THE CHRISTMAS MAKERS’ CLUB

“‘NOW CHILDREN, WE MUST MAKE OUR PLANS.’”

(See [page 20])

The Christmas Makers’ Club

BY
EDITH A. SAWYER

Illustrated by ADA C. WILLIAMSON

Of glad things there be ... four;

A lark above the old nest blithely singing,

A wild rose clinging

In safety to a rock: a shepherd bringing

A lamb, found, in his arms,

And Christmas bells a-ringing.

Willis Boyd Allen

Copyright, 1908
By L. C. Page & Company
(INCORPORATED)

All rights reserved

First Impression, May, 1908

COLONIAL PRESS
Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, U.S.A.

To
Margaret and Ruth
Dorothy and ’Nita

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE CHRISTMAS MAKERS’ CLUB

CHAPTER I
THE CLUB GATHERS FOR WORK AND PLAY

Didst thou never know

The joy of following the path untrod?

—Margaret E. Sherwood: Persephone.

“HOW I wish we had something new and interesting to do Friday afternoons!” said Elsa Danforth, a slim girl in a black coat, with a soft, wide black felt hat set back on the yellow hair which floated like a cloud of pale gold over her shoulders. Elsa was the tallest of the three girls who had hurried away from school together that gray mid-November afternoon. They were just now turning into Washington Avenue.

“It’s too cold to play outdoors,” said Betty White, dancing on ahead, her bag of school-books swung over her shoulder. Betty’s brown eyes danced like her feet, and so did the capes to her long blue coat and the wavy brown hair tied back with a bow of wide white ribbon.

“Isn’t there something we can do?” asked Alice Holt, the youngest and smallest of the three, hurrying to keep up with the others.

“Play dolls or play school is all I can think of,” said Betty. “O Elsa, we might go to your house and play with you!” she added, turning to Elsa. Betty had wanted to have a good look at the great house where Elsa Danforth lived with her grandmother. Betty had been in the house only twice, and then but for a few moments, since the Danforths came there in September.

“But—” began Elsa. Then she stopped; she could not bear to say that her grandmother had told her not to bring children home with her to play.

“I tell you what let’s do,” Alice exclaimed, before Betty could say anything. “Let’s start some kind of a club, and have it meet Friday afternoons. We might have it a Christmas Club.”

“Only grown-up people have clubs,” objected Betty instantly; she was still thinking of what fun it would be to go all over the Danforth house.

“We could have a club, though we are children,” said Elsa eagerly. “I am almost twelve years old.”

“I am only eleven,” said Betty, who, however, was nearly as tall as Elsa.

“And I am only ten and a half,” said Alice, running a little ahead, her blue eyes very wide open with interest. “But it truly doesn’t matter how old we are; we all play together and we like the same things.” Alice was a quaint little figure. She looked like a rather shabbily dressed doll, with her blue eyes and pink cheeks, her thick blue coat which came just to her knees, and a shaggy blue tam-o’-shanter, below which hung very smooth hair cut short around her neck.

“If we have a club, where will it meet?” asked Elsa.

“It can come to my house,” said Betty, beginning to be interested, and dancing on ahead, backward now.

“It can meet at my house, too, though I live rather far away,” said Alice.

Elsa walked on slowly, behind the others. She alone did not offer to have the club meet at her home.

They were directly in front of Betty’s home, a large and pleasant-looking house on this main avenue of the suburban town of Berkeley. “Come into my house and we will start the club now,” urged Betty, running up the front steps. But she stopped as Elsa said: “I must go and ask grandmother if I can belong.”

“O, of course she will let you,” exclaimed Betty. But Elsa, with flying yellow hair, was already half-way home. So Betty and Alice waited on the top step.

In a very short time Elsa came running back and announced breathlessly: “Yes—I can belong—and I can stay till five o’clock.” Her usually pale face was rosy from the haste, and her wide-brimmed hat had slipped down over her loose, fair hair.

It would be hard to find three girls more unlike than these three good friends who went hurrying into the house together. Elsa, the oldest, had a sensitive face and deep violet-gray eyes, which, with her soft, silky hair, gave her a delicate, almost flower-like look. Betty, next in age, was a lively, wide-awake girl with merry brown eyes and bright cheeks; she was always a leader, and sometimes a wilful one, in any fun or adventure. Alice—“Baby Alice,” as Betty often teasingly called her—had softly rounded cheeks, big blue eyes, and a fair, high forehead. Alice was a dreamy, rather quiet child, but everybody loved her for her unselfish, affectionate ways.

Betty opened the hall door and went ahead through the wide hall. “Hang your coats and things here in the closet,” she cried, taking off her overshoes, “and come on up to the nursery. We can have it all to ourselves.”

Elsa’s eyes shone with pleasure as she looked around the hospitable hall and at the huge fireplace where a bright fire burned. She always felt the homelikeness of the Whites’ house the moment she came into it. It was so unlike her grandmother’s house, where everything was stiff and stately.

