Just here Mr. Burnham’s coachman came round the corner in great haste.
“Well, Patrick, what is it?” said his master.
“The shafts uv that sleigh—bad look to ’em!—is bruk, yer honor; ’n’ I don’t see how I’ll iver get thim bashkits carried round at all!”
“Oh, those baskets!” cried Mr. Burnham in distress. “Our Christmas baskets haven’t been delivered yet, and it’s almost eleven o’clock. The storm and our worry about you kept us from delivering them last night, and we have hardly thought of them this morning. I’m afraid those poor people will have a late Christmas dinner.”
“Baskets o’ stuff for poor folks’s dinners?” said Farmer Ross. “Let me take ’em round.”
“Oh, yes, father!” shouted Win. “Let Phil and me go with him! The baskets are marked, aren’t they? It’ll be jolly fun to deliver them out of this sled.”
In a minute the baskets—half a dozen of them—were loaded in, and within half an hour they were all set down at the homes to which they were addressed. Poor old Uncle Ned and Aunt Dinah hobbled to the door and took in their basket with eyes full of wonder at the strange vehicle that was just driving from their doors; the Widow Blanchard’s children, playing outside, ran into the house when they saw the ponies coming, but speedily came out after their basket and carried it in, firm in the faith that they had had a sight of the veritable Santa Claus. To all the rest of the needy families the gifts, though late, were welcome; and the bright vision of the evergreen bower on runners brought gladness with it into all those lowly homes.
Farmer Ross went back with the boys to their home; his ponies were taken from the sled and given a good Christmas dinner in Mr. Burnham’s stable; he himself was constrained to remain and partake of the feast that would not have been eaten but for him, and that lost none of its merriment because of him; and at length, about three o’clock in the afternoon, the Christmas car, stripped of its bravery, but carrying some goodly gifts to Mrs. Ross, started on its return to Washington Mountain.
My little friends who read this story will be glad to know that the Christmas festival at the church had been deferred on account of the storm from Christmas Eve to Christmas evening; so that the Burnhams had a chance to assist at the unloading of the Christmas tree.
They will also guess that Farmer Ross’s house and his barn and his orchard and his pasture and his woods and his trout brook and his blackberry bushes and his dog and his ponies and his cows and his oxen and his hens and pretty nearly everything that was his had a chance to get very well acquainted with Win and Phil during the next summer vacation. It will be a long time, I am sure, before the Rosses and the Burnhams cease to be friends, and before any of them will forget The Strange Adventures of a Wood Sled.