J INNIE! Vir-r-rginia-a-a! You ‘Jin’! If you’re not here in a minute, I’ll whip you within an inch of your life!”
It was the shrill voice of Mrs. Tyke. Down from some mysterious part of the recesses of the house it came with the force and precision of a rifle-ball, through the narrow hall and open door to the ears of Jinnie, who was scrubbing the front steps.
Why Mrs. Tyke desired that the steps and the pavement should be scrubbed upon that cold and dismal December morning cannot be imagined. Probably she herself could not have given a reason for it if she had been asked. The bricks looked very clean and wholesome before the work began, and the marble steps were almost painfully white. Now, the pavement was covered with a film of ice upon which pedestrians slipped and were provoked to anger, and the steps were positively so icy as to be unfit for use.
312 The voice of Mrs. Tyke gave fresh impetus to the arm of the child, who was just giving a few finishing wipes to the uppermost step. She was a little child, surely not more than eight years of age. As she knelt upon the marble, rather painful prominence was given to a pair of shoes which might once have been the property of Mrs. Tyke herself, but which were now worn, as forlorn and riddled wrecks, upon feet which were stockingless. The thin little legs above the leather ruins were blue with cold, and the tiny arms which wielded the wiping-cloth with accelerated speed were bare and chapped to redness.
If it was an offence to cover a pavement with ice upon such a morning, it was a bitter wrong to compel a little child so poorly clad to perform the work.
Before Jinnie had replaced her cloth in her bucket, Mrs. Tyke appeared in the doorway with anger in her face. She took hold of one of the child’s ears with her coarse fingers and pulled her into the hallway head foremost with as much force as if she had been shot out of a catapult. Then Mrs. Tyke, with a vigorous hand, boxed the ear that she had pulled, cuffed the other ear, impartially, knocking the child against the wall.
“I’ll teach you to mind me when I call you! Pottering and fooling with your work! Now you go right out into the yard and scrub those bricks313 in a jiffy, or you’ll know how the broom-handle feels.”
Mrs. Tyke was going to have the back-yard scrubbed also. Why Mrs. Tyke did not scrub the four walls of the house, and the roof, and the chimney flues and the fence, and why she did not scrub the cobble-stones in the street, is an impenetrable secret.
Jinnie picked up the bucket, and went staggering through the hall, into the kitchen, with a feeling that her head might at any moment tumble off, as a result of Mrs. Tyke’s blows, and roll upon the floor. She refilled her bucket at the hydrant, and began her work with a vigor that promised to make Mrs. Tyke’s back-yard within a few moments a fit place for skaters.
Just before the work was done, Mrs. Tyke appeared at the window with her bonnet on, and in a severe tone gave Jinnie some directions respecting the preparation of dinner during her absence. Then Mrs. Tyke withdrew, and just as the front door slammed Jinnie saw the head of a child appear over the top of the partition fence, between the yards of Mrs. Tyke and Mrs. Brown.
Young Miss Brown watched Jinnie putting away the scrubbing implements, and when Jinnie drew near to the fence with an apparent purpose to have some conversation, the little Brown said:
“It’ll pretty soon be Christmas, now.”
314 “Will it?” said Jinnie, without manifesting any trace of interest in the fact.
“Yes, and Kris Kingle is coming to our house. Mamma said so. Does Kris Kingle come to your house on Christmas?”
“Nobody ever comes to our house but the milkman. He is not Kris Kingle, is he?”
“Oh, no! Don’t you hang up your stockings on Christmas eve?”
“I have no stockings to hang up.”
“Where does Kris Kingle put all your pretty things, then?”
“He don’t bring me any. Who is Kris Kingle?”
“Why, don’t you know? He comes in a sleigh full of toys, pulled by reindeer, and—”
“Where does he come from? Ohio?”
“I guess so. But he comes down the chimbley every night before Christmas, and—”
“I expect our chimbley must be too little. Or maybe he don’t know we live here.”
“Oh, he knows where everybody lives; all the little children.”
“I’m so sorry he forgets me! Maybe it’s because I have no stockings! Oh, I wish, I wish I had!”