Elsa especially loved the nursery, Betty’s bedroom and playroom, for it had picture-paper of children resting under trees and of wandering brooks which led to other children and other trees; it had also a broad window-shelf filled with bright-blossoming geraniums, and above, a cage with three tiny East Indian strawberry-birds; and—best of all to Elsa—a row of dolls, large and small, on a long, chintz-covered window-seat between Betty’s blue-and-white bed on one side and her dolls’ house on the other. Indeed, Elsa loved Betty’s room quite as much as Betty herself did.

Alice had never been in the room before. “O, what dear, lovely birds!” she exclaimed, clasping her dimpled hands and looking up with round, surprised eyes at the three mites of birds, brown with red spots, red eyes and red beaks, and legs so thin and needle-like as to seem scarcely strong enough to support even the tiny bodies.

“They are the dearest things,” said Betty enthusiastically. “Uncle John brought them to me from India. I am glad there are three of them, because if one dies there will be two left.”

“But what if two die?” asked Alice anxiously.

That, however, Betty did not want to think of, so she said hurriedly: “Come on, let’s decide about the club.”

“What shall we name it?” asked Elsa, who had settled herself on the soft rug by the bedside, with one elbow on the window-seat so that she could better look at the dolls.

“The Friday Club,” suggested Betty, who was sitting at the foot of the bed.

“I like ‘Club of Three,’” said Alice, turning away from the strawberry birds with a little sigh of happiness.

“I don’t like either of those names,” said Elsa. “Why not call it the Christmas Club, if that is what it is going to be?”

“Anybody can have a Christmas Club,” objected Betty, tightening the white ribbon bow on her hair.

“Why not ask somebody to name it for us?” suggested Alice.

“No, we must name it ourselves, and keep the name a secret,” came Betty’s quick answer.

“Then let’s choose one of us president, and let her name it,” said Elsa, who had Betty’s smallest doll in her lap now.

“All right,” replied Betty, looking from Elsa to Alice, whose eyes were again fixed upon the birds. Then, because Alice was always peacemaker, Betty said: “I will choose Alice for president.”

“And I will choose Elsa,” said Alice quickly, looking around.

“I will choose Betty,” said Elsa.

“Dear me!” cried Betty, jumping up so suddenly that the tiny brown-and-red birds began fluttering around their cage; “we are all president, and that means nobody is president, and we haven’t any name either.”

“I think we’d better give up the club,” said Alice, seeing trouble ahead.

“It was you who wanted to start it, and now you are backing out, Alice,” cried Betty, stamping her foot impatiently. The little birds had a panic of fluttering.

“I’m not backing out, only if we are going to get into a fuss the first thing, we might as well give it up,” said Alice wisely.

“Why not play dolls?” suggested Elsa, noticing that the hands of the blue-and-white clock on the shelf were pointing at four. Elsa did not have many chances to be with other children, and she did not like to have the time go so fast now.

“No, let’s stick to the club,” insisted Betty, reseating herself on the bed.

Just then Betty’s mother came to the nursery door with a rosy-cheeked baby in her arms who looked like a smaller Betty. The white-capped nurse followed close behind.

“I am sorry to disturb you, children,” said Mrs. White, after a pleasant word of greeting, “but Nurse has just brought baby in from out-of-doors, and she wants to put him in the nursery, as he is fretful, and watching the birds always quiets him. Take your friends down to the living-room, Betty.”

“But, mother, we are just starting—” began Betty.

“Betty dear, remember not to argue when I ask you to do anything,” murmured Mrs. White into her little daughter’s ear, stooping to kiss her forehead.

Elsa and Alice were already at the nursery door, looking with adoring eyes at the baby, who was stretching out his chubby hands toward the birds.

“We can stay in the living-room just as well, mother dear,” said Betty, patting her baby brother’s cheek affectionately and then quickly leading the way down-stairs.

The living-room had a low ceiling and diamond-paned windows. The large centre-table was covered with books, the chairs were deep and comfortable, and on the wide couch opposite the fireplace lay two great, sleek gray cats curled up, fast asleep.

“What are your cats’ names?” asked Alice, who, not being a near neighbour, did not know so much of Betty’s home and pets as did Elsa.

“Romulus and Remus,” said Betty. “But we must talk about the club.”

“I don’t believe we are going to have any club,” said Elsa, beginning to stroke the cats, who purred in lazy content, without opening their eyes.

“Then it is your own fault,” exclaimed Betty, with a flash of temper.

“Why?” Elsa left off petting the cats and sat up very straight on the sofa.

“Because you give up so soon,” replied Betty.

Elsa suddenly bent low over the cats until her golden hair hid her face, but she made no answer.

“I wish we had some one older to manage for us,” sighed Alice, turning over the pages of a picture-book on the table.

“I tell you what we can do,” cried Betty, jumping up from the black bearskin hearth-rug where she had settled herself momentarily. “We can ask Miss Ruth Warren to be in the club!”

“But will she want to be in a club with little girls?” asked Alice anxiously.

“I think she will,” returned Betty.

“Perhaps she will be president,” suggested Alice, who was a born peacemaker.

“Maybe she will name the club for us,” put in Elsa, raising her head. The flash of sensitiveness had died out of her violet-gray eyes.

