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Billy's Santa Claus Experience |
By |
Cornelia Redmond |
Of course I don't believe in any such person as Santa Claus, but Tommy does. Tommy is my little brother, aged six. Last Christmas I thought I'd make some fun for the young one by playing Santa Claus, but as always happens when I try to amuse anybody I jes' got myself into trouble. |
I went to bed pretty early on Christmas Eve so as to give my parents a chance to get the presents out of the closet in mamma's room, where they had been locked up since they were bought. I kep' my clo'es on except my shoes, and put my nightgown over them so as I'd look white if any of them came near me. Then I waited, ... |
I kep' on pinchin' myself and waitin' for a time, and then when I was sure that everybody was asleep I got up. The first thing I went into was my sister's room and got her white fur rug that mamma gave her on her birthday, and her sealskin cape that was hanging on the closet door. I tied the cape on my head with shoest... |
I hurt my fingers some opening the scuttle, but kept right on. It was snowing hard and I stood and let myself get pretty well covered with flakes. Then I crawled over to the chimney that went down into our room and climbed up on top of it. I had brought my bicycle lantern with me and I lighted it so as Tommy could see ... |
There did not seem to be any places inside the chimney where I could hold on by my feet, but the ceiling in our room was not very high and I had often jumped most as far, so I jes' let her go, and I suppose I went down. Anyway, I did not know about anything for a long time. Then I woke up all in the dark with my head f... |
"Those must be sparrers that are making that noise in the chimney. Jes' touch a match to the wood in the boys' fireplace." |
I heard papa strike a light and then the wood began to crackle. Then, by jinks! it began to get hot and smoky and I screamed: |
"Help! Murder! Put out that fire lest you want to burn me up!" |
Then I heard papa stamping on the wood and mamma calling out: |
"Where's Billy? Where is my chile?" |
Next Tommy woke up and began to cry and everything was terrible, specially the pains all over me. Then papa called out very stern: |
"William, if you are in that chimney come down at once!" and I answered, cryin', that I would if I could, but I was stuck and couldn't. |
Then I heard papa gettin' dressed, and pretty soon he and John from the stable went up on the roof and let down ropes what I put around me and they hauled me up. |
It was jes' daylight and I was all black and sooty and scratched and my arm was broken. |
Everybody scolded me excep' mamma. I had spoiled my sister's white rug and broken all of Tommy's toys, and the snow what went in through the scuttle melted and marked the parlor ceiling, besides I guess it cost papa a good deal to get my arm mended. Nobody would believe that I had jes' meant to make some fun for Tommy,... |
<eob> |
Bunny Brown And His Sister Sue And Their Shetland Pony |
By |
Laura Lee Hope |
Chapter I |
In The Ark |
"Oh, Bunny! Here comes Bunker Blue!" |
"Where is he? I don't see him!" |
Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue were playing on the shady side porch of their house one morning, when the little girl, looking up from a cracker box which had been made into a bed -- where she was putting her doll to sleep -- saw a tall boy walking up the path. |
"There's Bunker!" went on Sue to her brother, Bunny, at the same time pointing. "Maybe he's come to take us for a ride in one of daddy's fishing boats!" |
"Have you, Bunker?" asked Bunny, standing up and brushing some shavings from his little jacket, for he had been using a dull kitchen knife, trying to whittle out a wooden boat from a piece of curtain stick. "Oh, Bunker, have you?" |
"Have I what?" asked the tall boy, who worked on the dock where Mr. Brown, the father of Bunny and Sue, carried on a boat and fish business. "Have I what?" Bunker asked again, and he stood still and gazed at the two small children who were anxiously looking at him. |
"Have you come to take us for a ride?" asked Bunny. |
"In one of daddy's boats?" added Sue, who generally waited for her brother to speak first, since he was a year older than she. |
"Not this time, messmates," answered Bunker Blue with a laugh, calling the children the name one sailor sometimes gives to another. "Not this time messmates. I've come up to get the ark." |
"Oh, the ark!" cried Bunny. "Did you hear that, Sue? Bunker has come up to get the ark!" |
"Oh! Oh!" and Sue fairly squealed in delight. "Then we'll have a nice ride in that. Wait, Bunker, till I put my doll away, and I'll come with you. Wait for me!" |
"And I'll come, too," added Bunny. "I can bring my boat with me. 'Tisn't all done yet," he added, "but I can whittle on it when we ride along, and then I can sail it when we get to the dock." |
"Now avast there and belay, messmates!" cried Bunker Blue with a laugh, using some more of the kind of talk he heard among the sailors that came to Mr. Brown's dock with boats of fish. "Wait a minute! I didn't say I had come to give you a ride in the ark. I just came to get it." |
"But you will let us ride, won't you, Bunker?" asked Bunny, smiling at the tall boy. |
"'Cause we'll sit just as still as anything," added Sue. |
"And I won't touch the steering wheel -- not once!" promised Bunny. |
"I guess you'd better not -- not after you once got almost run away with in the big ark," said Bunker. "I should say not!" |
"Oh, please let us come with you!" begged Sue. "We want awful much to ride in the ark, Bunker!" |
While the two children were talking to the tall boy another little girl had crawled under the fence from the street, and was now standing near Bunny and his sister. She was Sadie West, one of Sue's chums, and when she heard Bunny's sister begging for a ride in the "ark" Sadie said: |
"Oh, Sue! is he going to take your Noah's ark away? I wouldn't let him if I were you!" |
"It isn't Noah's ark at all," Sue explained. "We call the big automobile, that we had such a long ride in, the ark. It looks a little like a Noah's ark, but it's bigger, and we can all get in it," she added. |
"Oh!" exclaimed Sadie. "I thought Bunker meant he was going to take your little ark, and all the wooden animals, away," she added. |
"Not this time," said Bunker Blue. "Your father sent me up, Bunny, to get the big auto -- the ark, as you call it. It's got to be fixed, and I'm to drive it to the shop over at East Milford. That's why I came up. Where's your mother? I want to tell her I'm taking away the ark, so she won't think some tramps or some gyp... |
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