Clara Wood Mingins

“ The doctor looked wistfully after Jeanie as she went up the wide stairs with a dancing child clinging to either hand. “That is a pretty picture,” he said to Mr. Douglas; “you should be a happy man, for you have caused some sorrowing ones to rejoice. Jeanie, now—it is ten years, is it not? I thought that night you called me to come quickly, I had never seen a face so sad. Jeanie is all that is noble, God bless her!”
“Yes,” said Mr. Douglas, “think what she has been to us. My wife, Stella, talked to her by the hour before Dorothy was born, told her all her plans, hopes and fears. ”

“ Father, dear, the Christmas Carols seem always to make you sorrowful. I have noticed, too, when we sing the carols in church, that so many people look sad. Often, I have seen tears in their eyes. Only the children look really happy. ”

“ It was broken by the doctor asking: “Has anyone heard Jeanie express any Christmas desires?”
“I asked her what she would like me to give her,” said Dorothy, “and she said, ‘I would like your undivided attention to your sewing about half an hour each day.’ She said, ‘that would be a gift worth having.’
“It’s very hard to sew; I seem to find so much to interest me somewhere else, when I should be sewing—birds and clouds out of the window—and fairy stories in the grate fire.”
“Rings always wants to play when it’s sewing time,” chuckled Lois, “and then my needle gets lost. ”

“ I feel perfectly certain that I shall have to go to the city and offer assistance to Santa Claus. Every year it turns out that some little boy or girl gets up Christmas morning to an empty stocking and no one wants such a thing to happen.”
“Why, that’s just what we want to do—give a really merry Christmas to some of the sorry ones,” and Dorothy plunged into the subject. “You know last summer there were some children in this neighborhood, ‘Fresh air children,’ they were called. Jeanie brought one of them, a little girl, Maddie Morrison, over here to see if any of my dresses would fit her. ”

“ We are not very big and cannot make many things that would be of any real value, and we have only the money father gives us. We have saved nearly all of that——”
“And,” Lois interrupted, “I put in the five-dollar gold piece Father Douglas gave me, because I routed the ‘think you can’ts,’ and learned to play the scales.”
“Yes, and we’ve found out that the ‘think you can’ts’ are really ‘don’t want tos,’” Dorothy explained earnestly. “Sometimes I don’t even want to want to,” she added pensively. “Jeanie told us she knew just the thing for us to do. ”

“ Lois interrupted Timothy, “because I don’t really know, and sailor Tom said he thought I must have been born about December.”
“Why not?” said Timothy; “and some day you will know. Just because ships are lost, there is no rhyme nor reason in talking about people being lost; meantime, there are two Christmas candles shining here.”
“Doctor says he is going to have Maddie for his Christmas candle; doesn’t she look like a real one in her white dress and that hair?” Dorothy enthused.
“She does,” Timothy admitted. “She will no doubt shine in more ways than one. She may need some snuffing ”

“ The children are coming one week before Christmas day and stay until after the New Year. We are planning to have two weeks of happy days; snow-balling, sleighing, making snow men and forts, and, oh! all kinds of winter games.
“Every one is going to do something to give them a good time. Mrs. Grant is going to invite them to her house to pop corn, Mrs. Waring is going to show them some beautiful pictures and have a moonlight ride, father says Lois and I may invite them to a candy pull, and give a party Christmas afternoon. We are going to have a Santa Claus hunt. ”

“ Douglas was with them instantly. “Bring him to the library, Timothy—come in doctor—perhaps——”
Mr. Stanley came forward with outstretched hand. “Mr. Douglas, understanding your sorrow as I do, though a stranger to you, let me try to comfort you. Let me beg of you to keep up your courage. So many things could have happened that none of us even suspect. I know it is better for all [Pg 32] concerned that you believe that the child is safe. Why take it for granted that evil has befallen her? Is not God our very present help in trouble? ”

“ So they talked of little Dorothy. Each had some tender memory. “She belongs to the community; in her estimation everyone is good and kind; she never saw anything but the angel side; she has been a little Christmas messenger,” sorrowed an old man.
“What they are going to do at her own home, I can’t think.”
“Has anyone seen Mr. Douglas? He has grown [Pg 31] old since yesterday; and Timothy—I could hardly bear the look in the man’s eyes.” ”

“ We will accomplish more.”
“That is Mr. Stanley,” said the judge to a friend at his side; “built the big house on the Point, you know; only reached here last night.”
It was Christmas eve. Stockings were filled and Christmas trees were trimmed, for little children slept in expectation of a joyous to-morrow.
No cheering news had come to the waiting hearts in Dorothy’s home. Mr. Douglas paced back and forth in his library, while outside of the closed door the doctor kept time with the weary walker.
Timothy spoke softly to the doctor: “There is a Mr. Stanley here.” ”

“ Douglas, “and we will see that she has proper clothing—that is the arrangement for each child.”
“No!” the doctor declared, “‘finding is keeping.’ I shall fit her out myself. Perhaps Jeanie can be persuaded to come with me and see how well I know what a little girl needs. Why shouldn’t I have a stocking hung up in my chimney, a Christmas tree on my hearth, a Christmas candle in my window?” he demanded smilingly.
“We have worked very hard and long to earn our part for the Christmas surprise for the city children,” continued Dorothy. ”

“ If it wasn’t a woman mad ’cause she had too much to do, marching her round, it was a big girl puttin’ on airs,” “and she wasn’t no roach to be routed out and ’sterm’nated.”
When pressed for an explanation by an irate matron, she had drawn a very vivid picture of the destruction of roaches in the tenement where she had lived, and the “board o’ health man” who had said, “you got to rout ’em out. Keep right after ’em till you ’sterm’nate ’em out.” So “somebody was always shooin’ ’em out o’ one place into another, like you do the orphums here.” ”

“ You see,—love is just,—why it’s everything. Jeanie says, ‘love never dies.’”
The twilight shadows were falling fast around them, but the Bethlehem Star of peace and joy had risen in both their hearts. Father dear had caught a new note in the Christmas Carol. “Love never dies.”
[Pg 6]
II.
GROWING IN GRACE.
Dorothy had finished her lessons and was sitting in the deep window seat in the nursery, looking out upon the water, and listening to the voices of the waves as they dashed against the shore. ”

“ She was sorry.’
“Then I told God some things ’bout granny. How tired she was, how hard she worked, scrubbin’ and washin’—an’ she was old—and her bones was stiff; and I told God, ‘Granny never told no lies, not for fair. Just play lies, you know, like when we didn’t have anythin’ to eat, she’d say, “Well, I guess we’ve been eatin’ too much roast duck and fixin’s, an’ we better fast ’til morning,” and then she’d hold me in her lap and we’d laff ’bout the duck not settin’ well in our stummicks.’
“After ’while she’d say in a sort of a tuney talkin’ way ”

“ A tall, handsome man, who had been a silent listener, spoke, and at the sound of his voice every one turned. “Let us not give up hope,” he said. “I know we cannot think of anything more to do just now ”