“Come on, then! Let’s ask her now,” said Betty; and in another moment the three girls had slipped on their coats and were running toward the Warrens’ house.

The Warren family was a small one now; only Miss Ruth and a maiden aunt lived in the old home-stead. There had always been some one for Ruth Warren to devote herself to,—first her mother, then her grandmother, next her father; and now the last of her older relatives, this aunt who thought herself so much of an invalid that she seldom came down-stairs. Ruth’s brothers and sisters had married and left the old home; but although Ruth had chosen to remain unmarried, she had a busy life and a happy one, with her home cares and housekeeping, and a large number of nephews and nieces to love. There was a touch of sunshine about her that made other people the happier for knowing her. She was pleasant, too, to look upon, for she had beautiful brown eyes and warm-toned yellow hair. She was girlish-looking, in spite of her thirty years, and she always wore soft, graceful, unrustling gowns.

She had just come, this afternoon, from a luncheon-party, and, finding that her aunt had a caller, she seated herself before the open fire in the library, trying to decide whether or not she would go to Mrs. Wharton’s tea, at five o’clock. “I wish there were something more interesting to do,” she said to herself; “luncheons and afternoon teas are all about alike.”

Old Sarah, the family servant, appeared at the library doorway just then. “Well, Sarah?” said Miss Ruth, looking up at the tall, thin, spectacled woman, whose corkscrew-like curls were bobbing with her displeasure.

“Three little girls to see you,” said Sarah, her lips screwing themselves tight together as if in objection to three little girls coming into the house. “And here they are, chasing right after me,” she snapped out, moving to one side.

Betty, who felt quite at home here, had urged the other children into following Sarah to the library.

Miss Ruth rose quickly and went forward to meet them: “Come in, girls,” she said, in a friendly voice. “I am glad to see you.”

“You know Elsa Danforth?” said Betty, in a suddenly shy manner.

“Yes, indeed; Elsa is my neighbour, though she has never been in my house before,” replied Miss Ruth, taking Elsa’s hand into her cordial grasp.

“And this is our little friend, Alice Holt,” said Betty, drawing blue-eyed Alice forward.

“Are you going somewhere?” asked Betty, almost before Miss Ruth had time to greet Alice. “You look all dressed up.”

“No,” said Miss Ruth, deciding instantly that she would not go to Mrs. Wharton’s tea. “I have just come from somewhere. Take off your coats and sit down, girls.”

“We want you to be in our club,” began Betty.

“What kind of a club is it?”

“It is a Christmas Club, for play,” said Betty.

“And work, too,” put in Elsa, shyly, thinking that their play alone might not interest grown-up Miss Ruth.

“Making Christmas presents especially,” said Betty, feeling hopeful.

“For whom?” asked Miss Ruth. She had a way of making people feel comfortable, and she met the children’s request so naturally that they were speedily losing their shyness.

“For our friends,” said Betty.

“We might make things for the children at the Convalescent Home,” suggested Alice, drawing her chair a little nearer.

“What is that?” asked Elsa.

“O, it’s a big, big brick house about a mile from where I live,” explained Alice eagerly; “and children are brought there from the city hospital—children who are getting cured, and they stay there sometimes a long, long while for the country air and the sunshine make them well again. Some of them are on crutches and have bandages all over them and some are fastened to boards.” Alice had talked very fast, and she stopped now, quite out of breath.

“I shouldn’t like to see them,” said Betty, shrugging her shoulders.

“But they are all getting well, even though they do have crutches and boards and bandages,” continued Alice, her blue eyes shining with interest. “Mother takes us children over there once in a while; she says it is good for us, because it makes us more tender-hearted.”

“I don’t believe my grandmother would let me go,” said Elsa, who had been leaning forward, listening intently, with her chin in the palm of her slim little hand. “Grandmother is particular about the children I associate with, and I suppose these are all poor children. I should just love to go, though,” she added, with a long sigh.

“Wouldn’t it be a good plan for our club to make things to give those little children?” asked Betty, growing more interested the more she thought about the children.

“The very thing!” said Miss Ruth. “Miss Hartwell, who is at the head of the Convalescent Home, told me only yesterday that about fifty children are there now. Of course the playthings wear out, and when the children go back to their homes, cured, they want to take with them the toys they have grown fond of. But what have you named your club?” asked Miss Ruth, turning to Betty.

“That’s what we can’t decide about,” said Betty. “We want you to name it and be president.”

“But this is such a great honour!” exclaimed Miss Ruth. Her brown eyes had a way of laughing, even when her face was sober.

“Now, Miss Ruth,—don’t laugh at us, please,” begged Betty, slipping her arm around Miss Ruth’s neck.

“Why not name it the Christmas Makers’ Club,” suggested Miss Ruth, with serious eyes now, “—especially if you decide to make things for the convalescent children?”

“That’s the very best name we could have!” cried Betty, jumping up and clapping her hands.

“Splendid!” exclaimed Alice, two dimples showing in her soft pink cheeks.

“It sounds like all sorts of interesting things,” said Elsa, coming to Miss Ruth’s side and timidly stroking her sleeve.