“Won’t Mrs. Tyke lend you one of hers?”
“I’m afraid to ask her. I wonder would Kris Kingle come if I put a bucket there for him?”
“I never heard of his giving toys in a bucket.315 If he gave you a large doll maybe he would. Have you got a large doll?”
“I never had any doll. I made one once out of a dust brush and some rags, but Mrs. Tyke whipped me and took it away. If I had a real doll I’d be so happy that I couldn’t stand it.”
“If Mrs. Tyke whipped you for it that would keep you from being too happy, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you ask your mamma to write to Kris Kingle to come?”
“I never had a mamma; and no father, either. I was born in an asylum, and Mrs. Tyke always says it’s a pity I was ever.”
“Maybe he’d come if you’d pray to get him.”
“I only know ‘Now I lay me.’ I learned it at the asylum; but I daren’t say it out loud any more.”
“I don’t know what we can do about it, then.”
Jinnie began to cry; but suddenly remembering the imminent probability of Mrs. Tyke’s return, she wiped her eyes with a rag of her dress, and said,—
“Good-bye; I must go in now. I have to get dinner.”
So she ran into the kitchen, and the head of the youthful Brown slowly descended until it was eclipsed by the fence.
Jinnie went to work to prepare the vegetables316 for dinner, with her poor little brain in such a stir of excitement about Kris Kingle and the possibility of his remembering her or forgetting her, that she could hardly keep her mind upon the task that her hands were doing; but she was recalled from her dreams by the sound of Mrs. Tyke’s step in the hall; and as Mrs. Tyke perceived that she had not been very industrious, Mrs. Tyke promptly boxed her ears. She fell to the floor, and then Mrs. Tyke kicked her two or three times. This energetic treatment effectively dispelled all of Jinnie’s visions of Kris Kingle. She had rarely had any information upon which to build pleasant thoughts of what life might have been to her; and now when her little mind was taking its first flight into those realms of imagination wherein so many of the forlorn of earth find at least a taste of happiness, the red and vigorous hand of Mrs. Tyke hurled her back once more into the dreary and dreadful reality of life.
For the rest of the day Jinnie hurried through her myriad duties with a tremulous fear upon her that if she should dare even to think of that mysterious being who loved the little children she might invoke still further blows. The blows came at any rate, more than once, despite her carefulness; but that was always a part of her experience, and she bore them perhaps a little better now because she was looking forward with a faint317 suggestion of happiness to the night, when she should lie beneath the scant covering of her bed, and think without fear of harm of the reindeer and sleigh and the toys of the kind old man, who might perhaps not forget her this time.
When supper-time came Mrs. Tyke ordered her to go to the baker’s for bread. The shop to which she had been accustomed to go was closed, for some reason, and Jinnie sought another, upon another street. On her way home through the dusky thoroughfare she came suddenly upon a show-window brilliantly lighted, and filled with childish splendors belonging to the Christmas season.
She had never seen so many beautiful things before. There were toys of all kinds, some of which she understood and some of which were all the more fascinating for the mystery that surrounded them. There were wagons and horses, and miniature tea-sets, and pop-guns, and baby houses, and jumping-jacks, and railroad cars, and tin steamboats, and make-believe soldier caps; and these were mingled with clusters of glass balls of various colors, which glittered in the gaslight in a most wonderful manner. But the glory of the window was a huge waxen doll dressed as a bride, in pure white, with a veil and a wreath and the loveliest satin dress. She had real golden hair and the softest blue eyes, that stared and stared as though they were looking into some other surprising show-window over the way.
318 Jinnie trembled when she saw this marvellous doll. She had no idea that anybody ever wore such wonderful clothing as that. She had never dreamed that anything could be so beautiful. She thought she would be perfectly happy if she could stand there and gaze at it during the remainder of her life. Oh, if Kris Kingle would come and leave her such a doll as that! No, that could not be; it was impossible that she should ever have such a joyful experience. But maybe he might bring her a doll like some of the smaller and less splendid ones which surrounded the bride in swarms. Yes, she would be satisfied with the very poorest one of them. She would hide it somewhere, under her bed covering, perhaps, where Mrs. Tyke could not see it, but where she could find it and kiss it and hug it and take it close in her arms when she went to sleep at night.
