第53章 CHRISTMAS BACK HOME(1)

It was the time of year when the store windows are mighty interesting. Plotner's bakery, that away, 'way back in the summer-time, was an ice-cream saloon, showed a plaster man in the window, with long, white whiskers, in top boots and a brown coat and peaked hat, all trimmed with fur, and carrying a little pinetree with arsenical foliage. Over his head dangled a thicket of canes hanging by their crooks from a twine string stretched across. They were made of candy striped spirally in red and white.

There were candy men and women in the window, and chocolate mice with red eyes, and a big cake, all over frosting, with a candy preacher on it marrying a candy man and lady. The little children stood outside, with their joggerfies, and arithmetics, and spellers, and slates bound in red flannel under their arms, and swallowed hard as they looked. Whenever anybody went in for a penny's worth of yeast and opened the door, that had a bell fastened to it so that Mrs. Plotner could hear in the back room, and come to wait on the customer, the smell of wintergreen and peppermint and lemonsticks and hot taffy gushed out so strong that they couldn't swallow fast enough, but stood there choking and dribbling at the mouth.

Brown's shoe store exhibited green velvet slippers with deers'

heads on them, and Galbraith's windows were hung with fancy dressgoods, and handkerchiefs with dogs' heads in the corners;but, next to Plotner's, Case's drug-and-book store was the nicest.

When you first went in, it smelled of cough candy and orris root, but pretty soon you could notice the smell of drums and new sleds, and about the last smell, (sort of down at the bottom of things)was the smell of new books, the fish-glue on the binding, and the muslin covers, and the printer's ink, and that is a smell that if it ever gets a good hold of you, never lets go. There were the "Rollo" books, and the "Little Prudy" books, and "Minnie and Her Pets," and the "Elm Island" series, and the "Arabian Nights," with colored pictures, and There were skates all curled up at the toes, and balls of red and black leather in alternate quarters, and China mugs, with "Love the Giver," and "For a Good Boy" in gilt letters on them. Kind of Dutch letters they were. And there were dolls with black, shiny hair, and red cheeks, and blue eyes, with perfectly arched eyebrows. They had on black shoes and white stockings, with pink garters, and they almost always toed in a little. They looked so cold in the window with nothing but a "shimmy" on,, and fairly ached to be dressed, and nursed, and sung to. The little girls outside the window felt an emptiness in the hollow of their left arms as they gazed. There was one big doll in the middle all dressed up. It had real hair that you could comb, and it was wax. Pure wax! Yes, sir. And it could open and shut its eyes, and if you squeezed its stomach it would cry, of course, not like a real baby, but more like one of those ducks that stand on a sort of bellows thing. Though they all "chose" that doll and hoped for miracles, none of them really expected to find it in her stocking sixteen days later. (They kept count of the days.) Maybe Bell Brown might get it; her pa bought her lots of things. She had parlor skates and a parrot, only her ma wouldn't let her skate in the parlor, it tore up the carpet so, and the parrot bit her finger like anything.

The little boys kicked their copper-toed boots to keep warm and quarreled about which one chose the train of cars first, and then began to quarrel over an army of soldiers.

"I choose them!"

"A-aw! You choosed the ingine and the cars.""Dung care. I choose everything in this whole window.""A-aw! That ain't fair!"

In the midst of the wrangle somebody finds out that Johnny Pym has a piece of red glass, and then they begin fighting for turns looking through it at the snow and the court-house. But not for long. They fall to bragging about what they are going to get for Christmas.

Eddie Cameron was pretty sure he 'd get a spy-glass. He asked his pa, and his pa said "Mebby. He'd see about it." Then, just in time, they looked up and saw old man Nicholson coming along with his shawl pinned around him. They ran to the other side of the street because he stops little boys, and pats them on the head, and asks them if they have found the Savior. It makes some boys cry when he asks them that.

The Rowan twins - Alfaretta and Luanna May - are working a pair of slippers for their pa, one apiece, because it is such slow work.

Along about suppertime they make Elmer Lonnie stay outside and watch for his coming, and he has to say : "Hello, pa!" very loud, and romp with him outside the gate so as to give the twins time to gather up the colored zephyrs and things, and hide them in the lower bureau drawer in the spare bedroom. At such a time their mother finds an errand that takes her into the parlor so that she can see that they do not, by any chance, look into the middle drawer in the farther left-hand corner, under the pillow-slips.

One night, just at supper-time, Elmer Lonnie said: "Hello, pa!"and then they heard pa whispering and Elmer Lonnie came in looking very solemn - or trying to - and said: "Ma, Miss Waldo wants to know if you won't please step over there a minute.""Did she say what for? Because I'm right in the midst of getting supper. I look for your pa any minute now, and I don't want to keep him waiting.""No 'm, she didn't say what for. She jist said: 'Ast yer ma won't she please an' step over here a minute.' I wouldn't put anythin' on.