“We must keep it a secret, though. We mustn’t tell the name to anybody,” said Betty, perching herself on the arm of Miss Ruth’s chair, at the other side. “People will have to know there is a club, but they mustn’t know anything more than that.”

“How will you keep your work a secret?” asked Miss Ruth.

“If you are our president, you might keep the presents we make,” said Elsa.

“Please, O, please!” begged Betty and Alice in a chorus. “Please be president!”

Miss Ruth looked from one to another of the bright, excited faces, for a moment. “I will gladly be your president, and keep your work,—and do anything else you want me to,” she said, finally.

Elsa’s face flushed rosy with pleasure, and she gave little Alice a good hug. Betty dropped a warm kiss on Miss Ruth’s hair and said: “Then come back with us now to my house, because I invited the Club to meet there first.”

Ruth Warren was as good as her word: “I will go where the Club wants me to go,” she said, rising. “First of all, though, let me give you some plum buns which Sarah made this morning.”

“I know old Sarah’s plum buns; they are as good as she is cross,” said Betty, as Miss Ruth left the room.

“That’s not very polite, Betty,” said Alice.

“I don’t care. I am not very polite, anyway,” replied Betty quickly. “I tell the truth, though.”

“That sounds as if you thought other girls didn’t tell the truth!” exclaimed Elsa.

“It is pretty hard to, always,” said Alice slowly. “I try to, but sometimes the fib slips out first, and then it’s all the harder to get the truth out.”

“Mother always catches me if I don’t tell things straight,” confessed Betty.

“Papa used to tell me that the only thing he wanted me to be afraid of was of not telling the truth,” Elsa said, her face growing suddenly sad. Her father had died less than a year ago.

At that moment Miss Ruth came into the room with a large plateful of buns,—crisp and tempting and full of raisins,—and soon all three girls were eating with a relish, as children eat, just after school.

“Come!” said Betty, taking up her coat. “We ought to start.”

Alice and Elsa obligingly put on their coats, but Ruth Warren saw that they hesitated, and Betty as much as the others: there was yet a goodly pile of buns left.

“Fill your pockets, girls,” she said. “Sarah will be disappointed if you don’t eat all the buns.” So the three girls filled their pockets, and Alice said shyly: “I will take one to Ben if you don’t mind. O, thank you!”

“Who is Ben?” inquired Ruth Warren, as with a dark red golf cape over her black lace gown, she started forth with the girls for Betty’s home,—Betty hanging upon one arm, while Elsa and Alice walked on the other side.

“Ben is my twin brother,” Alice replied. “He’s ’most always hungry; mother says boys always are.”

“Three plum buns!” exclaimed Betty. Then she repeated in a comical, sing-song voice:

“Three plum buns!

One for you and one for me,

And one left over:

Give it to the boy who shouts

To scare sheep from the clover.”

“But Ben doesn’t scare sheep from the clover,—because we haven’t any sheep,” said Alice, very earnestly. “All we have is hens.”

“O, Alice,” cried Betty, “that is only poetry.”

“You do have hens then, Alice?” asked Miss Ruth quickly, seeing the child’s face redden.

“Yes, and Ben takes care of them, and he sells the eggs,” answered Alice proudly.

“They have the loveliest place,” said Betty, “a little hens’ house, and they raise lettuce and radishes and all sorts of good things to eat.”

“You see,” cried Alice, feeling that some explanation was necessary, and running a little ahead in her eagerness: “father isn’t very well, and he is a teacher, and he had to go out West for his health, and we can’t afford to go, too, and we all try to help earn money to help, because he doesn’t have much money. Besides Ben’s chickens, mother has a market-garden, and a hired man to help; and I help, too. Perhaps the Club will meet out at my house, sometimes.”

“We will surely have at least one meeting there,” said Miss Ruth, while Elsa’s eyes danced with pleasant anticipations.

Betty hurried ahead, ran up the steps of her home and threw open the door, her heart swelling with hospitality. “O mother!” she exclaimed, for Mrs. White was just passing through the hall; “Miss Ruth is going to belong to our Club!”

“This is good of you, Ruth,” said Mrs. White, greeting her neighbour cordially. “But you must not let the children trespass upon your time.”

Betty looked up in dismay: had they been asking too much of Miss Ruth?

“It will be such a new and refreshing kind of Club that I shall enjoy it,” said Ruth Warren reassuringly.

“It is good for us to dare to be children with children,” said Mrs. White, stroking Elsa’s soft hair and looking into the appealing violet-gray eyes that always brought a thrill of sympathy into her heart for the motherless child.

Elsa, meeting the kind glance, said very earnestly: “We are going to call the Club—”

“O, Elsa, you mustn’t tell! You will spoil it all,” cried Betty impatiently.

“Forgive my little Betty for her interruption, Elsa,” said Mrs. White, seeing the colour rush into Elsa’s face. “Fault-finding is an easy trade, Betty. But I suppose you children will all enjoy your Club more if you keep the name and what you do as a secret.”

Elsa looked up into Mrs. White’s kindly face and wondered if Betty realized how fortunate she was in having such a mother, who understood so well what little girls wanted.

“We are going to make—” began Betty.