The thought of Mrs. Tyke came to her like a blow in the midst of her delight. She remembered that she must hurry homeward, and so taking a last, long look she turned and ran along the pavement, her heart filled with a wild, passionate longing that Kris Kingle would come to her and bring her something she could love.
Of course Mrs. Tyke greeted her with angry words and two or three savage thumps. She expected that. But Mrs. Tyke was not content with this. When she sat down to supper she told Jinnie319 that as she had been unusually idle and bad that day she should go hungry to bed. Then Mrs. Tyke ate a particularly hearty meal, with the child watching her; and when she had finished she sat by, growling and threatening, while Jinnie cleared away the tea-things preparatory to being marched off to bed.
Jinnie missed her supper sadly, but she did not mind the hunger so much on that night, for her mind was busy with new delights.
It was dark in her room, but she knew where the chimney was; and before she undressed she went over and felt it. There was a hole there for a stove-pipe, but it had paper pasted over it.
“Perhaps,” said Jinnie, “Kris Kingle did not come because the hole was shut.”
He would not come down the chimney and out into the dining-room, she knew, because he would have to go through the stove; and that would burn him, and his toys, too, perhaps. She thought it might be an inducement for him to come if she should punch a hole through the paper. She was afraid to tear it off, afraid of Mrs. Tyke’s vengeance; so she pushed her finger through it. Then she undressed, and went hopefully to her bed upon the floor.
But not to sleep; she was too greatly excited. She began to wonder why it was that life was so terrible. She never imagined that her life differed320 from those of other children. It is the peculiar infamy of brutality to a child that the victim does not know how to sound the cry for the help that is almost always near to it. It accepts its lot as a thing of course; it does not know that there are perhaps within a few short steps of its house of suffering hearts that would stir with wrath for its wrongs, and that there is within reach a law which would bring retribution upon the head of its oppressor.
Jinnie believed that all childhood was a time of punishment and misery. She saw other children playing in the street who seemed merry and joyous, and she could not understand why they were so. She remembered the Brown girl, also, and how she had heard her sometimes laughing and singing. Jinnie could not laugh and sing in her house with Mrs. Tyke near her. She thought the other children might be happy because they had dolls, and because they could have their stockings filled at Christmas time. She knew that grown-up people were not abused as she was, but it seemed such a long, long time to wait until she was grown up. She felt that when she was she would be kinder to children, and not strike them with the poker, at any rate, as Mrs. Tyke sometimes struck her.
And if Kris Kingle should come down into her room through the hole in the paper, she thought she would like to be awake and to ask him to take321 her away with him in his sleigh somewhere. As she dwelt upon this she pictured herself going up the chimney and then flying over the roofs behind the reindeer, and looking back at Mrs. Tyke standing at the window and cursing her. And so she fell asleep and into a tangled maze of dreams, wherein Kris Kingle, Mrs. Tyke and the doll-baby bride were mingled in great confusion.
Jinnie’s first thought in the morning was the last that she had upon the night before. But as she hurriedly dressed herself it flashed across her mind that as there was grave peril that Kris Kingle might not come to her, perhaps it would make matters surer if she should go to him.
The milkman, whose cry she expected every moment, to her seemed a likely person to know where Kris lived, and to take her there. Young Miss Brown had rather indicated that Kris’s home was in Ohio; but whether Ohio was a little piece up the street or millions of miles away, or whether it was a house or a stable or a town, she did not know. The milkman had spoken pleasantly to her sometimes, and he had a wagon. It was not as attractive as a sleigh with reindeer, but she had often longed to ride in it. She determined to speak to him. But when he came and she opened the door with a beating heart, he snatched the pitcher from her hand and frowned while he filled it. He was thinking of some offensive suggestions made by322 Mrs. Tyke upon the preceding evening in reference to his too intense partiality for water; and he seemed so cross that Jinnie was afraid to speak to him.
She came int............