Nell, who was twelve—a slender, sunny-haired little creature—first clasped her hands, then clapped them, then danced up and down the old woodshed pausing at last in front of a big kitchen table, where a toy engine and train of cars were making a circuit around and around and around a tiny track. The hired boy, Eb—a few years older, rough-handed and poorly dressed—smiled at the child’s pleasure.
“That’s nothing,” he said. “I didn’t have to do much to it.”
“But you did, Eb. It was all broken to pieces. Papa would be awfully disappointed to find it that way when he comes, and Tommy would never have gotten over it. Never! He’s set his heart on a train for Christmas, and it’s been promised to him, and now to have it all smashed in the express! Oh, Eb, nobody could have fixed it but you. You’re a real genius, mamma says, and ought to go to a mechanical school. Isn’t it lucky you’re living with Uncle Bob when we come to visit him!”
The dainty, dancing fairy stopped suddenly and held up a warning finger.
“Sh, Eb! There’s Tommy now! He’s coming back! Oh, stop it! stop it! and cover it so he can’t see! He’ll be coming straight in here, I know!”
Outside there were the wild whoop of a small boy with large lungs, a clatter of a sled, a stamping of feet, then a plunging into the kitchen, just as Eb had slipped a stick through the train wheels to stop it, and covered it with an old homespun saddle blanket, gathered hastily from the corner. A moment later Tommy burst in, red, snowy, and full of the curiosity which most healthy boys are likely to have, especially about Christmas-time.
“What are you doing here, Nell, you and Eb? What have you been making with all that wire, and those tools? What’s that blanket on the table? Pooh, Bess! What are you shivering for with that great cape on? I’m not cold, and I’ve been coasting for over an hour, down the back-barn hill! Oh, say, come in the kitchen, Nell! I want to show you a funny icicle I found. Come quick, before it’s all melted away!”
Like a whirlwind he had stormed in and out, followed closely by Nell, who threw a merry glance of relief over her shoulder. Eb, leaning against the work-bench, smiled back; then, with a sigh, saw them disappear.
For Nellie’s words and her mother’s had set his heart to beating with something like hope. What if there really could be a way by which he could go to such a place as she had mentioned, and learn to be a—a— And then, as he saw them go out, and the door close behind them, it seemed as if hope went out with them. They would all be gone in a few days and never remember him again. He hurried off to pitch down the evening hay for the cattle, and see if he couldn’t forget, too.
From earliest childhood Eben Lessing had worked with tools—a one-bladed knife at first, then such other clumsy things as he could get hold of. With these he had made curious toys that would run by water, or wind, or heat, or steam, some of them quite useful. When he came to Robert Whittaker’s to live he built, besides other things, a churn of a new pattern, and a fan over the dining-room table, both to run by water-power brought from the brook. And when Mrs. William Whittaker, who was from the city, had seen these things, she had said the boy deserved a mechanical education, and then forgot all about it again, being very busy with all the Christmas preparations, while Eb, pitching down great wads of sweet hay from the barn loft, was still dreaming in spite of himself, of a day when he should leave the district school for a mechanical college, and become a great inventor, and marry Nellie Whittaker, and so live happy ever after. Then it came milking-time, and swishing the broad white streams into the foaming pail, he dreamed again, and kept on dreaming even after he was in bed and asleep. Then he forgot, and when he remembered again it was morning—the morning of the day before Christmas.