“There, Betty, who is telling now!” said Mrs. White laughingly. “I am afraid I shall be learning your secrets if I stay any longer,” she added, turning away. “Be sure you don’t let the children bother you, Ruth.”

“No danger of that,” was the quick reply. And already, indeed, Ruth Warren’s face looked younger and happier. “Now, children, we must make our plans,” she continued, when they were all in the living-room. “It seems to me the meetings would better be at my house. You can come there on your way from school, and I will have everything ready,—our work and something to eat.”

“That will be better than meeting here,” said Betty instantly, “because the other children—Max and Janet—come home from the high school early and they might be around sometimes, and sometimes we should have to keep very quiet on account of the baby.”

“It would be a little nearer our house, too,” said Elsa, “and grandmother could see Miss Ruth’s house from the window, and maybe I could stay later than five o’clock sometimes.”

“And how would you like it, Alice?” asked Ruth Warren, turning to the fair-haired child who was usually the last speaker.

“O, I’d like ever and ever so much to have the Club meet at your house,” said Alice eagerly. “Ben can call for me to go home.”

“Then we have our name settled, and the place where we shall meet,” said Miss Ruth. “Next we must decide what to give the Convalescent Home children for Christmas.”

“Dolls!” cried Betty, from a big, square cushion on the floor.

“Dolls!” echoed Elsa, curled up on the wide sofa beside the two sleepy gray cats.

“Dolls,—different kinds, paper dolls and some rag dolls,” said Alice, her shabby little shoes sticking out straight ahead from the depths of the chair she had chosen.

“Rag dolls!” Betty tossed her head scornfully.

“Yes,—rag dolls, please,” urged Elsa.

“Some rag dolls, surely,” said Miss Ruth; “one of my dearest dolls was a black Dinah with a red dress and yellow ribbons on her woolly hair,—a homely-dear doll my grandmother made for me.”

“Did your grandmother make dolls for you?” asked Elsa in a low voice.

“Yes—but that was probably because somebody had made dolls for her when she was a little girl,” explained Miss Ruth.

“Dolls, then, it’s going to be,” said Betty. “We will all buy some dolls, and make dresses for them ourselves, at the Club meetings.”

Ruth Warren glanced at the children quickly. Elsa was daintily dressed in a soft, black gown with a fine-embroidered white guimpe; Betty had on a pretty blue-and-green Scotch plaid dress, with a simple muslin guimpe: the Danforths and the Whites were well-to-do people. But what about the Holts? The hem of Alice’s sailor-suit had been twice let down,—the careful pressing of the creases could not conceal the fact; her stocking-knees were closely darned, her shoes were shabby; and her story of how all the family worked to help earn money was undoubtedly true. If Betty and Elsa bought dolls, Alice might not be able to buy so many as they. So Miss Ruth said at once: “I will provide the dolls, and you may dress them. Each of you bring some pieces of pretty ginghams and wash-goods to me before next Friday, and I will have the dresses cut out and ready for you to begin on when you come to the Club meeting. Do you think you can make dresses for as many as two dozen dolls in all,—twenty-four dolls that will be, and eight apiece for you?”

“O, yes, yes!” came the chorus of answers.

“Then, sometime when the Club is sewing and we are tired of talking, I will tell you a story about a little old lady’s doll,” said Miss Ruth.

“O, tell it now!” urged Betty.

“Please!” “Please!” begged Elsa and Alice.

“The next time, perhaps,” said Miss Ruth, glancing up at the clock, whose hour-hand was fast approaching five, and shaking her head at Betty’s added “Please!”

“Don’t you think we ought to have a few boy dolls?” asked Alice. “Some of the convalescent children are boys, and Ben likes my boy dolls best.”

“Does Ben play with dolls?” asked Betty scornfully, rattling the tongs by the fireside.

“He used to when he was littler,” said Alice, “and he does sometimes now, when he has the sore throat and has to stay in the house. He doesn’t mind other boys knowing it, either,” she said, sitting up very straight in the deep chair, her blue eyes beaming with pride; “one of the boys teased him about it, and Ben ducked him into the frog-pond. Ben is different from other boys,” Alice explained, turning to Miss Ruth. “I think he would like to come to the Club sometimes.”

“We don’t want boys in our Club,” objected Betty, rising and walking around the room.

“But Ben isn’t like other boys,” said Elsa from her corner with the cats.

“Ben could often help us,” said Miss Ruth encouragingly; “there will be ever so much that a boy can do, especially toward Christmas-time.”

“Ben can sew, too,” said loyal Alice. She loved her twin brother heartily and wanted to have him in all her good times.

“Here comes Ben, now,” exclaimed Betty, catching sight of him from the window.

“He said he would call for me about five o’clock,” cried Alice, running with Betty to the front door.

Back they came in a moment, followed by a rosy-cheeked boy, taller than Alice but looking very much like her except that his big blue eyes sparkled with fun, while hers were dreamy and rather serious. Ben had on a short reefer jacket and knee trousers. In his red-mittened hands he held the round cap which he had pulled off from his close-cropped yellow hair.

“This is my twin brother,” said Alice, leading him forward to Miss Ruth.

