Say, that little guy had the most innocent lamb-like look on his face you ever saw. He was always saying things like that, and not a one of us thought he was too religious or anything. In fact, everyone of us had already become Christians ourselves, only most of us weren’t quite as brave as Little Jim was, just talking right out about what we thought, without caring what anybody said, most of us thinking a lot more than we said. Poetry especially was bashful, especially in his Sunday school class, on account of his voice was changing and was more like a duck’s with a bad cold, than a boy’s, and was half man’s and half boy’s voice anyway.
“Come on! you guys!” Dragonfly yelled back to us from up ahead, and we all swished on.
It was quite a long run to the sycamore tree, but we got there quick, and found Circus and Big Jim looking inside the big long opening in its side for the letter or whatever it was we were supposed to find. In a jiffy Circus had it out and was waving it around in the air for us to see, and when we gathered around, we saw that it was an envelope with our names on it, only it was an actual honest-to-goodness letter with a postmark on it which, when I got close enough to see, I saw was Pass Lake, Minnesota.
Say, something in my heart went flippety-flop, and I just knew who the letter was from. For some reason I knew, knew what was going to be inside. It was going to be a letter from the same great big fat man on whose property on Pass Lake we’d had our camp last summer, and he was inviting us to come up again for a week or two or maybe more.
Say, it certainly didn’t take us long to find out that I was right, which I knew I was.
“It’s from Santa Claus!” Dragonfly said, Santa Claus being the name we’d given to the man whom we’d all liked so well on our camping trip and whose wife had made such good blackberry pies.
Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! We all read the letter, and felt so wonderful inside we wanted to yell and scream.
There was one paragraph in the letter that bothered us, though, and it was, “Be sure, of course, to get your parents’ consent, all of you, and be sure to bring along your fishing tackle. Fishing is good. Little Snow-in-the-face will be eager to see you all. He has been very sick this past week, and has been taken to the government hospital. Be sure to pray for him. His big brother, Eagle Eye, has a real Sunday school going here, but his mother and father are not yet believers on the Lord Jesus Christ, and that makes it hard for him. But Snow-in-the-face is a very brave little Christian.”
Right that second, we heard footsteps coming in our direction, and looking up I saw a dark brown smiling face, a row of shining white teeth with one all-gold tooth right in front, and I knew it was Barry Boyland, Old Man Paddler’s nephew, who had taken us to Pass Lake last year.
“Hi, gang!” he called to us, and we called back to him, “Hello, Barry.” And we all swarmed around him to tell him about the letter and to ask questions, all of us knowing that he was the one who had written the notes for us, just to make the last letter more mysterious and more of a surprise.