"There's nothin' happened to Jim, has there?" she interrupted.
"Nothing at all, madam, nothing at all," said Hetherington. "The work was a little too much for him to-day – that's all – and he keeled over. He's safe, and comfortable in the – well, they took him to the hospital, but don't you worry – he'll be all right in a day or two, and meanwhile I'm going to look after you and the kiddies."
The chauffeur placed the basket inside the door.
"You'll find a small turkey, and some – er – some fixings in it, Mrs. Mulligan," said Hetherington. "Whatever ought to go with a turkey should be there, and – er – have the kiddies gone to bed?"
"Poor little souls, they have," said the woman.
"Well, just you tell 'em for me," said Hetherington, "that Santa Claus received little Mary's letter, will you, please? And – er – and if they don't mind a very late call like this, why I'd like to see them."
The woman looked anxiously into Hetherington's eyes for a moment, and then she tottered and sat down.
"You're sure there's nothin' the matter with Jim, sir?" she asked.
"Absolutely, Mrs. Mulligan," Hetherington answered. "It's exactly as I have told you. The cold and hunger were too much for him, but he's all right, and I'll guarantee to have him back here inside of forty-eight hours."
"I'll call the childer," said Mrs. Mulligan.
Two wide-eyed youngsters shortly stood in awed wonder before their strange visitor, never doubting for a moment that he was Santa Claus himself.
"How do you do, Miss Mulligan?" said Hetherington, with a courtly bow to the little tot of a girl. "I received your letter this afternoon, and was mighty glad to hear from you again, but I've been too busy all day to write you in return, so I thought I'd call and tell you that it's all right about those shoes, and the hat, and the new doll-baby, and the things for Jimmie. Fact is, I've brought 'em with me. Reginald," he added, turning to the chauffeur, who stood grinning in the doorway, "just unfasten that bundle of shoes, will you, while I get Jimmie's new mitts and the base-ball bat?"
"Yes, sir," said the chauffeur, suiting his action to the orders, and with a right good will that was pleasant to see.
"Reginald is my assistant," said Santa Claus. "Couldn't get along without Reginald these days – very busy days they are – so many new kiddies in the world, you know. There, Jimmie – there's your bat. May you score many a home-run with it. Here's a ball, too – good thing to have a ball to practise with. Some day you'll be a Giant, perhaps, and help win the pennant. Incidentally, James, old boy, there's a box of tin soldiers in this package, a bag of marbles, a select assortment of tops, and a fur coat; just try that cap on, and see if you can tell yourself from a Brownie."
The children's eyes gleamed with joy, and Jimmie let out a cheer that would have aroused the envy of a college man.
"You didn't mention it in your note, Mary, dear," continued Santa Claus, turning to the little girl, "but I thought you might like to cook a few meals for this brand-new doll-baby of yours, so I brought along a little stove, with a few pots and pans and kettles and things, with a small china tea-set thrown in. This ought to enable you to set her up in housekeeping; and then when you go to school I have an idea you'll find this little red-riding-hood cloak rather nice – only it's navy blue instead of red, and it looks warm."
Hetherington placed the little cloak with its beautiful brass buttons and its warm hood over the little girl's shoulders, while she stood with her eyes popping out of her head, too delightedly entranced to be able to say a word of thanks.
"Don't forget this, sir," said the chauffeur, handing Hetherington a package tied up in blue ribbons.
"And finally," said Hetherington, after thanking Reginald for the reminder, "here is a box of candy for everybody in the place. One for Mary, one for Jimmie, one for mother, and one for popper when he comes home."
"Oh thank you, thank you, thank you!" cried the little girl, throwing herself into Hetherington's arms. "I knowed you'd come – I did, I did, I did!"
"You believed in old Santa Claus, did you, babe?" said Hetherington, huskily, as the little girl's warm cheek pressed against his own.
"Yes, I did – always," said the little girl, "though Jimmie didn't."
"I did so!" retorted Jimmie, squatting on the floor and shooting a glass agate at a bunch of miggles across the room. "I swatted Petey Halloran on the eye on'y yesterday for sayin' they wasn't no such person."
"And you did well, my son," said Hetherington. "The man or boy that says there isn't any Santa Claus is a – is a – well, never you mind, but he is one just the same."
And bidding his little friends good night, Hetherington, with the chauffeur close behind him, left them to the joys of the moment, with a cheerier dawn than they had known for many weary days to follow.
V
"Good night, sir," said the chauffeur, as Hetherington paid him off and added a good-sized tip into the bargain. "I didn't useter believe in Santa Claus, sir, but I do now."
"So do I," said Hetherington, as he bade the other good night and lightly mounted the steps to his house.
A MERRY CHRISTMAS PIE
Take a quart of pure Good Will,
Flavor well with Sympathy;
Boil it on the fire till
It is full of bubbling Glee.
Season with a dash of Cheer,
Mixed with Love and Tenderness;
Cool off in an atmosphere
That is mostly Kindliness.
Stick a dozen raisins in
Made of grapes from Laughter's vine,
And such fruits as you may win
In a purely Jocund line.