“My name is Benjamin Franklin Holt,” said the boy, hastily pulling off his right-hand red mitten. His cheeks grew rosier than ever, as he bowed and shook hands with Miss Ruth, but he kept his eyes on her face in a manly fashion.

Ruth Warren liked the little fellow from that moment for his straightforward look. “We are glad to see you, Ben,” she said, “and we were just talking about your coming to the Club sometimes.”

“Are you going to have a Club? I might come when there isn’t anything else to do,” said Ben cheerfully.

“Ben!” exclaimed his sister.

“All right, Peggy. Yes, ma’am, thank you, I’d like to come sometimes.” Ben edged over to the sofa. The two gray cats jumped down when he began stroking them, and rubbed against his legs.

“Ben loves animals,” said Alice, with shining eyes.

“Alice told us you like to play dolls,” said Betty teasingly.

“I do, sometimes, when there isn’t anything better to do,” said Ben. He gave a funny side-glance at Miss Ruth out of his twinkling eyes as he added, straightening up his fine, sturdy little figure: “I ducked a boy in the frog-pond once for trying to tease me about dolls.”

Ruth Warren’s eyes laughed back into Ben’s, but she said very seriously: “I am sure you would not treat any of your sister’s friends in ungallant fashion.”

“That’s the trouble about girls,” replied Ben confidentially; “a boy can’t ever play fair with them, because they are girls.” One of the things which always delighted people with Ben was his extremely friendly and wise manner.

“You have not asked the name of our Club, Ben,” suggested Miss Ruth.

“Don’t tell him, please, until he really joins,” urged Betty.

“That will be time enough,” said Ben, carelessly but sweet-temperedly.

“I must go this minute!” cried Elsa, jumping up from the sofa and hurriedly putting on her coat, as the clock struck five. “Good-bye! good-bye! I’ve had a beautiful time. Thank you, Miss Ruth!” she called back as she darted out of the house.

Betty White’s musical voice—which seemed to belong with the shining brown hair and the fearless eyes—followed Miss Ruth and the Holt twins as they made their way down the front steps a few moments later: “We will run straight home from school to your house, Miss Ruth, for the Club meeting next Friday afternoon; and don’t forget the story.”

Alice and Ben walked the short distance homeward with Miss Ruth. Happy Alice chattered away about the Club: “I am so glad it is really started,” she said gleefully, as they stopped at the foot of the Warrens’ door-steps.

Ben whipped off his cap and stood bareheaded, looking up into Ruth Warren’s face. Something friendly in her eyes made him say: “You look as if you liked boys, Black Lace Lady.”

“I do like boys, Ben,” said Miss Ruth; and from that moment she and Ben were friends.

Ben, while she spoke, had been pulling Alice by the hand. “Come on, Peggy,” he cried now.

But Alice hung back long enough to call out: “Ben always has names for people. Good-bye!” Then the twins ran off together, hand in hand.

At half-past five Elsa Danforth sat at a side-table in the dining-room bay-window eating her bread-and-milk supper out of a gold-lined silver porringer. The soft light from the great, glowing chandelier in the dining-room fell upon the beautiful flowering plants and upon the little black-gowned figure sitting there among them, all alone. Elsa had begged the maid to leave the shades up,—it grew dark early these short November days,—and she glanced out every now and then through the twilight at the Warren house with happy thoughts in her heart. She almost felt as if she had company, for the house was so near and Miss Ruth had been so kind that afternoon.

Mrs. Danforth, the tall, stately lady whom Elsa called “grandmother”—never “grandmamma”—dined at half-past six, for, notwithstanding the solitude of her life since her husband, Judge Danforth, had died and she had come to live in this suburban town of Berkeley, she chose to keep up the formal New York way of living. She had late breakfasts always, so that when Elsa was attending school, the only times the two saw one another for more than a few moments were at luncheon, in the evening after Mrs. Danforth’s dinner was over and before Elsa’s bedtime, and on Sunday.

Elsa often felt very lonely, especially eating by herself. But she never complained; she never thought herself very large or important, and she was quite used to obeying her grandmother. Uncle Ned had said for her to do exactly as her grandmother wanted her to do; and if Uncle Ned had said this, it must be all right.

“Who are the children in your Club, Elsa, beside Elizabeth White?” asked Mrs. Danforth that evening. She and Elsa were sitting in the luxurious library. The chairs were upholstered in dark green velvet, the books on the tables and in the bookcases had rich bindings. Out of the library opened a long drawing-room furnished in cream colour and gold, and having beautiful inlaid cabinets full of treasures.

Mrs. Danforth was a handsome woman, very erect, with a broad white forehead, gray hair, heavy dark eyebrows, and keen blue eyes. She was dressed in a corded black silk, richly trimmed with lace and jet.

Elsa looked up from her book and answered: “The other member of the Club is Alice, and maybe her brother Ben is coming sometimes, grandmother.”

“What is their last name?” asked the grandmother quickly.

“Alice and Ben Bolt,” said Elsa.

“Nonsense, child,” replied Mrs. Danforth: she had a discouraging way of saying “Nonsense!” that made Elsa feel like a very small and silly child; “those are names from an old nursery ballad.”

