He had ample opportunity to air his feeble-shafted malice during the week preceding Christmas, for scouts, in uniform and out of it, were constantly to be seen engaged in “hifalutin stunts,” according to Godey, which meant that they had been organized into a brigade by the scoutmaster for the doing of sundry and many good turns befitting the season.
It might be only the carrying of parcels, for a heavy-laden woman, who had visited a distant city on a shopping expedition, from the little railway station on the edge of the yellow wintry salt-marshes to her home! Or the bearing of gifts from a benevolent individual or society to some poor or solitary human brother or sister who otherwise might forget the meaning of Christmas.
It was on behalf of one such person that Corporal Leon Chase—detailed for duty on this brigade—took counsel with his mother on the afternoon of Christmas Eve.
“You don’t suppose that she’ll stay alone in that old baldfaced house to-day and to-morrow, do you, mother?” he said, rather ambiguously. “The town authorities ought to forbid her living on there all by herself; she’ll be snowed in pretty soon if this cold snap continues. Why! the river is all frozen over—ice fairly firm too. I’m going skating by an’ by.”
“I’d wait until it is a little more solid, if I were you,” returned the mother anxiously. “You know our brackish ice is apt to be treacherous; the salt in the water softens it, so your father says, renders it more porous and unsafe. I suppose you were speaking of old Ma’am Baldwin. I don’t see what the authorities can do. They can’t force her into an institution; she owns that old house. And I don’t know that her daughter’s husband—little Jack’s father—wants her in his home. It’s too bad that her son Dave should have turned out such a good-for-nothing! Trouble about him has aged her, I guess; she’s not as old as she seems.”
Then Starrie Chase inveigled his dimpling mother into a pantry and, while she made passes at him with a rolling-pin, proceeded to whisper in her ear—with a measure of embarrassment, for he was not accustomed to himself in the rôle of alms-bearer. But in a shadowy corner within him, once tenanted by Malign Habit, there still lurked a vision which sprang out on him at times, of an old woman raising her feeble arm to ward him off: it caused him to grit his teeth and mutter: “I wish I could do something more than to chop her wood occasionally!” And vaguely the mental answer would come: “Estu preta! At a time when you least expect it, you may find yourself up against the Big Minute!”
And in the mean time Starrie cornered his mother in the pantry—floury shrine of Christmas culinary rites!—and presently listened, well-pleased, to her answer:—
“Yes! I’m glad that you put it into my head, son. I’ll pack some things into a basket for her, and you can take it across the marshes now. It must be bitterly lonely for her, poor old woman! And oh! Leon, as you’ll be in that direction, could you go on into the woods and get me some red berries for Christmas decorations?”
“Sure, mum!” And Leon stepped forth to speak to Colin Estey, who was awaiting him at the rear of the Chase homestead, exercising in a preliminary canter a new pedalomotor which Santa Claus, masquerading as the expressman, had dropped at his home a little too soon.
“Take care you don’t run into a tree, smash it up, and drive a splinter through your nose, as Marcoo did when he got his, last year!” admonished Starrie. “Say! Col, I can’t go skating for a little while: I’m bound for the woods first to get some alder-berries for decorations. Want to come?”