Christmas in Storyland

by Unknown

Sarah Addington

It seemed to Jerry that he would really die if he didn’t get a book that Christmas. Here he was, eight years old, learning to read, liking to read better than almost anything else in the world, and he had no book to read from. He read at school in books furnished by somebody or other, Jerry didn’t know who, but that wasn’t enough. Jerry wanted a book for his very own. He wanted it big enough to carry under his arm, and small enough to put under his pillow at night. He wanted it to have stories in it about bears and St. Bernards and dragons and boys—no girls; stories, too, about snakes and explorers and boats and soldiers. He wanted the book to have red and yellow and green pictures of airplanes and lions and pirates, one picture on every page.

This was the book Jerry wanted. This was the book he dreamed of in bed at night and thought about in the daytime, the book he pretended to carry under his arm and made believe was under his pillow. But there wasn’t the slightest chance of Jerry’s getting that book, or any book. Indeed, Jerry would have been ashamed to mention the word “book” at home. People don’t talk airily about blue-and-gold books when their mothers don’t have enough breakfast and their fathers don’t have enough supper and nobody in the whole family ever has enough dinner, even on Sunday.

And that was the appalling state of affairs at the Juddikins’. Nobody ever mentioned it, but there it was. They hadn’t enough food, they hadn’t enough fire, they hadn’t enough clothes. There were five Juddikins: Mr. Juddikins, Mrs. Juddikins, Jerry Juddikins, the baby Juddikins, and Mutt Juddikins, who, though he was only a dog and, as dogs go, not of high social position, yet was a highly important member of the Juddikins family. He was a mutt dog, the Juddikins frankly called him Mutt, yet this dog was far from a mutt at heart. Indeed, he had a thoroughbred soul, such as some of your blue-blooded aristocratic dogs never dream of having. He never whined when he was hungry, like the fussy little Pomeranian next door. He didn’t need a silk pillow to sleep on, like the lazy Pekingese across the street. Not much. Mutt was a real sport. He took what he got, which wasn’t much, but it was always all that the Juddikins could give him; bread and gravy, potatoes sometimes, even a bone now and then, a skimpy, dry bone, to be sure, but none the less a bone. Mutt took these and was grateful and happy, even put on airs as if it were a feast that the Juddikins had set before him.

For Mutt was not only a sport, he was also a swell. He carried his tail at the most elegant angle. He picked up his feet with style and dignity. His were drawing-room manners. He had shameful ancestors; his grandfather on his mother’s side had been a mere roustabout dog, one of those villains who spend their lives fighting and stealing and cheating man and beast alike. Mutt remembered him well; he had died in a brawl which was the talk of the alley for days. Then there was Mutt’s grandmother on his father’s side, a dissolute old dog who ate a cat a day when she was home, and who, when she wasn’t home, wandered abroad pillaging and plundering like a very pirate among dogs. She dined on garbage and slept in ash cans. Mutt’s own mother was far from a lady, his father was a brute, and their home life was deplorable.

And yet along came Mutt, their descendant, a gentleman if not a scholar, a dog well-mannered, refined, gallant, heroic. The last of a long line of ruffians, thieves, bullies and traitors, Mutt was a cavalier among dogs, and he lived with the Juddikins and was the very center of their small and humble universe.

Some people said the Juddikins ought not to keep Mutt: they were too poor. But, as Mrs. Juddikins said, when you’re poor you need a dog the most of all, and as for giving up Mutt, rich or poor, the Juddikins would as soon have considered giving up the baby, I do believe. Of course the baby was very sweet and cunning, but Mutt was far more intelligent, and one thing he didn’t do, he didn’t swallow buttonhooks and hairbrushes all day long, as the foolish Juddikins baby tried to do.

The Juddikins would have been a very happy family, then, if only they hadn’t been so poor. But they were poor. There was hardly any money at all in Mr. Juddikins’ pocket, none at all in Mrs. Juddikins’ pocket, less than none in the brown box on the mantelpiece, for there, where the money used to be, were now only bills. Bills for the rent of the Juddikins’ tiny house, bills for the doctor—for once the baby really swallowed part of the hairbrush, and old Doctor Jollyman had to come running and fish out the bristles.

It was all because Mr. Juddikins didn’t have a job. Fathers have to have jobs, it seems, to keep families going, and Mr. Juddikins didn’t have one, so his family wasn’t kept going very well. It scared Mr. Juddikins half to death sometimes to think that the whole family depended on him like this. Mrs. Juddikins, Jerry Juddikins, the baby Juddikins, Mutt—all had stomachs to fill, all had bodies to be warmed at the fire, and this not to mention Mr. Juddikins, who was hungry and cold himself all the time.

Every morning Mr. Juddikins would start out to look for a job. First he would rise early and call everybody. “Get up, mother! Get up, Jerry! Get up, baby!” Mutt was the only one who didn’t have to be told to get up. Then Mr. Juddikins would bustle around and make a fire, oh, a very small one, and while Mrs. Juddikins was making the tea, oh, a very small pot, Mr. Juddikins would put on his clean collar and his stringy black tie, and sing as he looked at himself in the mirror. Mr. Juddikins was, you see, of a cheerful disposition. If he had not been, he could never have sung as he looked at himself in the mirror. Mr. Juddikins would then take his tea. He made dreadful faces over the tea, for he didn’t like it without milk and the Juddikins had no milk, except the baby, who had nothing else, unless you count the bristles.