Christmas stories

by Mary Jane Holmes

The year had rolled round swiftly, and the little ones of St. Luke’s were again looking eagerly forward to Christmas Eve and the wonderful tree, which all the summer long had been growing down by the lake and gathering new beauty and strength for the task it was to perform. It was in the cellar of St. Luke’s now, and the ladies and children were busy trimming the little stone church on the corner, and Maggie Hewitt was with them, holding twine and pulling twigs for Miss Nellie, at whose side she hovered constantly, and whom some of the young girls called “Miss Morgan’s shadow.” But Bennie was not there, and if you had gone down on the tow path that winter day and entered the room, into which the snow used to drift at night, and where Bennie used to hide away from his drunken, crazy father, you would scarcely have known the place. Nellie Morgan had proved the good angel of that house, as of many others, and discovering that appreciation of tidiness and comfort which Bennie possessed to so great a degree, she had made his surroundings as pleasant as possible under the circumstances. Bennie was a delicate child, and often sick for days and even weeks, and when Miss Nellie found how distasteful to him was that dingy, dreary room where the broken window was stuffed with rags, and the damp, stained paper hung in strips on the wall, she went to work with a will, and many an article of cast off furniture found its way from the garret of the Morgan house to the hut on the tow path, and in comparison with his condition one year ago, Bennie now lodged like a prince, and felt almost as happy as one. There was fresh paper on the walls, the window was mended, and a clean white curtain hung before it; a strip of carpet covered the floor, and Bennie’s bed was a wide, capacious crib, which had once been Wallie Morgan’s; and there, propped up with pillows and clad in a bright dressing-gown, Bennie lay that December day when his sister Maggie was busy at the church where he so longed to be. A severe cold had settled on his lungs, and for weeks he had kept in doors, trying to subdue the tickling cough, which harassed him day and night.

“Oh, if I only can be well by Christmas, I want to see Jesus’ birth night once more. Do you think he’ll let me go?” he would say to Miss Nellie, when she came, as she often did, to see him, and with tears in her eyes Nellie would smooth the light hair of the little boy who had grown so fast into her love, and answer that she hoped so, when all the time there was a great fear in her heart that never again would Bennie celebrate the Saviour’s birth night.

But she would not tell him so then, for she felt sure that he was one of the little ones of whom our Savior said “of such is the kingdom of Heaven.” Her labor had not been in vain so far as Bennie was concerned. With astonishing avidity he had seized upon her words of instruction, and now, whether awake or asleep, the baby of Bethlehem was always present with him, the friend to whom he told his joys and griefs and to whom he often prayed for his drunken father, his idle, wicked sister Hetty, and his other sister, Maggie, whom he loved so well.

Such a child could not fail to influence any household for good, and it was observed by many that Mr. Hewitt worked more steadily, and was not intoxicated so often as of old, while Hetty was less in the street and never brought her vile, noisy companions to disturb her sick brother. And Bennie was very happy except when he thought of the Christmas Festival and his desire to attend it.

“Please, Jesus of Bethlehem, let me be well enough to go there just this once and hear my name called from the tree, will you, and I’ll be so good and not fret at Mag when my side aches and I cough so hard.”

This was Bennie’s prayer, or the substance of it, said often to himself, but for once God did not seem to hear the little boy, for his cough daily grew worse, the pallor about his lips grew deeper, the red on his thin cheeks redder, and his great blue eyes had in them that bright, glassy look which only the eyes of consumptives wear.

“I can’t go; he won’t let me,” he said, with a burst of tears, the morning before Christmas to Miss Nellie, who had come down to see him, and who tried to comfort him by saying that he would be remembered just the same, and that his presents would be new to him Christmas morning.

“’Tain’t that,” he answered with quivering lip, “’Tain’t the presents. It’s going up myself and feeling that he counts me in as one of ’em, I want to hear Him call my name,—Bennie Hewitt, and know how it sounds.”

It was a fancy of his that Jesus himself called the names of the little ones, and Nellie did not try to dispel the illusion. Jesus would call him soon, she was sure, and with a kiss and a promise to come again on the morrow she left him and went back to the church where she was busy all the day with Maggie as her constant aid. And while they trimmed the house of God and hung their gifts upon the tree, little Bennie lay in his crib thinking about it and of the tree of life, of which Nellie had once read to him. Would he ever see that tree, and would there be something on it for him, and could he bathe his burning cheeks and hands in that pure river of water, and wouldn’t it be nice to have no nights to cough so in, and no need of sun or moon to light those golden streets.