Page:St. Nicholas (serial) (IA stnicholasserial402dodg).pdf/671

1913.] shining star stood still, so Santy could empty all his pack down the baby king’s chimney.”

It was a queer procession which wandered through Will’m’s sniffing, singsong account. To the camels, sages, and herald angels, to the shepherds and the little woolly white lambs of the Judean hills, were added not only Bo-Peep and her flock, but Baa, the black sheep, and the reindeer team of an unscriptural Saint Nicholas. But it was all Holy Writ to Will’m. Presently the mere thought of angels and stars and silver bells gave him such a big, warm feeling inside, that he was brimming over with good-will to everybody.

When Libby came home from school a few minutes later, he was in the midst of his favorite game, one which he played at intervals all through the day. The game was Railroad Train, suggested naturally enough by the constant switching of cars and snorting of engines which went on all day and night at this busy junction. It was one in which he could be a star performer in each part, as he personated fireman, engineer, conductor, and passenger in turn. At the moment Libby came in, he was the engine itself, backing, puffing, and whistling, his arms going like piston-rods, and his pursed-up little mouth giving a very fair imitation of “letting off steam.”

“Look out!” he called warningly. “You ’ll get runned over!”

But instead of heeding his warning, Libby planted herself directly in the path of the oncoming engine, ignoring so completely the part he was playing, that he stopped short in surprise. Ordinarily, she would have fallen in with the game, but now she seemed blind and deaf to the fact that he was playing anything at all. Usually, coming in the back way, she left her muddy overshoes on the latticed porch, her lunch basket on the kitchen table, her wraps on their particular hook in the entry. She was an orderly little soul. But to-day she came in, her coat half off, her hood trailing down her back by its strings, and her thin little tails of tightly braided hair fuzzy and untied, from running bareheaded all the way home to tell the exciting news. She told it in gasps:

“You can write letters to Santa Claus—for whatever you want—and put them up the chimney—and he gets them—and whatever you ask for, he ‘ll bring you—if you ’re good!”

Instantly the “engine” was a little boy again, all a-tingle with this new delicious mystery of Christmas-tide, Hc climbed up into the rocking-chair and listened, the rapt look on his face deepening. In proof of what she told, Libby had a letter all written and addressed, ready to send. One of the older girls had helped her with it at noon, and she had spent the entire afternoon recess copying it. Because she was just learning to write, she made so many mistakes that it had to be copied several times. She read it aloud to Will’m:

“Dear Santa Claus:

Please bring me a little shiny gold ring like the one that Maudie Peters wears.

“Now, you watch, and you ‘ll see me send it up the chimney when I get my muddy overshoes off and my hands washed. This might be one of the times when he ’d be looking down, and it ‘d be better for me to be all clean and tidy.”

Breathlessly Will’m waited till she came back from the kitchen, her hands and face shining from the scrubbing she had given them with yellow laundry soap, her hair brushed primly back on each side of its parting, and her hair ribbons freshly tied. Then she knelt on the rug, the fateful missive in her hand.

“Maudie is going to ask for ’most a dozen presents,” she said. “Rut as long as this will be Santy’s first visit to this house, I ’m not going to ask for more than one thing, and you must n’t, either. It would n’t be polite.”

“But we can ask him to bring a ring to Dranma,” Will’m suggested, his face beaming at the thought. The answer was positive and terrible, out of her wisdom newly gained at both church and school.

“No, we can’t! He only brings things to people who b’leeve in him. It’s the same way it is about going to heaven. Only those who b’leeve will be saved and get in.”

“Dranma and Uncle Neal will go to heaven,” insisted Will’m, loyally, and in a tone which suggested his willingness to hurt her if she contradicted him. Uncle Neal was “Dranma’s’ husband.

“Oh, of course they ‘ll go to heaven all right,” was Libby’s impatient answer. “They ’ve got faith in the Bible and the minister and the heathen and such things, But they won’t get anything in their stockings because they are n’t sure about there even being a Santa Claus! So there!”

“Well, if Santa Claus won’t put anything in my Dranma Neal’s stocking, he ’s a mean old thing, and I don’t want him to put anything in mine,” began Will’m, defiantly, but was silenced by the sight of Libby’s horrified face.

“Oh, brother! Hush!” she cried, darting a frightened glance over her shoulder toward the chimney. Then in a shocked whisper which scared Will’m worse than a loud yell would have