s caresses in a fashion which proved conclusively that though the fare night be meagre at times there was no lack of kindness in the Dunn establishment for the little outcast.

"O, here’s Violetta," Peggy cried. Owing to the sex of Jimmy’s protégé, Mrs. Dunn had assumed the responsibility of naming her, bestowing on the waif the name that would have been given to Bill, the baby, if his turning out a boy had not transferred the right of decision from his mother to his father. Peggy rummaged in the bottom of her basket, as the Dunns, one after another, stroked Violetta’s back, with grimy fingers, and displayed their new acquisitions. "Where has that package gone to?" scolded Peggy. "I hope I haven’t forgotten Violetta’s present. O, no, here it is."