Racketty-Packetty House and Other Stories (17 page)

“I'm happy to make her acquaintance,” said S. C., “and I'm happy to make yours. You are a nice child, though a trifle peppery. I'm very glad to see you.”

“I'm very glad indeed to see you, sir,” said Jem. “I wasn't quite sure——”

But there she stopped, feeling that it would be scarcely polite to tell him that she had begun of late years to lose faith in him.

But S. C. only chuckled more comfortably than ever and rubbed his hands again.

“Ho, ho!” he said. “You know who I am, then?”

Jem hesitated a moment, wondering whether it would not be taking a liberty to mention his name without putting “Mr.” before it; then she remembered what Baby had called him.

“Baby called you ‘Mr. Claus,' sir,” she replied; “and I have seen pictures of you.”

“To be sure,” said S. C. “S. Claus, Esquire, of Chimney-land. How do you like me?”

“Very much,” answered Jem; “very much, indeed, stir.”

“Glad of it! Glad of it! But what was it you were going to say you were not quite sure of?”

Jem blushed a little.

“I was not quite sure that—that you were true, sir. At least I have not been quite sure since I have been older.”

S. C. rubbed the bald part of his head and gave a little sigh.

“I hope I have not hurt your feelings, sir,” faltered Jem, who was a very kind hearted little soul.

“Well, no,” said S. C. “Not exactly. And it is not your fault either. It is natural, I suppose; at any rate, it is the way of the world. People lose their belief in a great many things as they grow older; but that does not make the things not true, thank goodness! and their faith often comes back after a while. But, bless me!” he added, briskly, “I'm moralizing, and who thanks a man for doing that? Suppose——”

“Black eyes or blue, sir?” said a tiny voice close to them. Jem and Flora turned round, and saw it was one of the small workers who was asking the question.

“Whom for?” inquired S. C.

“Little girl in the red brick house at the corner,” said the workwoman; “name of Birdie.”

“Excuse me a moment,” said S. C. to the children, and he turned to the big book and began to run his fingers down the pages in a business-like manner. “Ah! here she is!” he exclaimed at last. “Blue eyes, if you please, Thistle, and golden hair. And let it be a big one. She takes good care of them.”

“Yes, sir,” said Thistle; “I am personally acquainted with several dolls in her family. I go to parties in her dolls' house sometimes when she is fast asleep at night, and they all speak very highly of her. She is most attentive to them when they are ill. In fact, her pet doll is a cripple, with a stiff leg.”

She ran back to her work and S. C. finished his sentence.

“Suppose I show you my establishment,” he said. “Come with me.”

It really would be quite impossible to describe the wonderful things he showed them. Jem's head was quite in a whirl before she had seen one-half of them, and even Baby condescended to become excited.

“There must be a great many children in the world, Mr. Claus,” ventured Jem.

“Yes, yes, millions of 'em; bless 'em,” said S. C., growing rosier with delight at the very thought. “We never run out of them, that's one comfort. There's a large and varied assortment always on hand. Fresh ones every year, too, so that when one grows too old there is a new one ready.

I have a place like this in every twelfth chimney. Now it's boys, now it's girls, always one or t'other; and there's no end of playthings for them, too, I'm glad to say. For girls, the great thing seems to be dolls. Blitzen! what comfort they
do
take in dolls! but the boys are for horses and racket.”

They were standing near a table where a worker was just putting the finishing touch to the dress of a large wax doll, and just at that moment, to Jem's surprise, she set it on the floor, upon its feet, quite coolly.

“Thank you,” said the doll, politely.

Jem quite jumped.

“You can join the rest now and introduce yourself,” said the worker.

The doll looked over her shoulder at her train.

“It hangs very nicely,” she said. “I hope it's the latest fashion.”

“Mine never talked like that,” said Flora. “My best one could only say ‘Mamma,' and it said it very badly, too.”

“She was foolish for saying it at all,” remarked the doll, haughtily. “We don't talk and walk before ordinary people; we keep our accomplishments for our own amusement, and for the amusement of our friends. If you should chance to get up in the middle of the night, some time, or should run into the room suddenly some day, after you have left it, you might hear—but what is the use of talking to human beings?”

“You know a great deal, considering you are only just finished,” snapped Baby, who really was a Tartar.

