The Chronicles of Rhoda Part 8

They both looked at me, but Evelyn was the only one who smiled.

"Perhaps," she said. "He used to be very fond of you."

After that I was always watching for the little boy. Every morning when I got up I looked out of the window to see if he were not coming in our gate. And the last thing before I went to bed, I looked out carefully again. I thought that I should know him by his hair, and I felt how lovely it would be if he would only come at Christmas time. Christmas was not going to be so nice that year as usual. I did not think that I should get anything. There were lots of presents in the house for other children, even my little brother and sister, but somehow there did not seem to be any for Rhoda!

"Father," I said, one morning, "there's a very pretty book in your top drawer. A child's book. I wonder whose it is?"

He was quite busy reading his paper, but he answered me at once.

"That's for a little friend of mine," he declared. "It's a secret."

"Oh! Is she a good girl, father?"

He glanced at me and laughed.

"Sometimes she's awfully good," he answered.

Then it was not for me. n.o.body ever seemed to think that I was good, not even when I was trying my best. It must be grand to be good! Just think of being born that way, so that you could not help it, but went on growing better and better until you died! There was a little girl down the street like that. We played together on sunny days. I found it very hard to play with any one who was so good.

"And sometimes," my father went on, still with that smile in his eyes, "sometimes she's so dreadfully bad that I'm really shocked!"

"Oh!" I said again.

I had seen my father shocked. When he was shocked, he always laughed very hard.

"Has it pictures, father?" I asked, meekly, trying to turn the subject.

"No. My little friend doesn't care about pictures," he answered, indifferently.

Then it was not for me. I was very fond of pictures. Everybody knew that. It did seem queer that in all the many packages which he brought home, night after night,--round ones, and square ones, and even some with mysterious humpy corners,--there should not be a single thing for Rhoda! And Christmas was coming faster and faster.

Evelyn, too, had all manner of pretty presents laid by for other little girls, quite strange little girls, who did not love her at all so far as I could see, but she never said a word about my present; not even one day when she called me into her house and opened her parlor door. She opened it very softly, as if there were company, and she put her finger on her lip that I should not speak.

There was company. Inside the room was filled with dolls! They sat in rows on the sofa and on the piano, they lay in careless heaps on the chairs and tables; blue-eyed dolls and black-eyed dolls, some that went promptly to sleep when you laid them down, some in j.a.panese dresses, and some that wore long clothes and caps like sure enough babies. We went about solemnly, hand in hand, and looked at them all. They stared back as if they wanted a mother, and one on the center-table, a queen of a doll with earrings in her ears, held out her arms to come to me!

"Whom do you think they're all for?" Evelyn asked, gayly. "Guess."

I held her closer by the hand and gazed about me. _I_ was very fond of dolls. I had never had enough. I believed that once or twice I had mentioned the fact. I drew a long breath. Just suppose--

"They're for orphans," Evelyn cried, quickly. "You know what orphans are, don't you, Rhoda? They are poor children who haven't any mothers or fathers to buy them dolls! It's a very sad thing to be an orphan."

I glanced about me again. The queen was very beautiful.

"Will they be good to them?" I questioned, wistfully.

I had heard of people whipping dolls! And once a little boy had drowned a doll! His sister's! It was dreadful!

"Oh, I'm sure this doll is going to be spoiled," Evelyn answered, with her hand on the queen.

I looked from her to the great doll with shy admiration. They both had the same fair hair, and the same pink cheeks and the same gray eyes.

Their faces were just like flowers.

"I think her name is Evelyn, too," I said.

I had always thought that Evelyn liked me, but that day I was sure of it. We had a long talk in a big chair about all the things which I wanted for Christmas. She said that I was surely to come Christmas morning and see the orphans get their dolls. Somebody named Santa Claus would be there. I had heard of Santa Claus before, but only in a general sort of a way. He seemed to be a very kindly sort of person who gave away dolls by the hundred, sometimes to orphans, and sometimes just to little girls who needed them. It was a question how much you had to need them.

At the very last Evelyn gave me a message to deliver.

"Rhoda," she said, earnestly, "tell grandmother that there is good news.

What she was wishing for is really going to happen!"

She hugged me up closer to her.

"Oh, what a Christmas this will be!" she cried. "We are all going to get what we want, all of us, even Rhoda!"

Afterwards she changed. When I went out of the door she drew me back and looked at me anxiously, almost coldly.

"Rhoda, don't tell grandmother anything," she said. "It might be a mistake. I wouldn't have her disappointed for the world!"

I did not want grandmother to be disappointed, but still when I went back into our house and saw her sitting by the window, I felt that I should like to tell her some good news. Just that once. She looked so frail and old, and I had never noticed before how white her hair was.

My mother was very tender with grandmother. Every morning she would send her three children, the twins and me, to kiss her, and when my father came home at night she would send him to lean on the back of the big chair, and look down at the closed Bible. Grandmother never took the picture out when my father was there. She never even listened to the people pa.s.sing by outside. She would talk to him about other things in which neither of them took much interest, until he would go away, half sadly, half angrily.

"She is the most absurd woman who ever lived," he told my mother. "Here is Frank winning laurels by the dozen, and, on account of her stupid prejudice, she won't listen to his name. Does she expect to keep this thing up forever?"

"She is thinking of him all the time," my mother said, quietly. "She loves him."

"I know she loves him!" my father cried. "She loves him better than she does me. I was always the one who didn't count! Always."

My mother laid her hand upon his arm and stopped him.

"Hush, Robert," she said.

Her eyes wandered over me sitting on my stool by the fireplace, and pa.s.sed to little brother d.i.c.k playing with his blocks.

"Who can judge a mother's heart?" she questioned, softly, and then turned upon him with a demand that was almost wrathful. "Have you nothing to be thankful for," she cried, "that you grudge him a thought at Christmas time!"

My mother always took grandmother's part. She seemed to understand grandmother better than my father did. Once I heard her say that the curl in the Bible was like one of little d.i.c.k's. She laid it against his soft hair, and it matched, color and curl, as if it had been cut from his head. After that she was even kinder to grandmother than before.

Norah out in the kitchen was the happiest person in the house. Every night she wrote home to Ireland, and sometimes she laughed and sometimes she cried. I liked to hear about Ireland. I would climb upon the kitchen table and watch her write, and listen when she read bits of her letters to me. I knew all about Norah's people, and could call her brothers and sisters, and even her cousins, by name. She was sending money in her letter to buy her mother a new green plaid shawl for Christmas. She was, also, going to buy the priest a pig. Norah was worried about the priest.

He gave away everything that he had to the poor of the parish, and went hungry all the time. After much thought she had decided on the present of a pig, as being a thing which the priest might keep for himself.

"Though they're that owdacious, Rhoda," she cried, in high wrath, "that I'm thinking they'll take the pig, too!"

"What would they do with the pig, Norah?" I asked, anxiously.

"Sure, they might eat it!" she answered, with a dark frown.