“I am sure their names are Alice and Ben, anyway, grandmother,” said Elsa, pushing back the silky hair which had dropped forward, and looking steadily at her grandmother out of great, wide-open eyes.

“Probably those are not their real names,” replied Mrs. Danforth. She seemed rather troubled about something, Elsa thought. And then the child tried to remember if she had done anything her grandmother did not like.

Later, just before Elsa’s bedtime, Mrs. Danforth asked again: “What is the last name of the children you call Alice and Ben?”

“Bolt, or Holt, or Colt may be; I can’t remember,” answered Elsa, looking up from the pages of the “Swiss Family Robinson” and hoping her grandmother would not notice that the mantel clock was striking eight.

“Where do they live?”

“O, a mile away,” said Elsa. “And they have hens and a garden, and they raise radishes for the city market.”

“Are you sure they are proper children for you to associate with?”

“O, yes, grandmother,” said Elsa warmly. “Alice, especially, has beautiful manners; Betty says her mother especially likes to have her play with Alice.”

“I must speak to Mrs. White about it, to make sure,” said Mrs. Danforth, and Elsa’s face coloured sensitively, for she felt that her grandmother thought she was not telling the truth.

“Bedtime now, Elsa,” said Mrs. Danforth, the next moment. “Put away your book. And try to remember people’s names. It is something a lady always does.”

“Yes, grandmother,” said Elsa dutifully.

Almost any one, looking on, would have been surprised to see Elsa walk up to her grandmother and, instead of kissing her good night, put out her hand; and then to see Mrs. Danforth touch the slender, childlike hand for only a brief second with the tips of her jewelled fingers. But Elsa understood; long ago her grandmother had explained that she thought kissing was an unnecessary and foolish custom.

“Good night, Elsa. Remember to say your prayers.”

“Yes, grandmother. Good night.”

Elsa went slowly out of the room and up the polished stairs to her own room, which always seemed empty to her, with its white-papered walls, white bed, white furniture, curtains, even white frames on the pictures of Greek statuary and ruined temples.

Mrs. Danforth never thought of tucking Elsa into bed; and the child, as she hung her black dress over the chair to-night, shed a few tears—as she often did—over having to go to bed all alone in that white, white room where her little black dresses looked so black.

It seemed to Elsa that she had been wearing black dresses all her life. Three years ago her mother had died, then a year later her grandfather, Judge Danforth, died, and within the last twelve months, her father. Since her father’s death, her own pretty home had been broken up, her old nurse dismissed, and she had lived with her grandmother, at first in the great New York house, and now for three months amid new surroundings in Berkeley.

No wonder that the grief and the many changes and now the sober, quiet life with her grandmother in a new place, had made Elsa a sad-eyed, white-faced child. The late summer, after their coming to Berkeley, had been particularly lonely, for there had been nobody to play with. Since October, however, when the Whites had come back from their summer home, Elsa had been happier. Betty as near neighbour, had become Elsa’s special friend, and now she and Alice had also made friends.

When Elsa was ready for bed, in her long white nightgown, she turned off the electric light, put up the window-shades, and looked out toward the Warren house. “I wonder which is Miss Ruth’s room,” she whispered to herself. “Wish I dared to ask her, because if it’s on this side, I could look over sometimes, and feel as if I had company.”

With a little sigh, Elsa knelt down by her white bed and mumbled her prayer. Then, jumping up from her knees, she listened at the door. Not a sound from Cummings, her grandmother’s maid, who had the room next to Elsa’s, and who usually stayed down in the servants’ dining-room until nine o’clock. Everything was quiet. So Elsa went quickly over to the white bureau and pulling open the lower drawer, took from under a pile of playthings a rather small china doll in a faded pink dress, the red of whose cheeks had been almost entirely kissed off. With this doll hugged close in her arms, Elsa crept into bed.

On the white-cushioned couch between the windows sat a dignified row of dolls, seven in all, and all in good clothes. But better than any of these, Elsa loved her little old china doll which her own dear nurse had given her at parting and which Elsa had named for her nurse, Bettina. For some reason which Elsa did not try to explain to herself, she kept Bettina from the sight of her grandmother and especially from Cummings, the middle-aged woman who attended to Mrs. Danforth’s wardrobe and in what time there was left, made dresses for Elsa. Every morning when Elsa woke, the first thing she did, after pressing many loving kisses upon Bettina’s worn face, was to put her away under the pile of playthings in the lower drawer of the bureau.

Thinking about the Club made Elsa feel very wide awake. She began picturing to herself Betty White’s nursery-room with the bright scarlet geraniums, the strawberry-birds, and the pretty chintz cushions; and she hugged her doll the closer to take away the feeling of loneliness in her own dreary white room.

“Now, listen, Bettina, and try to learn our verses; and perhaps we can go to sleep,” said Elsa, beginning to whisper softly the cradle-song her father had taught her, not long before he died. Repeating these three verses every night meant more to Elsa than the prayer which she hurried through on her knees. And Bettina listened attentively, as dolls listen, while a voice said close to her ears:

“Dear Heart, Sweet Heart,

Time that little children

Creep into their mothers’ arms, to wait Sleep’s silent call;

Sweet Heart, Dear Heart,

All the little children

Must the Moon find sleeping when she mounts Heaven’s wall!

