Happy Days for Boys and Girls Part 31

"Why, John, are you back? Dear me, if there isn't that same child--Puppet!"

John went off to his work again. Puppet ate her breakfast, and told her story, and then said,--

"Please, mum, may I play with the cart?"

And because of her yellow hair, she might play with the cart.

"But aren't you sick, and oughtn't you to take some medicine, and go to bed?" asked the lady, whose hair had grown gray over sickness and medicine.

Puppet meditated. She felt very well. She thought that she had rather play with the tip-cart than to take medicine. So she played all day, and went to bed at night.

At night John come home from his work, and, as usual, heard of all that had happened through the day.

"I wish we could keep the little thing, John, dear. She has yellow hair, just like--"

"Yes," said John, "I saw."

"And she'd be _such_ a comfort!"

"If she didn't die by and by," said John.

"But, John, dear, just think of a little thing like her spending the night in the middle of a meadow, with the water all about her."

John thought. And he thought that if she could stand that without being sick, she could stand their love without dying.

So Puppet and the guitar live with John and the gray-haired lady.

MARY B. HARRIS.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "MIKE ROLLED OVER AND OVER TO THE FOOT OF THE STEPS."

See p. 169.]

MERRY CHRISTMAS.

All the hill-side was green with maples, and birches, and pines. The meadows at its foot were green, too, with the tufted salt gra.s.s, and glittering with the silver threads of tide braided among its winding creeks. Beyond was the city, misty and gray, stretching its wan arms to the phantom s.h.i.+ps flitting along the horizon.

From the green hill-side you could hear the city's m.u.f.fled hum and roar, and sometimes the far-off clanging of the bells from its hundred belfries. But the maples and birches seemed to hear and see nothing beyond the suns.h.i.+ne over their heads and the winds which went frolicking by. Life was one long dance with them, through the budding spring and the leafy summer, and on through the grand gala days of autumn, till the frost came down on the hills, and whispered,--

"Your dancing days are all over."

But the pines were quite different. They, the stately ones, stood quite aloof, the older and taller ones looking stiffly over the heads of the rollicking maples, and making solemn reverences to the great gray clouds that swept inland from the ocean. The straight little saplings at their feet copied the manners of their elders, and folding their fingers primly, and rustling their stiff little green petticoats decorously, sat up so silent and proper.

So unlike the small birches and maples that chattered incessantly, wagging their giddy heads, and playing tag with the b.u.t.terflies in the suns.h.i.+ne all the day long!

"How tiresome those stupid old pines are! No expression, no animation.

So lofty and so exclusive, and forever grumbling to each other in their hoa.r.s.e old Scandinavian, which it gives one the croup even to listen to! Of what possible use _can_ they be?"

This was what the maple said to the birch one day when the Summer and her patience with her sombre neighbor were on the wane--one day when there was a gleam of golden pumpkins in the tawny corn stubble beyond the wood, and the purpling grapes hung ripening over the old stone wall that lay between, and the maple had brightened its summer dress with a gay little leaf set here and there in its s.h.i.+ning folds.

The birch agreed with the maple about the pines, and the maple went glibly on.

"I've ordered my autumn dresses--a different one for each day in the week. Just think of those horrid pines never altering the fas.h.i.+on of their stiff old plaiting."

"We shall not be obliged to remain in this dull place much longer,"

said the tall pines loftily to each other, looking quite over the heads of the maple and the birch. "We shall soon be crossing the ocean, and then our lives will have just begun. We simply vegetate here."

"Ho, ho!" laughed the maple and the birch behind their fluttering green fans, pretending to be greatly amused at what the west wind was saying to them.

Now, though the trees spoke a different language, yet each understood perfectly well what the other said; so their rudeness was quite inexcusable.

When the summer was ended, the maple began to put on her gorgeous autumn dresses; but the pines looked much at the sky, and paid little heed to the maple. The other trees on the hill-side, quite faded with their summer gayeties, looked on languidly in the still autumn days at the maple's brilliant toilets.

Soon the cold rains swept in from the sea, blurring the wood vistas; and when they were gone, the frost came in the midnight, with its unwelcome message, and later the snow lay white above all the faded and fallen crimson and gold of the maple and the tarnished silver of the birch.

All the trees, brown and bare now, moaned in the wintry wind--all but the tall pines, and they were crossing the ocean; their lives had begun. The little saplings remained behind, but with their heads perked stiffly up above the snow; they had the air of expecting somebody.

They were not disappointed. One sunny morning, a boy and a girl came singing through the wood paths, each in a pair of high-topped boots, and each in a faded and closely-b.u.t.toned coat, the girl with a blue hood pulled over her rosy face, and the boy with a fur cap closely tied about his ears by a red comforter. The two drew a hand-sled, and peered about under the tall trunks as they went stamping through the deep snow. How they shouted as they spied the little pine trees perking up their heads! How they tossed aside the snow, and worked away with their jackknives, hacking at the little pine trees till they had cut them all down, all ready to be piled up on their hand-sled.

"Where are you going?" asked the giddy little birch of the pines, peeping out from a small window in her snow-house. Her nose was purple, and her fingers stiff with cold; but down under the earth her feet were warm, and that was pleasant, at any rate.

"It is of no consequence where," said the pines, in their grimmest Scandinavian.

The birch simply said, "O!" and drew in her little purple nose, hoping heartily they were all going to be burned, as that would be a good end and riddance of them.

But the little pines were not going to be burned; they were going away to the city that lay misty and still beyond the frozen meadows.

Stretched out stiffly on the hand-sled, they were jostled along out through the wood, over the frozen turnpike, and across the mill-dam to Boston.

They alighted at the Boylston Market, and were ranged in a row against the dark brick wall.

"How much happens in a very short time!" they said to each other; "all those gaudy, chattering trees left without a leaf to cover them, our own friends all gone on their travels, and we here in the city, wrapped in our warm winter furs."

It was the Christmas week. The shop windows were gay with toys and gorgeous Christmas offerings; the shop doors were opening and shutting on the crowd that came and went through them. A bustling throng of people pa.s.sed incessantly up and down the narrow sidewalks, and carriages of all descriptions blocked the crossings, or drove recklessly over the frozen pavement.

The old woman in the quilted black hood and s.h.a.ggy cape, who had charge of the little pine trees, drove a brisk trade that day in her wreaths and holly; but though many people stopped to admire the little pines, and even to ask their price, no purchaser had yet appeared for them.

The old dame was rubbing her mittened hands briskly together, and mumbling in a displeased way at the pine trees, when a carriage drew suddenly up at the curbstone, and out sprang a little girl.

"See, papa, how lovely! So green, and fresh, and thick!" she said, pointing to the row of pines.

A bargain was concluded in a trice. The money was dropped into the eager, outstretched mitten of the old woman, and a little Christmas tree dragged over the sidewalk, and set up in the buggy.

"We must have some of these lower branches cut off; they are in the way," said papa.

"Hev a knife, sir?" shouted a ragged little fellow, whipping a rusty old knife out of his pocket.