done, she said impressively, “Oh, I hope he has n’t heard you! He never would come to this house as long as he lives! And I could n’t bear for us to find just empty stockings Christmas morning!”
There was a tense silence. And then, still on her knees, her hands still clasped over the letter, she moved a few inches nearer the fireplace. The next instant Will’m heard her call imploringly up the chimney, “Oh, dear Santa Claus, if you ’re up there looking down, please don’t mind what Will’m said. He ’s so little he does n’t know any better. Please forgive him and send us what weask for, for Jesus’ sake, Amen!"
Fascinated, Will’in watched the letter flutter up past the flames, drawn by the strong draft of the flue, Then suddenly shamed by the thought that he had been publicly prayed for, out loud and in the daytime, he ran to cast himself on the old lounge, face downward among the cushions.
Libby herself felt a trifle constrained after her unusual performance, and to cover her embarrassment seized the hearth broom and vigorously swept up the scraps of half-dried mud which she had tracked in a little while before. Then she stood and drummed on the window-pane a long time, looking out into the dusk which always came so surprisingly fast these short winter days, almost the very moment after the sun dropped down behind the cedar-trees,
It was a relief to both children when Grandma Neal came in with a lighted lamp. Her cheerful call to know who was going to help her set the supper-table, gave Will’m an excuse to spring up from the lounge cushions and face his little world once more in a natural and matter-of-course way. He felt safer out in the bright warm kitchen. No stern, displeased eye could possibly peer at him around the bend of that black, shining stove-pipe. There was comfort in the savory steam puffing out from under the lid of the stew-pan on the stove. There was reassurance in the clatter of the knives and forks and dishes which he and Libby put noisily in place on the table. But when Grandma Neal started where she had left off, to finish the story of the camels and the star, he interrupted quickly to ask instead for the tale of Goldilocks and the three bears. The Christmas spirit had gone out of him. He could not listen to the story of the star. It lighted the way not only of the camel caravan, but of the sky road, too, and he did n’t want to be reminded of that sky road now. He was fearful that a cold displeasure might be filling the throat of the sitting-room chimney. If Santa Claus had happened to be listening when he called him a mean old thing, then had he ruined not only his own chances, but Libby’s, too. That fear followed him all evening. It made him vaguely uncomfortable. Even when they sat down to supper it did something to his appetite, for the dumpling stew did not taste as good as usual.
Chapter II
AN ADVENTURE AND A LETTER
It was several days before Will’m lost that haunting fear of having displeased the great power up
the chimney past all forgiveness. It began to leave him gradually as Libby grew more and more sure of her own state of favor. She was so good in school now that even the teacher said nobody could be better, no matter how hard he tried. She stayed every day to help clean the blackboards and collect the pencils. She never missed a syllable or stepped off the line in spelling class, nor asked for a drink in lesson time. And she and Maudie Peters had made it up between them not to whisper a single word until after Christmas, She was sure now that even if Santa Claus had overheard Will’m, her explanation that he was too little to know any better had made it all right.It is probable, too, that Will’m’s state of body helped his state of mind, for about this time his cold was well enough for him to play out of doors, and the thought of stars and angels and silver bells began to be agreeable again. They gave him that big, warm feeling inside again: the Christmas feeling of good-will to everybody.
Que morning, he was sitting up on a post of the side-yard fence, when the passenger train number four came rushing into the station, and was switched back on a side-track right across the road from him, It was behind time, and had to wait there for orders, or till the Western Flier passed it, or for some such reason. It was a happy morning for Will’m. There was nothing he enjoyed so much as having one of these long Pullman trains stop where he could watch it. Night after night, he and Libby had flattened their faces against the sitting-room window to watch the seven o’clock Limited pass by. Through its brilliantly lighted windows they loved to see the passengers at dinner. The white tables with their gleam of glass and shine of silver and glow of shaded lights seemed wonderful to them. More wonderful still was it to be eating as unconcernedly as if one were at home, with the train jiggling the tables while it leaped across the country at its highest speed. The people who could do such things must be wonderful too.
There were times when passengers, flattening their faces against the glass to see why the train had stopped, caught the gleam of a cheerful home window across the road, and, holding shielding