“I was FINISHED,” retorted the doll. “I did not begin life as a baby!” very scornfully.

“Pooh!” said Baby. “We improve as we get older.”

“I hope so, indeed,” answered the doll. “There is plenty of room for improvement.” And she walked away in great state.

S. C. looked at Baby and then shook his head. “I shall not have to take very much care of you,” he said, absentmindedly. “You are able to take pretty good care of yourself.”

“I hope I am,” said Baby, tossing her head.

S. C. gave his head another shake.

“Don't take too good care of yourself,” he said. “That's a bad thing, too.”

He showed them the rest of his wonders, and then went with them to the door to bid them good-bye.

“I am sure we are very much obliged to you, Mr. Claus,” said Jem, gratefully. “I shall never again think you are not true, sir.”

S. C. patted her shoulder quite affectionately.

“That's right,” he said. “Believe in things just as long as you can, my dear. Good-bye until Christmas Eve. I shall see you then, if you don't see me.”

He must have taken quite a fancy to Jem, for he stood looking at her, and seemed very reluctant to close the door, and even after he had closed it, and they had turned away, he opened it a little again to call to her.

“Believe in things as long as you can, my dear.”

“How kind he is!” exclaimed Jem, full of pleasure.

Baby shrugged her shoulders.

“Well enough in his way,” she said, “but rather inclined to prose and be old-fashioned.”

Jem looked at her, feeling rather frightened, but she said nothing.

Baby showed very little interest in the next room she took them to.

“I don't care about this place,” she said, as she threw open the door. “It has nothing but old things in it. It is the Nobody-knows-where room.”

She had scarcely finished speaking before Jem made a little spring and picked something up.

“Here's my old strawberry pincushion!” she cried out. And then, with another jump and another dash at two or three other things, “And here's my old fairy-book! And here's my little locket I lost last summer! How did they come here?”

“They went Nobody-knows-where,” said Baby. “And this is it.”

“But cannot I have them again?” asked Jem.

“No,” answered Baby. “Things that go to Nobody-knows-where stay there.”

“Oh!” sighed Jem, “I am so sorry.”

“They are only old things,” said Baby.

“But I like my old things,” said Jem. “I love them. And there is mother's needle case. I wish I might take that. Her dead little sister gave it to her, and she was so sorry when she lost it.”

“People ought to take better care of their things,” remarked Baby.

Jem would have liked to stay in this room and wander about among her old favorites for a long time, but Baby was in a hurry.

“You'd better come away,” she said. “Suppose I was to have to fall awake and leave you?”

The next place they went into was the most wonderful of all.

“This is the Wish room,” said Baby. “Your wishes come here—yours and mother's, and Aunt Hetty's and father's and mine. When did you wish that?”

Each article was placed under a glass shade, and labelled with the words and name of the wishers. Some of them were beautiful, indeed; but the tall shade Baby nodded at when she asked her question was truly alarming, and caused Jem a dreadful pang of remorse. Underneath it sat Aunt Hetty, with her mouth stitched up so that she could not speak a word, and beneath the stand was a label bearing these words, in large black letters—

“I wish Aunt Hetty's mouth was sewed up, Jem.”

“Oh, dear!” cried Jem, in great distress. “How it must have hurt her! How unkind of me to say it! I wish I hadn't wished it. I wish it would come undone.”

She had no sooner said it than her wish was gratified. The old label disappeared and a new one showed itself, and there sat Aunt Hetty, looking herself again, and even smiling.

Jem was grateful beyond measure, but Baby seemed to consider her weak minded.

“It served her right,” she said.

But when, after looking at the wishes at the end of the room, they went to the other end, her turn came. In one corner stood a shade with a baby under it, and the baby was Miss Baby herself, but looking as she very rarely looked; in fact, it was the brightest, best tempered baby one could imagine.

“I wish I had a better tempered baby. Mother,” was written on the label.

Baby became quite red in the face with anger and confusion.

“That wasn't here the last time I came,” she said. “And it is right down mean in mother!”

This was more than Jem could bear.

“It wasn't mean,” she said. “She couldn't help it. You know you are a cross baby—everybody says so.”

Baby turned two shades redder.

“Mind your own business,” she retorted. “It was mean; and as to that silly little thing being better than I am,” turning up her small nose, which was quite turned up enough by Nature—“I must say I don't see anything so very grand about her. So, there!”