Make a batter from the cream
Of Good Spirits running high,
And you'll have a perfect dream
Of a Merry Christmas pie!
THE CHILD WHO HAD EVERYTHING BUT —
I
I KNEW it was coming long before it got there. Every symptom was in sight. I had grown fidgety, and sat fearful of something overpoweringly impending. Strange noises filled the house. Things generally, according to their nature, severally creaked, soughed and moaned. There was a ghost on the way. That was perfectly clear to an expert in uncanny visitations of my wide experience, and I heartily wished it were not. There was a time when I welcomed such visitors with open arms, because there was a decided demand for them in the literary market, and I had been able to turn a great variety of spooks into anywhere from three thousand to five thousand words apiece at five cents a word, but now the age had grown too sceptical to swallow ghostly reminiscence with any degree of satisfaction. People had grown tired of hearing about Visions, and desired that their tales should reek with the scent of gasoline, quiver with the superfervid fever of tangential loves, and crash with moral thunderbolts aimed against malefactors of great achievement and high social and commercial standing. Wherefore it seemed an egregious waste of time for me to dally with a spook, or with anything else, for that matter, that had no strictly utilitarian value to one so professionally pressed as I was, and especially at a moment like that – it was Christmas morning and the hour was twenty-eight minutes after two – when I was so busy preparing my Ode to June, and trying to work out the details of a midsummer romance in time for the market for such productions early in the coming January.
And right in the midst of all this pressure there rose up these beastly symptoms of an impending visitation. At first I strove to fight them off, but as the minutes passed they became so obsessively intrusive that I could not concentrate upon the work in hand, and I resolved to have it over with.
"Oh, well," said I, striking a few impatient chords upon my typewriting machine, "if you insist upon coming, come, and let's have done with it."
I roared this out, addressing the dim depths of the adjoining apartment, whence had risen the first dank apprehension of the uncanny something that had come to pester me.
"This is my busy night," I went on, when nothing happened in response to my summons, "and I give you fair warning that, however psychic I may be now, I've got too much to do to stay so much longer. If you're going to haunt, haunt!"
It was in response to this appeal that the thing first manifested itself to the eye. It took the shape first of a very slight veil of green fog, which shortly began to swirl slowly from the darkness of the other room through the intervening portières into my den. Once within, it increased the vigor of its swirl, until almost before I knew it there was spinning immediately before my desk something in the nature of a misty maelstrom, buzzing around like a pin-wheel in action.
"Very pretty – very pretty indeed," said I, a trifle sarcastically, refusing to be impressed, "but I don't care for pyrotechnics. I suppose," I added flippantly, "that you are what might be called a mince-pyrotechnic, eh?"
Whether it was the quality of my jest, or some other inward pang due to its gyratory behavior, that caused it I know not, but as I spoke a deep groan issued from the centre of the whirling mist, and then out of its indeterminateness there was resolved the hazy figure of an angel – only, she was an intensely modern angel. She wore a hobble-skirt instead of the usual flowing robes of ladies of the supernal order, and her halo, instead of hovering over her head as used to be the correct manner of wearing these hard-won adornments, had perforce become a mere golden fillet binding together the great mass of finger-curls and other distinctly yellow capillary attractions that stretched out from the back of her cerebellum for two or three feet, like a monumental psyche-knot. I could hardly restrain a shudder as I realized the theatric quality of the lady's appearance, and I honestly dreaded the possible consequences of her visit. We live in a tolerably censorious age, and I did not care to be seen in the company of such a peroxidized vision as she appeared to be.
"I am afraid, madam," said I, shrinking back against the wall as she approached – "I am very much afraid that you have got into the wrong house. Mr. Slatherberry, the theatrical manager, lives next door."
She paid no attention to this observation, but, holding out a compelling hand, bade me come along with her, her voice having about it all the musical charm of an oboe suffering from bronchitis.
"Not in a year of Sundays I won't!" I retorted. "I am a respectable man, a steady church-goer, a trustee for several philanthropic institutions, and a Sunday-School teacher. I don't wish to be impolite, but really, madam, rich as I am in reputation, I am too poor to be seen in public with you."
"I am a spirit," she began.
"I'll take your word for it," I interjected, and I could see that she told the truth, for she was entirely diaphanous, so much so indeed that one could perceive the piano in the other room with perfect clarity through her intervening shadiness. "It is, however, the unfortunate fact that I have sworn off spirits."
"None the less," she returned, her eye flashing and her hand held forth peremptorily, "you must come. It is your predestined doom."
My next remark I am not wholly clear about, but, as I remember it, it sounded something like "I'll be doomed if I do!" whereupon she threatened me.
"It is useless to resist," she said. "If you decline to come voluntarily, I shall hypnotize you and force you to follow me. We have need of you."
"But, my dear lady," I pleaded, "please have some regard for my position. I never did any of you spirits any harm. I've treated every visitor from the spirit-land with the most distinguished consideration, and I feel that you owe it to me to be regardful of my good name. Suppose you take a look at yourself in yonder looking-glass, and then say if you think it fair to compel a decent, law-abiding man, of domestic inclinations like myself, to be seen in public with – well, with such a looking head of hair as that of yours."
