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“No,” Uncle Peter said. “I took my gun and hunted all round the place, but I couldn’t find him. I saw some more of his tracks. He’d gone on north, farther into the Big Woods.”
Alice and Ella and Mary were all wide awake now, and Laura put her head under the covers and whispered to Alice, “My! weren’t you scared?”
Alice whispered back that she was scared, but Ella was scareder. And Ella whispered that she wasn’t, either, any such thing.
“Well, anyway, you made more fuss about being thirsty,” Alice whispered.
They lay there whispering about it till Ma said: “Charles, those children never will get to sleep unless you play for them.” So Pa got his fiddle.
The room was still and warm and full of firelight. Ma’s shadow, and Aunt Eliza’s and Uncle Peter’s were big and quivering on the walls in the flickering firelight, and Pa’s fiddle sang merrily to itself.
It sang “Money Musk,” and “The Red Heifer,” “The Devil’s Dream,” and “Arkansas Traveler.” And Laura went to sleep while Pa and the fiddle were both softly singing:
“My darling Nelly Gray, they have taken you away,
And I’ll never see my darling anymore.”
In the morning they all woke up almost at the same moment. They looked at their stockings, and something was in them. Santa Claus had been there. Alice and Ella and Laura in their red flannel nightgowns and Peter in his red flannel nightshirt, all ran shouting to see what he had brought.
In each stocking there was a pair of bright red mittens, and there was a long, flat stick of red-and-white-striped peppermint candy, all beautifully notched along each side.
They were all so happy they could hardly speak at first. They just looked with shining eyes at those lovely Christmas presents. But Laura was happiest of all. Laura had a rag doll.
She was a beautiful doll. She had a face of white cloth with black button eyes. A black pencil had made her eyebrows, and her cheeks and her mouth were red with the ink made from pokeberries. Her hair was black yarn that had been knit and raveled, so that it was curly.
She had little red flannel stockings and little black cloth gaiters for shoes, and her dress was pretty pink and blue calico.
She was so beautiful that Laura could not say a word. She just held her tight and forgot everything else. She did not know that everyone was looking at her, till Aunt Eliza said:
“Did you ever see such big eyes!”
The other girls were not jealous because Laura had mittens, and candy, and a doll, because Laura was the littlest girl, except Baby Carrie and Aunt Eliza’s little baby, Dolly Varden. The babies were too small for dolls. They were so small they did not even know about Santa Claus. They just put their fingers in their mouths and wriggled because of all the excitement.
Laura sat down on the edge of the bed and held her doll. She loved her red mittens and she loved the candy, but she loved her doll best of all. She named her Charlotte.
Then they all looked at each other’s mittens, and tried on their own, and Peter bit a large piece out of his stick of candy, but Alice and Ella and Mary and Laura licked theirs, to make it last longer.
“Well, well!” Uncle Peter said. “Isn’t there even one stocking with nothing but a switch in it? My, my, have you all been such good children?”
But they didn’t believe that Santa Claus could, really, have given any of them nothing but a switch. That happened to some children, but it couldn’t happen to them. It was so hard to be good all the time, every day, for a whole year.
“You mustn’t tease the children, Peter,” Aunt Eliza said.
Ma said, “Laura, aren’t you going to let the other girls hold your doll?” She meant, “Little girls must not be so selfish.”
So Laura let Mary take the beautiful doll, and then Alice held her a minute, and then Ella. They smoothed the pretty dress and admired the red flannel stockings and the gaiters, and the curly woolen hair. But Laura was glad when at last Charlotte was safe in her arms again.
Pa and Uncle Peter had each a pair of new, warm mittens, knit in little squares of red and white. Ma and Aunt Eliza had made them.
Aunt Eliza had brought Ma a large red apple stuck full of cloves. How good it smelled! And it would not spoil, for so many cloves would keep it sound and sweet.
Ma gave Aunt Eliza a little needle-book she had made, with bits of silk for covers and soft white flannel leaves into which to stick the needles. The flannel would keep the needles from rusting.
They all admired Ma’s beautiful bracket, and Aunt Eliza said that Uncle Peter had made one for her—of course, with different carving.
Santa Claus had not given them anything at all. Santa Claus did not give grown people presents, but that was not because they had not been good. Pa and Ma were good. It was because they were grown up, and grown people must give each other presents.
Then all the presents must be laid away for a little while. Peter went out with Pa and Uncle Peter to do the chores, and Alice and Ella helped Aunt Eliza make the beds, and Laura and Mary set the table, while Ma got breakfast.