She scarcely condescended to speak to them while they remained in the Wish room, and when they left it, and went to the last door in the passage, she quite scowled at it.

“I don't know whether I shall open it at all,” she said.

“Why not?” asked Flora. “You might as well.”

“It is the Lost pin room,” she said. “I hate pins.”

She threw the door open with a bang, and then stood and shook her little fist viciously. The room was full of pins, stacked solidly together. There were hundreds of them—thousands—millions, it seemed.

“I'm glad they
are
lost!” she said. “I wish there were more of them there.”

“I didn't know there were so many pins in the world,” said Jem.

“Pooh!” said Baby. “Those are only the lost ones that have belonged to our family.”

After this they went back to Flora's room and sat down, while Flora told Jem the rest of her story.

“Oh!” sighed Jem, when she came to the end. “How delightful it is to be here! Can I never come again?”

“In one way you can,” said Flora. “When you want to come, just sit down and be as quiet as possible, and shut your eyes and think very hard about it. You can see everything you have seen to-day, if you try.”

“Then I shall be sure to try,” Jem answered. She was going to ask some other question, but Baby stopped her.

“Oh! I'm falling awake,” she whimpered, crossly, rubbing her eyes. “I'm falling awake again.”

And then, suddenly, a very strange feeling came over Jem. Flora and the pretty room seemed to fade away, and, without being able to account for it at all, she found herself sitting on her little stool again, with a beautiful scarlet and gold book on her knee, and her mother standing by laughing at her amazed face. As to Miss Baby, she was crying as hard as she could in her crib.

“Mother!” Jem cried out, “have you really come home so early as this, and—and,” rubbing her eyes in great amazement, “how did I come down?”

“Don't I look as if I was real?” said her mother, laughing and kissing her. “And doesn't your present look real? I don't know how you came down, I'm sure. Where have you been?”

Jem shook her head very mysteriously. She saw that her mother fancied she had been asleep, but she herself knew better.

“I know you wouldn't believe it was true if I told you,” she said; “I have been

BEHIND THE WHITE BRICK.”

Alcott, Louisa May, LITTLE WOMEN. (41023-4)) $3.00

Barrie, J. M., PETER PAN. (40783-7) $2.00

Beaumont, Marie Leprince de, and Perrault, Charles, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST AND OTHER FAIRY TALES. (41716-6) $2.00

Burnett, Frances Hodgson, A LITTLE PRINCESS. (41446-9) $2.00

Burnett, Frances Hodgson, THE SECRET GARDEN. (40784-5) $2.50

Burroughs, Edgar Rice, AT THE EARTH'S CORE. (41657-7) $2.00

Carroll, Lewis, ALICE IN WONDERLAND. (41658-5) $2.00

Dasent, George Webbe, EAST O' THE SUN AND WEST O' THE MOON AND OTHER NORWEGIAN FAIRY TALES. (41724-7) $2.00

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, FAVORITE SHERLOCK HOLMES DETECTIVE STORIES. (41242-3) $2.00

Grahame, Kenneth, THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS. (40785-3) $2.00

Kipling, Rudyard, CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS. (40786-1) $2.00

Kipling, Rudyard. THE JUNGLE BOOK. (41024-2) $2.00

Kipling, Rudyard, JUST SO STORIES. (41722-0) $2.00

MacDonald, George, THE PRINCESS AND THE GOBLIN. (40787-X) $2.50

Macfarlan, Allan A., NATIVE AMERICAN TALES AND LEGENDS (41476-0) $2.00

McSpadden, J. Walker, ROBIN HOOD. (41021-8) $2.50

Montgomery, Lucy Maud, ANNE OF GREEN GABLES. (41025-0) $2.50

Nesbit, E., THE RAILWAY CHILDREN. (41022-6) $2.50

Sewell, Anna, BLACK BEAUTY. (40788-8) $2.50

Spyri, Johanna, HEIDI. (41235-0) $2.50

Sterne, Emma Gelders, THE STORY OF THE AMISTAD. (41537-6) $2.00

Stevenson, Robert Louis, KIDNAPPED, (41026-9) $2.50

Wilde, Oscar, THE HAPPY PRINCE AND OTHER FAIRY TALES. (41723-9) $2.50

 

 

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