My visitor laughed heartily.
"Oh, if that's all," she said, most amiably, "we can arrange matters in a jiffy. Your wife possesses a hooded mackintosh, does she not? I think I saw something of the kind hanging on the hat-rack as I floated in. I will wear that if it will make you feel any easier."
"It certainly would," said I; "but see here – can't you scare up some other cavalier to escort you to the haven of your desires?"
She fixed a sternly steady eye upon me for a moment.
"Aren't you the man who wrote the lines,
The World's a green and gladsome ball,
And Love's the Ruler of it all,
And Life's the chance vouchsafed to me
For Deeds and Gifts of Sympathy?
"I did, madam," said I, "and I meant every word of it, but what of it? Is that any reason why I should be seen on a public highway with a lady-ghost of your especial kind?"
"Enough of your objections," she retorted firmly. "You are the person for whom I have been sent. We have a case needing your immediate attention. The only question is, will you come pleasantly and of your own free will, or must I resort to extreme measures?"
These words were spoken with such determination that I realized that further resistance was useless, and I yielded.
"All right," said I. "On your way. I'll follow."
"Good!" she cried, her face wreathing with a pleasant little nile-green smile. "Get the mackintosh, and we'll be off. There's no time to lose," she added, as the clock in the tower on the square boomed out the hour of three.
"What is this anyhow?" I demanded, as I helped her on with the mackintosh and saw that the hood covered every vestige of that awful coiffure. "Another case of Scrooge?"
"Sort of," she replied as, hooking her arm in mine, she led me forth into the night.
II
We passed over to Fifth Avenue, and proceeded uptown at a pace which reminded me of the active gait of my youth. My footsteps had grown unwontedly light, and we covered the first ten blocks in about three minutes.
"We don't seem to be headed for the slums," I panted.
"Indeed, we are not," she retorted. "There is no need of carrying coals to Newcastle on this occasion. This isn't a slum case. It's far more acute than that."
A tear came forth from her eye and trickled down over the mackintosh.
"It is a peculiarity of modern effort on behalf of suffering humanity," she went on, "that it is concentrated upon the relief of the misery of the so-called submerged, to the utter neglect of the often more poignant needs of the emerged. We have workers by the thousand in the slums, doing all that can be done, and successfully too, to relieve the unhappy condition of the poor, but nobody ever seems to think of the sorrows of the starving hundreds on upper Fifth Avenue."
"See here, madam," said I, stopping suddenly short under a lamp-post in front of the Public Library, "I want to tell you right now that if you think you are going to take me into any of the homes of the hopelessly rich at this hour of the morning, you are the most mightily mistaken creature that ever wore a psyche-knot. Why, great heavens, my dear lady, suppose the owner of the house were to wake up and demand to know what I was doing there at this time of night? What could I say?"
"You have gone on slumming parties, haven't you?" she demanded coldly.
"Often," said I. "But that's different."
"Why?" she asked, with a simplicity that baffled me. "Is it any worse for you to intrude upon the home of a Fifth Avenue millionaire than it is to go unasked into the small, squalid tenement of some poor sweatshop worker on the East Side?"
"Oh, but it's different," I protested. "I go there to see if there is anything I can do to relieve the unhappy condition of the persons who live in the slums."
"No doubt," said she. "I'll take your word for it, but is that any reason why you should neglect the sufferers who live in these marble palaces?"
As she spoke, she hooked hold of my arm once more, and in a moment we were climbing the front door steps of a palatial residence. The house showed a dark and forbidding front at that hour in the morning despite its marble splendors, and I was glad to note that the massive grille doors of wrought iron were heavily barred.
"It's useless, you see. We're locked out," I ventured.
"Indeed?" she retorted, with a sarcastic smile, as she seized my hand in her icy grip and literally pulled me after her through the marble front of the dwelling. "What have we to do with bolts and bars?"
"I don't know," said I ruefully, "but I have a notion that if I don't bolt I'll get the bars all right."
I could see them coming, and they were headed straight for me.
"All you have to do is to follow me," she went on, as we floated upward for two flights, paying but little attention to the treasures of art that lined the walls, and finally passed into a superbly lighted salon, more daintily beautiful than anything of the kind I had ever seen before.
"Jove!" I ejaculated, standing amazed in the presence of such luxury and beauty. "I did not realize that with all her treasures New York held anything quite so fine as this. What is it, a music-room?"
"It is the nursery," said my companion. "Look about you and see for yourself."
I did as I was bidden, and such an array of toys as that inspection revealed! Truly it looked as if the toy-market in all sections of the world had been levied upon for tribute. Had all the famous toy emporiums of Nuremberg itself been transported thither bodily, there could not have been playthings in greater variety than there greeted my eye. From the most insignificant of tin-soldiers to the most intricate of mechanical toys for the delectation of the youthful mind, nothing that I could think of was missing.
The tin-soldiers as ever had a fascination for me, and in an instant I was down upon the floor, ranging them in their serried ranks, while the face of my companion wreathed with an indulgent smile.
"You'll do," said she, as I loaded a little spring-cannon with a stub of a lead-pencil and bowled over half a regiment with one well-directed shot.