She put a gay crêpe tissue paper table-set into the basket. It had a tablecloth and napkins with bright colored fruits upon it. Then all the other things were packed tight and the basket was very heavy and very tempting when Ermelinda’s busy fingers had finished. It was put away in the pantry closet to stand there safely till the time should come.
Next day Ermelinda found Kitty Fowler, who volunteered to help. “You see, Kitty, I can’t carry that big basket all alone myself,” she explained. “I do need somebody ever so much.”
“Then I’ll help and I’ll be at the corner waiting for you at four o’clock.”
When she reached the corner with tired arms, Kitty was not there. Ermelinda waited. It was frightfully windy and cold. It seemed as if it might snow for there was penetrating dampness and chill in the air. She thought of Stella trying to buy the coat for a little sister—she wondered if, by now, the little sister had it. She hoped so. She wondered how Stella had earned the money—Still Kitty did not come. It was growing dusk.
Ermelinda decided that Kitty must have forgotten. She was that kind—always ready to help but not responsible. It was too late to go home and get mother—beside that, mother was tired. The boys were out skating. There was no reason why she, Ermelinda, should not go alone. So she tugged the big basket and the bundle onward. Her arms ached and she had to stop more than once to turn ’round about, taking the basket in the other hand and changing the bundle. Somehow she reached the right street and the door that led to her family up there on the top floor. Somehow she reached the landing. She put the basket down and knocked. She had planned how nice it would be just to hand the basket in and say, “Santa Claus came for Thanksgiving and brought you this.” Then she would run away and they would call, “Thank you! Thank you!”
Maybe they had not heard; Ermelinda knocked loudly again. No answer! She knocked again. All was silent! Then a woman in a blue apron came out upon the second floor landing and screamed up at her, “They’ve moved away. What d’you want anyhow? That family went off last week—Nobody’s there!”
At last, Ermelinda understood! But the woman did not know where they had gone. She suggested that Ermelinda ask the janitor on the first floor.
It crossed Ermelinda’s mind that she might give the basket to the woman on the second landing, but as she came down the wide-open door showed a table with food upon it. The janitor didn’t know where that family had gone—he said the man had work and they had gone away. Yes, they had been in hard straits for a while—didn’t pay rent at all, he said. But now there was nothing for Ermelinda to do about it. The bitter disappointment of the expedition made a lump in Ermelinda’s throat—why, if the fairy godmother had come to help Cinderella and had not found her, that is about how the fairy godmother would have felt!
Little Lady Bountiful almost cried but she took up the packages and walked home. She told mother all the story and then she wept. There were all those good things for somebody’s happy Thanksgiving and where should they go?
At last, mother suggested that she herself would buy the things in the basket and that Ermelinda might give the money to some public charity. She wrote her editor and asked what to do. The editor wrote back and said she thought Ermelinda was right: that the boys and girls might be told, perhaps, but that since they had given the money without sacrifice, it ought to be used to help some need. Ermelinda received the letter from the postman just as she started for school. She opened it in the cloak-room and there she met Stella, who was just hanging her tam upon a neighboring hook.