“Sweet Heart, Dear Heart,

Over little children,

As they dream their white, white dreams, the wings of Love are pressed;

Dear Heart, Sweet Heart,

They were little children

Whom the blessèd Child of Bethlehem lovèd best!

“Dear Heart, Sweet Heart,

All the little children

Come from Love, and go to Love, when life’s long day is done;

Sweet Heart, Dear Heart,

All are little children,

Hushed at last, on Nature’s bosom, one by one!”

And, as usually happened, when Elsa had said the last words, she fell fast asleep.

Down-stairs, Mrs. Danforth, putting aside her book, sat a long time deep in thought, her eyes shaded from the light. “Ben and Alice; Alice and Ben!” she kept repeating to herself. “Strange,—and the name, too, Holt, or Bolt;—yet it may be only that foolish old song. I must find out about it all.”

Finally, being a woman of strong will, she put the matter out of her mind, leaned back into the luxurious chair and went on reading her novel; while up-stairs, Elsa, the child who bore no shadow of resemblance to her in looks or ways, fell asleep with wet eyelashes.

Mrs. Danforth had every intention of being kind to Elsa. She provided suitable and pretty frocks and the daintiest of underwear for the child; she paid careful attention to Elsa’s education, her manners and her companions. The one thing she failed to give the child was the unbounded love which little fatherless and motherless Elsa needed more than anything else in the world.

In many ways Mrs. Danforth was proud of Elsa,—proud of her straight, naturally graceful figure, her spirited bearing, her wonderfully beautiful hair and eyes. Mrs. Danforth was a proud woman, and she enjoyed the thought that the little girl whom she called grandchild was well worthy of the name. She had never really cared for any child except her own daughter; but that was a sad story of long ago.

There was a definite reason why Mrs. Danforth did not give more affection to Elsa, just as there was a definite purpose back of her coming to live in Berkeley. This purpose, however, Mrs. Danforth was slow in carrying out, being a proud-spirited woman. To her many New York friends she explained her removal to Berkeley upon the ground that the quiet, suburban town, with its cultured people and its good schools, was a better place than New York City for Elsa to live in during the years of her young girlhood.

CHAPTER II
PRINCE GRAY OWL

Forth he set in the breezy morn,

Across green fields of nodding corn,

As goodly a Prince as ever was born.

—Christina Rossetti.

Where every wind and leaf can talk,

But no man understand

Save one whose child-feet chanced to walk

Green paths of fairyland.

—Sophie Jewett.

“THE children are late,” said Miss Ruth to Sarah who, soon after three o’clock the next Friday afternoon, came into the library with a large plate piled high with ginger cookies cut into shapes of animals,—horses, cats, dogs, giraffes, and elephants.

“Like as not they have given up wantin’ to have a club,” snapped Sarah, shutting her mouth as if she had bitten off the words. “Children nowadays are spoilt with havin’ such a lot done for ’em.” Sarah looked disappointed, however; she had spent a long time in making those cookies.

Sarah Judd was the only servant in the Warren household, and she had lived in the family a long time. Whenever Ruth Warren said anything to her about having a younger woman to help, Sarah always shook her head until the corkscrew side-curls fairly bobbed up and down and answered: “No, madam: if you have anybody else come to work for you, I go!” As old Sarah understood perfectly the ways and wishes of Miss Virginia Warren, Ruth’s aunt, Ruth kept the cross-spoken servant, who was in reality a kind-hearted woman.

Ruth Warren had learned the wisdom of silence when Sarah made scolding remarks; so now she kept on cutting out dresses for the rows and rows of dolls,—big and little dolls, blond-haired and black-haired, waxen-headed and china-headed, blue-eyed, gray-eyed, black-eyed,—two of each kind and twenty-four in all, lying there on the centre-table.

Sarah lingered in the room, brushing a little dust from the table with the corner of her white apron. “What a handsome lot of doll-babies,” she said after a moment; “I hope the children will come. I thought at first that havin’ ’em come would make an awful sight of dust an’ crumbs; but I can sweep Saturday mornin’s instead of Fridays, an’ it’s kinder nice to hear children ’round, a-talkin’ an’ a-laughin’, as fast as a sewin’-machine. Bless my heart, here they come now, a-hurryin’ along!” Sarah dodged behind the curtain and looked out over the tops of her spectacles. “Ain’t they cunnin’ little things!” she exclaimed, “comin’ along with their arms twined ’round one another, an’ that lively Betty White in the middle!”

As Sarah turned from behind the window-curtain to answer the quick ring of the front door-bell, she said anxiously: “If they eat all the animals in the plate, I have got some more plain cookies they can have.”

A moment later Sarah led the three girls into the library, her side-curls bobbing with excitement.

“O, look at those cookies!” cried Betty, after she had greeted Miss Ruth. “Good old Sarah must have made them.” And Sarah vanished from the doorway with a smile which made her thin, dry face seem suddenly to have cracked.