All of us rushed around like we were crazy.If father and mother hadn't held steady and kept us down,we might have raised the roof.We were all so glad about getting Leon and the money back;mother hadn't been sick since the fish cured her;the new blue goose was so like the one that had burst,even father never noticed any difference;all the children were either home or coming,and after we had our gifts and the biggest dinner we ever had,Christmas night all of us would go to the schoolhouse to see our school try to spell down three others to whom they had sent saucy invitations to come and be beaten.
Mother sat in the dining-room beside the kitchen door,so that she could watch the baking,brewing,pickling,and spicing.It took four men to handle the backlog,which I noticed father pronounced every year "just a little the finest we ever had,"and Laddie strung the house with bittersweet,evergreens,and the most beautiful sprays of myrtle that he raked from under the snow.Father drove to town in the sleigh,and the list of things to be purchased mother gave him as a reminder was almost a yard long.
The minute they finished the outdoor work Laddie and Leon began bringing in baskets of apples,golden bellflowers,green pippins,white winter pearmains,Rhode Island greenings,and striped rambos all covered with hoarfrost,yet not frozen,and so full of juice you had to bite into them carefully or they dripped and offended mother.These they washed and carried to the cellar ready for use.
Then they cracked big dishes of nuts;and popped corn that popped with the most resounding pops in all my experience--popped a tubful,and Laddie melted maple sugar and poured over it and made big balls of fluff and sweetness.He took a pan and filled it with grains,selected one at a time,the very largest and whitest,and made an especial ball,in the middle of which he put a lovely pink candy heart on which was printed in red letters:
"How can this heart be mine,yet yours,unless our hearts are one?"He wouldn't let any of them see it except me,and he only let me because he knew I'd be delighted.
It was almost dusk when father came through the kitchen loaded with bundles and found Candace and the girls still cooking.
We were so excited we could scarcely be gathered around the supper table,and mother said we chattered until she couldn't hear herself think.After a while Laddie laid down his fork and looked at our father.
"Have you any objection to my using the sleigh to-morrow night?"he asked.
Father looked at mother.
"Had you planned to use it,mother?"
Mother said:"No.If I go,I'll ride in the big sled with all of us.It is such a little way,and the roads are like glass."So father said politely,as he always spoke to us:"Then it will give me great pleasure for you to take it,my son."That made Leon bang his fork loudly as he dared and squirm in his chair,for well he knew that if he had asked,the answer would have been different.If Laddie took the sleigh he would harness carefully,drive fast,but reasonably,blanket his horse,come home at the right time,and put everything exactly where he found it.But Leon would pitch the harness on some way,race every step,never think of his steaming horse,come home when there was no one so wild as he left to play pranks with,and scatter the harness everywhere.He knew our father would love to trust him the same as he did Laddie.He wouldn't always prove himself trustworthy,but he envied Laddie.
"You think you'll take the Princess to the spelling bee,don't you?"he sneered.
"I mean to ask her,"replied Laddie.
"Maybe you think she'll ride in our old homemade,hickory cheesebox,when she can sail all over the country like a bird in a velvet-lined cutter with a real buffalo robe."There was a quick catch in mother's breath and I felt her hand on my chair tremble.Father's lips tightened and a frown settled on his face,while Laddie fairly jumped.He went white to the lips,and one hand dropped on the table,palm up,the fingers closing and unclosing,while his eyes turned first to mother,and then to father,in dumb appeal.We all knew that he was suffering.No one spoke,and Leon having shot his arrow straight home,saw as people so often do in this world that the damage of unkind words could not easily be repaired;so he grew red in the face and squirmed uncomfortably.
At last Laddie drew a deep,quivering breath."I never thought of that,"he said."She has seemed happy to go with me several times when I asked her,but of course she might not care to ride in ours,when she has such a fine sleigh of her own."Father's voice fairly boomed down the length of the table.
"Your mother always has found our sleigh suitable,"he said.
The fact was,father was rarely proud of it.He had selected the hickory in our woods,cut it and hauled it to the mill,cured the lumber,and used all his spare time for two winters making it.
With the exception of having the runners turned at a factory and iron-bound at a smithy,he had completed it alone with great care,even to staining it a beautiful cherry colour,and fitting white sheepskins into the bed.We had all watched him and been so proud of it,and now Leon was sneering at it.He might just as well have undertaken to laugh at father's wedding suit or to make fun of "Clark's Commentaries."Laddie appealed to mother:"Do you think I'd better not ask her?"He spoke with an effort.
"Laddie,that is the first time I ever heard you propose to do any one an injustice,"she said.
"I don't see how,"said Laddie.
"It isn't giving the Princess any chance at all,"replied mother "You've just said that she has seemed pleased to accompany you before,now you are proposing to cut her out of what promises to be the most delightful evening of the winter,without even giving her the chance to say whether she'd go with you or not.Has she ever made you feel that anything you offered her or wanted to do for her was not good enough?""Never!"exclaimed Laddie fervently.
