“I never had a mamma; and no father, either. I was born in an asylum, and Mrs. Tyke always says it’s a pity I was ever.”
“Maybe he’d come if you’d pray to get him.”
“I only know ‘Now I lay me.’ I learned it at the asylum; but I daren’t say it out loud any more.”
“I don’t know what we can do about it, then.”
Jinnie began to cry; but suddenly remembering the imminent probability of Mrs. Tyke’s return, she wiped her eyes with a rag of her dress, and said,—
“Good-bye; I must go in now. I have to get dinner.”
So she ran into the kitchen, and the head of the youthful Brown slowly descended until it was eclipsed by the fence.
Jinnie went to work to prepare the vegetables for dinner, with her poor little brain in such a stir of excitement about Kris Kingle and the possibility of his remembering her or forgetting her, that she could hardly keep her mind upon the task that her hands were doing; but she was recalled from her dreams by the sound of Mrs. Tyke’s step in the hall; and as Mrs. Tyke perceived that she had not been very industrious, Mrs. Tyke promptly boxed her ears. She fell to the floor, and then Mrs. Tyke kicked her two or three times. This energetic treatment effectively dispelled all of Jinnie’s visions of Kris Kingle. She had rarely had any information upon which to build pleasant thoughts of what life might have been to her; and now when her little mind was taking its first flight into those realms of imagination wherein so many of the forlorn of earth find at least a taste of happiness, the red and vigorous hand of Mrs. Tyke hurled her back once more into the dreary and dreadful reality of life.
For the rest of the day Jinnie hurried through her myriad duties with a tremulous fear upon her that if she should dare even to think of that mysterious being who loved the little children she might invoke still further blows. The blows came at any rate, more than once, despite her carefulness; but that was always a part of her experience, and she bore them perhaps a little better now because she was looking forward with a faint suggestion of happiness to the night, when she should lie beneath the scant covering of her bed, and think without fear of harm of the reindeer and sleigh and the toys of the kind old man, who might perhaps not forget her this time.
When supper-time came Mrs. Tyke ordered her to go to the baker’s for bread. The shop to which she had been accustomed to go was closed, for some reason, and Jinnie sought another, upon another street. On her way home through the dusky thoroughfare she came suddenly upon a show-window brilliantly lighted, and filled with childish splendors belonging to the Christmas season.