On Christmas morning there came a package and a letter for Davy
“Our little Merry Christmas Scout,” softly responded Mother, who was tending a gay little Jerusalem cherry tree at the window. Sometimes there are bargains, you know, the last thing before Christmas, and so Davy’s ten-cent shortage didn’t matter, after all!
LENDING THE BABY
Lakeside Park was fairly a-blossom with children that bright summer morning, babies and babies—chubby little boys in clean jaunty blouses, dainty little girls, fresher than the posies as they skipped about in their spick-and-span frocks—all safeguarded by grown-ups.
Bumpity-bump! Nurses, big sisters, and children turned out in a hurry to make room for Tilda, of the tenement, and baby Maggie in her brand-new coach. Tilda nodded and smiled shyly at the other little boys and girls as she pushed along the gorgeous gocart, a present that very morning from dear, freckled, carrot-headed Pete, of the same crowded tenement. Pete had made it his own self a-purpose for Maggie, out of a nice soap box and a pair of old wheels taken in trade with the rag man. And the red paint—the crowning glory of it all—he had earned doing odd jobs for Michael, the carpenter.
Wee Maggie, scrubbed to a polish, dimpled and babbled as she rumbled along. And what mattered to Tilda any longer the hot mile of dusty city walk—the tiresome journey from the tenement—now at last she had reached her beloved park? Oh, the cool, woodsy, sweet-smelling park! Here you could see such lots of the blue sky above the wavy trees and look as much as you liked at brilliant beds of geraniums and verbenas—so long as you didn’t pick them. And here, down by the ripply water, you could watch the whitest swans gliding along so elegantly, but not too superior to accept the bits of cake tossed from the bank by their young admirers.
By and by Tilda turned into a secluded path and came suddenly upon a lady seated all alone on a rustic bench. She was leaning her head on one hand and paying not a speck of attention to any of the beautiful things about her, not even to Mr. Robin, who was calling “cheer up” so insistently from the tip-toppest twig of the neighboring birch.
Deary me, what could be the matter? Tilda halted for exactly one quarter of a minute, then, dropping the cart handle, tiptoed across the grass, and, gently nudging the lady’s arm, whispered, “Are you sick, missis?”
The stranger started and glanced up, very much surprised to find a small girl in a faded, patched gingham gazing at her with solicitous gray eyes.
“Oh, no, child, I’m not ill, thank you! What made you think—but who is that little one in the wagon?” she asked with a sudden show of interest, interrupting herself.