It snowed hard all the next day, so hard that even Barney did not venture out; and David spent his time between the kitchen, where Johanna was frosting the Christmas cake, and the woodshed, where Barney was making the “woodpile look mortal weary.”
David’s mind was full of the happenings of the days that had passed, and of future plans. Everything had been as fine as a boy could wish, but he did not want it to stop. Here it was two days before Christmas, and he was quite sure there was still a lot to be found. The question was, where should he look for it now that the matter of neighbors had been exhausted?
As for the plans, they were growing every minute; but he had decided to say nothing about them to Johanna and Barney until the next day, when they were full-grown. Of one
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thing David felt certain: nothing could keep Christmas away this year. And so when Barney began to tease him on one of his trips to the woodshed and say that if this weather lasted he guessed the Christmas present from father would get there about Washington’s Birthday and that he guessed it would take a Santa Claus with seven-league boots to make the hilltop this year, David just smiled and looked very wise. Something was going to happen; he knew perfectly well that something was going to happen. And so, when it actually did happen, about half-way between dinner and supper time, he was not nearly as surprised as Johanna and Barney, who in a way might have expected it.
They were all three startled by a banging on the door and a stamping and pounding of feet outside. So loud did it sound in the midst of the silence that David thought there must be at least a dozen men. Great was his astonishment, therefore, when Barney swung open the door and a solitary figure stepped in, muffled in fur to the eyes.
“Burrrrrrrrrrr!” boomed the figure, and then he swept off his cap and made a laughing bow.
“Hello, Johanna! Hello, Barney! You never
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thought I would remind you right in the midst of a Christmas blizzard of that promise you made last summer. Come now, did you?”
“Holy St. Patrick!” gasped Johanna.
“Mr. Peter!” ejaculated Barney. “But how in the name of all the saints did ye ever make it in this storm?”
The man laughed again.
“Just the usual nerve of the tenderfoot. I left my painting-kit, bag, and canvases with the station-agent. He has promised to send them up if the storm ever stops. And I made a wager with him—a gallon can of next spring’s syrup against a box of cigars—that I’d be here by four o’clock. What’s the time?”
He had his things off by this time and was looking at his watch.
“Aha! Ten minutes to the good! If your wires are not down, Barney, I’ll call him up. He’ll be wanting to get ready to tap that maple-tree.”
The next moment they could hear his voice booming at the telephone.
“Yes, siree. Here I am, and not even my breath frozen. No, you needn’t be sending out that snow-plow after me just yet. Only get my things up here as soon as you can. All right!”
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Another instant he was back in the room again, vigorously shaking Johanna’s and Barney’s hands.
“Yes, here I am, to paint those snow canvases I’ve been going to do so long, and to dodge Christmas.”
Then it was that for the first time he became conscious of David in the window recess.
“Bless my soul! Who’s this, Johanna?”
Johanna explained, and David came forward and held out an eager hand. He liked this Mr. Peter tremendously, in spite of his last remark, and he was no end glad he had come.
The man returned David’s greeting with equal cordiality, while he screwed up his face into a comical expression of mock disgust.
“And I came up here to dodge Christmas! Say, young man, do you think it’s possible for any person to get away from Christmas with a boy around?”
“I hope not,” laughed David.
“You don’t mean to tell me that Christmas hasn’t grown into a very tiresome, shabby affair that we would all escape from if we only had the courage? You don’t believe there is anything in it nowadays, do you, except the beastly grind of paying your friends back and thanking
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your lucky stars it doesn’t happen oftener than once a year?”
“I certainly do, sir.” David spoke as one with authority.
The man rubbed his hands together thoughtfully and his eyes twinkled.
“I see. Johanna and Barney have gone off to fix a bed for me somewhere, so suppose we discuss this matter thoroughly. I’ll tell you my personal feelings and you can tell me yours. In the end, maybe we’ll compromise!”
He led the way to the window-seat and spread himself out comfortably in one corner; David curled up in the one opposite.
“To begin with,” and the man pounded his knee emphatically, “Christmas is responsible for a very bad economic condition. Every one spends more money than he has; that’s very bad. Next, you generally put your money into articles that are neither useful nor beautiful; you give your maiden aunt handkerchiefs and she has ten dozen of them already put by in her closet, while you send a box of candy to the janitor’s little girl, who can’t go out because she hasn’t any shoes to wear. Now if I could borrow an invisible cloak and go around a week before Christmas, peeping in on all the folks
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that need things and finding out just what they need, and then come back on Christmas Eve and drop the gifts unseen beside their doors—well, that might make Christmas seem a little less shabby. But as it is, I’m not going to give away an inch of foolish Christmas this year. And I’m not going to say ‘Merry Christmas’ to a solitary soul.”
