PAGE 2
A Christmas Inspiration
by
“Ow!” said Olive, as if the mere idea made her shiver.
A little silence followed. To tell the truth, none of them liked Miss Allen. They knew that she did not like them either, but considered them frivolous and pert, and complained when they made a racket.
“The skeleton at the feast,” Jean called her, and certainly the presence of the pale, silent, discontented-looking woman at the No. 16 table did not tend to heighten its festivity.
Presently Jean said with a dramatic flourish, “Girls, I have an inspiration–a Christmas inspiration!”
“What is it?” cried four voices.
“Just this. Let us give Miss Allen a Christmas surprise. She has not received a single present and I’m sure she feels lonely. Just think how we would feel if we were in her place.”
“That is true,” said Olive thoughtfully. “Do you know, girls, this evening I went to her room with a message from Mrs. Pickrell, and I do believe she had been crying. Her room looked dreadfully bare and cheerless, too. I think she is very poor. What are we to do, Jean?”
“Let us each give her something nice. We can put the things just outside of her door so that she will see them whenever she opens it. I’ll give her some of Fred’s roses too, and I’ll write a Christmassy letter in my very best style to go with them,” said Jean, warming up to her ideas as she talked.
The other girls caught her spirit and entered into the plan with enthusiasm.
“Splendid!” cried Beth. “Jean, it is an inspiration, sure enough. Haven’t we been horribly selfish–thinking of nothing but our own gifts and fun and pleasure? I really feel ashamed.”
“Let us do the thing up the very best way we can,” said Nellie, forgetting even her beloved chocolates in her eagerness. “The shops are open yet. Let us go up town and invest.”
Five minutes later five capped and jacketed figures were scurrying up the street in the frosty, starlit December dusk. Miss Allen in her cold little room heard their gay voices and sighed. She was crying by herself in the dark. It was Christmas for everybody but her, she thought drearily.
In an hour the girls came back with their purchases.
“Now, let’s hold a council of war,” said Jean jubilantly. “I hadn’t the faintest idea what Miss Allen would like so I just guessed wildly. I got her a lace handkerchief and a big bottle of perfume and a painted photograph frame–and I’ll stick my own photo in it for fun. That was really all I could afford. Christmas purchases have left my purse dreadfully lean.”
“I got her a glove-box and a pin tray,” said Belle, “and Olive got her a calendar and Whittier’s poems. And besides we are going to give her half of that big plummy fruit cake Mother sent us from home. I’m sure she hasn’t tasted anything so delicious for years, for fruit cakes don’t grow on Chestnut Terrace and she never goes anywhere else for a meal.”
Beth had bought a pretty cup and saucer and said she meant to give one of her pretty water-colours too. Nellie, true to her reputation, had invested in a big box of chocolate creams, a gorgeously striped candy cane, a bag of oranges, and a brilliant lampshade of rose-coloured crepe paper to top off with.
“It makes such a lot of show for the money,” she explained. “I am bankrupt, like Jean.”
“Well, we’ve got a lot of pretty things,” said Jean in a tone of satisfaction. “Now we must do them up nicely. Will you wrap them in tissue paper, girls, and tie them with baby ribbon–here’s a box of it–while I write that letter?”
While the others chatted over their parcels Jean wrote her letter, and Jean could write delightful letters. She had a decided talent in that respect, and her correspondents all declared her letters to be things of beauty and joy forever. She put her best into Miss Allen’s Christmas letter. Since then she has written many bright and clever things, but I do not believe she ever in her life wrote anything more genuinely original and delightful than that letter. Besides, it breathed the very spirit of Christmas, and all the girls declared that it was splendid.