Neighborhood Stories

“Merry Christmas!” Mis’ Holcomb says over like she hadn’t any strength. Then all of a sudden she stood up.

“Stubby,” she says, “you run out a minute, will you? You run over to the grocery and wait for me there a minute – quick. I’ll see to your package.”

He went when she said that.

And swift as a flash, before I could think at all what she meant, Mis’ Holcomb laid Stubby’s present down by her suit-case, and wheeled around and whipped two packages out of her shopping-bag, and faced the line of Friendship Village folks drawn up there to the window, taking their turns.

“Everybody!” she says, loud enough so’s they all heard her, “I’ve got more Christmas presents than I need. I’ll auction off some of ’em – all hand-made – to anybody that’s short of presents. I’ll show ’em to you. Come here and look at ’em, and make a bid.”

They looked at her for a minute, perfectly blank; and she was beginning to undo one of ’em… And then all of a sudden I see her plan, what it was; and I walked right over beside of her.

“Don’t you leave her undo ’em!” I calls out. “It’s for Stubby Mosher,” I says, “that can’t go, after all, to his mother in the Wooster Hospital, that’s going to die – count of his brother not sending him the money. She can’t get well – we know that since last week. They’s only forty-six cents in Sodality treasury. Let’s us buy Mis’ Holcomb’s presents that she’s made and is willing to auction off! Unsight-unseen let us buy ’em! I bid fifty cents.”

The line had kind of wavered and broke, and was looking away from itself towards us. The man at the window had stopped weighing and had his head close up, looking out.

Everybody was hushed dumb for a minute. Then it kind of got to Mis’ Wiswell – that’s had so much trouble that things ’most always get to her easy – and she says out:

“Oh, land! Is it? Why, I bid seventy-five then.”

“Eighty!” says I, reckless, to egg her on.

Then Libby Liberty kind of come to, and bid ninety, though everybody knew the most she has is egg-money – and finally it, whatever it was, went to Mis’ Wiswell for a dollar.

“Is it a present would do for ladies?” she says, when she made her final bid. “I donno, though, as that matters. One dollar!”

Well, then Mis’ Holcomb up with another present, and Mis’ Merriman started that one, and though dazed a little yet – some folks daze so terrible easy if you go off an inch from their stamping-ground! – the rest of us, including Abigail Arnold that hadn’t ought to have bid at all, got that one up to another dollar, and it went to Mis’ Merriman for that. But the next package stuck at fifty cents – not from lack of willingness, I know, but from sheer lack of ways – and it was just going at that when I whispered to Mis’ Holcomb:

“What’s in this one?”

“Towel with crochet work set in each end and no initial,” she says.

“Really?” says a voice behind me.

And there was the young lady in blue, with the ermine and the roses. And I see all of a sudden that she didn’t look to be laughing at us at all, but her eyes were bright, and she was kind of flushed up, and it come to me that she would have bidded before, only she was sort of watching us – mebbe because she thought we were quaint. But I didn’t have time to bother with that thought much, not then.

“I’ll give two dollars for that,” she says.

“Done!” says Mis’ Holcomb, real auctioneer-like, and with her cheeks red, and her hat on one ear, and her hand going up and down. “Now this one – who’ll bid on this one?” says she, putting up another. “How much for this? How much – ”

“How much is the fare to where he’s going?” says somebody else strange, and there was the youngish fellow speaking, that was with her with the roses.

“Seven-ten round trip to Wooster,” says Mis’ Holcomb, instant.

“Why, then, I bid three-ten for whatever you have there,” he says laughing.

But Mis’ Holcomb, instead of flaming up because now the whole money for Stubby’s fare was raised, just stood there looking at that youngish man, mournful all over her face.

“It’s a hand-embroidered dressing-sack,” she says melancholy. “You don’t never want that!”

“Yes – yes, I do,” he says, still laughing, “yes, I do. It’s a straight bid.”

“Oh, my land!” says Mis’ Holcomb, her voice slipping, “then we’ve got it. We’ve got it all right here!”

But while she was a-saying it, a big, deep voice boomed out all over her and the rest that was exclaiming.

“Ticket to where?” says the private-Santa-Claus-looking man in the fur coat.

“Wooster, this state,” says I, being Mis’ Holcomb was almost speechless.

“Well, now,” says the private Santa Claus, “don’t we go pretty close to Wooster? Where’s that map we wore out? Well, I know we go pretty close to Wooster. Why can’t we take your Master Stubby to Wooster in the car? We’re going on to-night – if we ever get to that general-delivery window,” he ends in a growl.

And that was the time the line made way – the line that never moves for no one. And the Santa Claus man went up and got his mail.

And while he was a-doing it, I run out after Stubby, setting on a barrel in the grocery, happy with three cranberries they’d give him. And as I come back in the door with him, I see Mis’ Holcomb just showing his rose to the young lady with the ermine and the roses. And then I see for sure by the young lady’s eyes that she wasn’t the way I’d thought she was – laughing at us. Why, her eyes were as soft and understanding as if she didn’t have a cent to her name. And I donno but more so.

“Oh, father,” I heard her say, “I’m glad we came in for the mail ourselves! What if we hadn’t?”

And I concluded I didn’t mind that word quaint half as much as I thought I did.

Every last one of the line went out of the post-office to see Stubby off, and the man at the window, he came too. They had a big warm coat they put the little boy into, and we wrapped up his rose and put that in the car, so’s it would get there sooner and save the postage, same time, and they tucked him away as snug as a bug in a rug, his little face just shining out for joy.

“Oh, and you can buy your presents back now,” says Libby Liberty to Mis’ Holcomb right in the middle of it.

“No, sir,” says Mis’ Holcomb, proud. “A bargain is a bargain, and I made mine.” And then she thought of something. “Oh,” she says, leaning forward to the window of the car, “don’t you want to sell your presents back again?”

“No!” they all told her together. “We made a straight bid, you know.”

“Then,” says Mis’ Holcomb, “let’s us give Stubby the money to put in his pocket and take the one-way fare to his mother!”

And that was what they done. And the big car rolled off down Daphne Street, with Stubby in it going like a king.

And when we all got back in the post-office, what do you s’pose? There was the crocheted towel and the hand-embroidered dressing-sack slipped back all safe into Mis’ Holcomb’s shopping-bag!

But she wouldn’t take the other things back – she would not, no matter what Mis’ Wiswell and Mis’ Merriman said.

“I can crochet a couple of things to-morrow like lightning,” says Mis’ Holcomb. “You don’t want me to be done out of my share in Stubby’s Christmas, do you?” she asks ’em.

And we all stood there, talking and laughing and going over it and clean forgetting all about the United States mails, till the man at the window called out:

“ ‘Leven minutes and a quarter before the mail closes!”

We all started back to the window, but nobody could remember just exactly where anybody was standing before, and they all wanted everybody to go up first and step in ahead of them. And the line, instead of being a line with some of ’em ahead of others and all trying to hurry, was just a little group, with each giving everybody their turn, peaceful and good-willing. And all of a sudden it was like Christmas had come, up through all the work and the stitches, and was right there in the Friendship Village post-office with us.

“Goodness!” says Mis’ Holcomb in my ear, “I was wore to the bone getting ready my Christmas things. But now I’m real rested.”

“So am I,” I says.

And so was every one of us, I know, falling back into line there by the window. All rested, and not feeling hurried nor nothing: only human.