“Maybe you’ll forget,” laughed David. “Now, is it my turn?”
Mr. Peter nodded.
“Well, I’ve found out, just lately, that Christmas isn’t things—it’s thoughts. And I’ve an idea how to make a bully Christmas this year out of nothing.”
He hunched up one knee and clasped his arms about it.
“You see, I used to think that you couldn’t have Christmas without all the store fixings and lots of presents, just as you do. And when I first came ’way up here I thought it was just naturally ‘good-by, Christmas.’ Then something happened.”
“Suppose you tell me what. We might make a better compromise if I understood just what did happen.”
David considered him thoughtfully. Johanna
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had said while he was out at the telephone that Mr. Peter was a painter, a bachelor chap with no one in particular belonging to him, and David wondered if he would really understand. As Johanna had often said, “There are some things you just can’t put through a body’s head.”
“Things happen ’way up here in the hills that would never happen in the city, never in a hundred years,” he began, slowly; and then, gaining courage from the painter’s nod of comprehension, he told all about everything. Of course he could not tell all the stories as they had been told to him—there was not time—but he told about them, and particularly about the “heathen.”
“And that isn’t all,” he finished, breathlessly. “I’ve a great plan for to-morrow night, if Johanna and Barney and you will help.”
“We might make that the compromise,” smiled Mr. Peter. “What is it?”
David told, and when he had quite finished, the man beside him nodded his head as if he approved.
“What does Johanna say?” he asked.
“I haven’t told her yet.”
“Well, we’ll ask Johanna and Barney to-night.
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Now let’s hunt them up and find out when supper is going to be ready. I’m as hungry as a bear.”
But before the plans were unfolded to Barney and Johanna that evening Mr. Peter told a story. He offered it himself as something he had picked up once upon a time, he could not remember just where. He said it was not the kind of a story he would ever make up in the wide world, but he thought it just the kind David might make up.
And here it is as the painter told it two nights before Christmas:
It was four o’clock on Christmas morning and Santa Claus was finishing his rounds just as the milkman was beginning his. Santa had been over to Holland and back again where he had filled millions of little Dutch shoes that stood outside of windows and doors; he had climbed millions of chimneys and filled millions of American stockings, not to mention the billions and trillions of Christmas trees that he had trimmed and the nurseries he had visited with toys too large for stockings. And now, just as the clock struck four, he had filled his last stocking and was crawling out of the last
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chimney onto the roof where the eight reindeer were pawing the snow and wagging their stumps of tails, eager to be off.
Santa Claus heaved a sigh of relief as he shook the creases out of the great magic bag that was always large enough to hold all the toys that were put into it. The bag was quite empty now, not even a gum-drop or a penny whistle was left; and Santa heaved another sigh as he tucked it under the seat of his sleigh and clambered wearily in.
“By the two horns on yonder pale-looking moon,” quoth he, “I’m a worn-out old saint and I am glad Christmas is over. Why, I passed my prime some thousand years ago and any other saint would have taken to his niche in heaven long before this.” And he heaved a third sigh.
As he took up the reins and whistled to his team he looked anything but the jolly old saint he was supposed to be; and if you had searched him from top to toe, inside and out, you couldn’t have found a chuckle or a laugh anywhere about him.
Away went the eight reindeer through the air, higher and higher, till houses looked like match-boxes and lakes like bowls of water; and
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it took them just ten minutes and ten seconds to carry Santa safely home to the North Pole. Most generally he sings a rollicking song on his homeward journey, a song about boys and toys and drums and plums, just to show how happy he is. But this year he spent the whole time grumbling all the grumbly thoughts he could think of.
“It’s a pretty state of affairs when a man can’t have a vacation in nearly five hundred years. Christmas every three hundred and sixty-five days and have to work three hundred and sixty-four of them to get things ready. What’s more, every year the work grows harder. Have to keep up with all the scientific inventions and all the new discoveries. Who’d have thought a hundred years ago that I should have to be building toy aeroplanes and electric motors? And the girls want dolls’ houses with lights and running water! I declare I’m fairly sick of the sight of a sled or a top, and dolls and drums make me shiver. I’d like to do nothing for a whole year, I tell you—nothing! It’s a pretty how d’ y’ do if the world can’t get along for one year without a Christmas. What’s to prevent my taking a vacation like any other man? Who’s to prevent me?”
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