Frances Margaret Fox
It was late autumn in the north woods, and Beatrice and Josephine were thinking about Christmas. They liked to think about Christmas: they liked to talk about it and to sing Christmas songs and to play Christmas games. Those two little girls had been known to play the game of Santa Claus filling Christmas stockings on the Fourth of July; and it was such fun they did not care who laughed.
Beatrice was seven years old and Josephine was nine that particular autumn day when they climbed to the top of the front gate posts to talk it over. There was no gate in front of their log cabin, only an opening where a gate would some day swing on hinges and fasten with a click. The gate posts were made of big, round logs of cedar, and were almost two feet taller than the top of the fence. There was a path leading from the gateway to the front door of the log cabin, and behind the cabin, and surrounding it on three sides, were the evergreen woods. In front of the cabin was a wide clearing belonging to the railway.
From early spring until late in the autumn the little girls were in the habit of climbing on the gate posts to watch the trains go by.
“I suppose if we had lots of money,” said Beatrice from the top of her gate post, “I suppose we could go to Marquette and buy Christmas presents for the whole family!”
“But most of all for mother!” added Josephine, happily kicking her feet.
“What should we get mother if we had money and could go traveling?” Beatrice inquired.
“Well,” answered Josephine, “if we ever have a ride on the cars, and if we ever go to Marquette with father and our pockets full of money, we’d buy,—we’d buy,—I don’t know what and you don’t know what!”
At that, the two little girls laughed and laughed until they almost fell off the gate posts; they liked to sit on the gate posts and laugh. For a while they talked about the Christmas presents they should like to make.
“But there should be something special for our mother,” insisted Josephine.