"Oh! don't blame the child," said mother, turning pale and getting between him and me. "You know it is Christmas eve, John."
Then he swore many awful oaths, and said he didn't care for Christmas, and that he was not going to be taunted with his poverty by his own children, and went stamping around the room in a furious passion. Mother went up to him to coax him, and put her arms around his neck; but he threw her off and knocked her down and, though you mayn't believe it, he actually lifted up his foot and stamped upon her face. That is why mother looks so bad now, with those great scars, but she was very beautiful before that, as everybody knows. When mother fell, Dash sprang up from the hearth where he lay curled up, and barked at father.
"They've all turned against me," said he, "even the dog. But I'll brain you", says he to Dash.
When I saw mother trying to get up, with the blood all streaming down her dress from her face and mouth, I got faint, and don't recollect any more until I woke up, it must have been noon next day, with a dreadful headache. I crept out of bed and went into the hall, and there I heard people talking down in the parlor. It was mother, Mrs. Thrifty, our next-door neighbor, and the doctor. The doctor and Mrs. Thrifty were trying to persuade mother to do something, but she kept saying, "Never! I couldn't—poor John!" and words like that.
Such terrible things had taken place and put my mind so astray that I quite forgot I shouldn't listen; but I soon remembered it, and went away. I wondered where father was, and thought I would look in his room to see if he was there. In the old times, before father changed, I used to be let come in, bright and early, to his room, and climb up on a chair and kiss him before he got up; and he used to call me his "Little Sunbeam" that came creeping in to say it was day. There he was now, lying on the bed without taking off his clothes or muddy boots, in a deep, heavy sleep. I did so want to love him, but I was afraid to wake him up to tell him so, he looked so frightful, gnashing his teeth in his dreams. But I thought I might be "Little Sunbeam" once more, even if he didn't know it, and I got a chair and climbed up and reached my arm over round his neck and gave him a kiss. It did not seem like father's face, but I suppose I had forgotten, it was so long since I kissed him before. Poor father! I began to mourn in my heart for him then, as mother says we must do now. I was afraid to stay there, but before I went away I knelt down beside the bed and prayed the Blessed Virgin to ask God to make him a good man again, and make him give up drinking, and make mother well, and let me be his "Little Sunbeam" as before. Then I slipped back to my room and dressed myself, and mother came up-stairs with her face all bandaged up, and she told me not to say anything to anybody about the last night.
That Christmas day wasn't like any Christmas day I can ever recollect. I didn't find any toys from Santa Claus in my stocking. We didn't go to mass, nor to see the little Jesus in the Crib, nor to hear the children sing around it. Nor we didn't have any plum pudding; and when I went out on the back porch—oh! dear, how my heart does ache—there lay poor old Dash, with his head split open, and quite dead.
You see I had so many things happen that I don't recollect how things turned out, except that mother and I left our house one day, because we got poor, mother said, and then we came here, and she says we are never to go back because our house is sold to strangers, to whom father was in debt. Pinkey Silver told me that the man who keeps the grog-shop where poor father was stabbed owns it now. And I must tell you about that.
It was the next Christmas day after the last one I told you about. We had nothing to eat all day. Toward evening mother told me to go to Mrs. Thrifty's and ask her to please lend us a loaf of bread. Mrs. Thrifty was gone to a party, and so I had to wait until near nine o'clock, when George Thrifty, that's Mrs. Thrifty's son, came in laughing and singing:
"Hie for merry Christmas!
Ho for merry Christmas!
Hurrah! for Christmas day!"