“Never mind, Aunt Millie,” I comforted, “uncle will write, I feel sure!” She looked up, startled, and seemed ashamed that I had found her crying and had struck her thought so.
“Who’s whimpering?” she cried fiercely. “Mind your business!” But I noticed that when she came in my room that night and thought me asleep, when in reality I was keeping my ears open for the carols, she kissed me very tenderly and crept away silently.
When the carols first strike a sleeping ear, one imagines that the far-away choirs of Heaven are tuning up for the next day’s chorus before God. The first notes set such dreams a-spinning as are full of angels and ethereal thoughts. Then the ear becomes aware of time and place, and seizes upon the human note that may be found in Christmas carols when they are sung by mill people at midnight in winter weather. Then the ear begins to distinguish between this voice and that, and to follow the bass that tumbles up and down through the air. Then there is a great crescendo when the singers are right under one’s window, and the words float into the chamber, each one winged with homely, human tenderness and love. So I was awakened by the carol singers that Christmas night. The first tune sung for us was, “Christians Awake,” and when its three verses had awakened us, and we had gone to the window to look down on the group, “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing,” was followed by a soaring adaptation of Coronation. It was a group of about fifteen. There were Old Bill Scroggs with his concertina, Harry Mills with his ’cello, and Erwind Nichols with his flute. Torvey was there, though he could not sing. He carried the lantern, caught the money that was dropped into his hat from the windows, and kept the young men and women from too much chattering as they approached the different stands. When they had finished their anthems, aunt called from the window, “Happy Christmas good folks. It was kind of you to remember us so. It’s real good.” Old Torvey answered back, “Merry Christmas, Mrs. Brindin. We must get along.” Then the crowd sent up a confused “Merry Christmas,” and passed on.
Then it was back to bed again to sleep until awakened by an unnatural pounding on our door below. “What is it, aunt?” I cried. “I don’t know,” she answered. “Put on your clothes and get down before they break in the door!” I dressed hurriedly, inserted the massive iron key in the lock, gave it a turn only to have the door thrust open wide by Old Torvey, who cried excitedly, as he waved a letter in the air, “It’s from Hammerica, from him!”
My aunt ran down at that, partly dressed, and screamed in her excitement. With fluttering, nervous fingers she tore open the envelope, and examined the contents in a breathless minute.
“Stanwood sent it,” she laughed, “there’s tickets for America and a money order for five pounds!” and then she gave in to a hysterical relapse which required the calling in of the green-grocer’s wife. It was a Merry Christmas!
Chapter III. My Schoolmates
Teach me American
Chapter III. My Schoolmates
Teach me American
IT was an extraordinary excuse that Uncle Stanwood gave for his neglect of us. He disposed of the matter by saying, in his Christmas letter, “I was so busy and so hard put to that I had no heart to write till I had gathered enough money to send for you. I know it must have worried you.”
His steamship tickets, however, had suddenly put us in the limelight in the town. “The Brindins are going over!” was the word that passed around. I can imagine no more perfect fame than the United States had gained in the minds of the men and women of our little town. America was conceived as the center of human desire, the pivot of worldly wealth, the mirror of a blissful paradise. If we had fallen heirs to peerages or had been called to Victoria’s court, it is doubtful if more out-and-out respect would have been showered on us than was ours when it was known that we were going to the “States.”