It was Christmas Eve, and twenty little boys and girls were watching for Santa Claus. Ten little boys in blue-striped blouses and dark-blue neckties, ten little girls in blue-checked aprons and dark-blue hair-ribbons fixed their eyes on the big folding doors and thought the time for them to open would never come.
All day long excitement had reigned supreme in the Children’s Home, a roomy comfortable house set on the very edge of the big city, and where were gathered the motherless and fatherless children who found love and care under its hospitable roof. Each ring of the doorbell brought chattering groups to hang over the banisters, each sound of wheels on the driveway was the signal for excited faces to be pressed against the window-pane and for round eyes to try in vain to bore through the paper wrappings of mysterious bundles whisked out of sight all too soon. Peeks through the parlor keyhole were forbidden, but passing the door on the way to luncheon several children were seen to stop and sniff the air as though they might actually smell out the secret.
“Nurse Norrie called it an ‘entertainment,’” said big Mary Ellen to a group gathered round her in the playroom. “I do wonder what ’t will be. It will be to-night anyway; she said so.”
“It’s cowboys and Indians, that’s what it is,” declared Sammy, an agile youth who all morning had somehow managed to look out of the window and over the banisters at the same time when occasion demanded. “It’s going to be a Wild West show to-night, I think.” And Sammy galloped up and down the playroom in imitation of the dashing broncos he hoped to see that night.
“Do you think Miss Martin would have horses in the parlor?” asked Mary Ellen scornfully. “I hope it will be tableaux.” And Mary Ellen immediately pictured herself the most beautiful tableau of them all, attired as a Red Cross nurse draped in the American flag, with a noble expression on her face, and perhaps supporting a wounded soldier or two.
Little Tom took his finger out of his mouth long enough to say, “I hope it’s candy”; and at this pleasing thought Luley and Lena, the fat little twins, clapped their hands in agreement. Polly, always a little behindhand, hadn’t made up her mind yet what the surprise was to be. So Mary Ellen turned to Lydia, a quiet little girl whose brown eyes looked out shyly upon the world from under a thatch of yellow curls. Now Lydia remembered clearly her Christmas a year ago, so although she felt a little shy about speaking out before them all, she was sure she had guessed the secret.
“I think it’s Santa Claus,” said Lydia timidly, “and maybe a Christmas Tree too.”
Miss Martin, who took good care of these little children and loved them every one, stood in the doorway listening and laughing.
“I’ll give you just one hint,” said she, “if you promise not to ask me another question. Lydia is the warmest. Sammy is freezing cold, so is Mary Ellen. Tom is warm, too, but Lydia is hot, red-hot I should say.” And then Miss Martin closed the door and fled. In the hall she met fat Nurse Norrie carrying a pile of clean blouses.
“Hark ye to the noise in there,” said Nurse Norrie with a chuckle. “I’m thinking if we live through this day we’ll live through anything.”