The Big Book of Christmas

by Anton Chekhov

  “Of Sallie? Why, we have,” said Mrs. Morton. “She’s some bigger now; but she had her photographt took in several ‘poses’, as they call ’em, when she was playin’ in that ‘Rural Beauty’. I got the prints myself from the man that took ’em.”

  But when she hunted for the pictures, Mrs. Morton found they were missing. “I declare for’t!” she said, quite vexed. “I do believe that Sallie took ’em with her to show to folks she expects to ask for work. Jest like her! Oh, she’s smart, Sallie is.”

  “There’s that picter she had took the time we went to the County Fair, three year ago, Maw,” suggested Mr. Morton, as they prepared to sit down to the bountiful table. “I ’low she’s filled out some since then; she was as leggy as a colt. But these gals can see what she looks like in the face.”

  While he was speaking his wife brought forth the family album— a green plush affair with a huge gilt horseshoe on the cover. She turned over the leaves till she found Sallie’s photograph, and displayed it with pride. Nan secretly thought her father’s description of Sallie at twelve years old or so was a very good one; but Mrs. Morton evidently saw no defects in her child’s personal appearance.

  “Sallie wore her hair in curls then, you see,” said Mrs. Morton. “But she says they ain’t fashionable now, and she’s been windin’ her braids into eartabs like that leadin’ lady in the movie company done. Makes Sallie look dreadfully growed up,” sighed the troubled woman. “I sartainly do hate to see my little girl change into a woman so quick.”

  “That’s what my woman says,” agreed Snubbins. “Celia’s ’bout growed up, she thinks. But I reckon if her mother laid her across her lap like she uster a few years back, she could nigh about slap most of the foolishness out o’ Celia. Gals nowadays git to feel too big for their boots— that’s what the matter.”

  “Mercy!” gasped Bess. “I hope my mother won’t go back to first principles with me, if I displease her. And I’m sure your Celia can’t be really bad.”

  “Just foolish— just foolish, both on ’em,” Mr. Morton said. “Let me help you again.”

  “Oh, I’m so full,” sighed Bess.

  “I’m afraid ye ain’t makin’ out a supper,” Mrs. Morton said.

  “Indeed we are,” cried Nan. “I only wish the children on that snow-bound train had some of these good things.”

  This turned the current of conversation and the Mortons were soon interested in the girls’ story of the castaways in the snow. Mrs. Morton set to work at once and packed two big baskets with food. A whole ham that she had boiled that day was made into sandwiches. There were hard boiled eggs, and smoked beef and cookies, pies and cakes. In fact, the good woman stripped her pantry for the needy people in the stalled train.

  Her husband got into his outer garments and helped Si Snubbins carry the baskets across the snow. Mrs. Morton’s last words to the girls were:

  “Do, do, my dears, try to find my girl and Celia when you go to Chicago.”

  Nan and Bess promised to do so, for neither realized what a great city Chicago is, and that people might live there, almost side by side, for years and never meet.

  Ravell Bulson’s Trouble

  “What do you think of those two girls, anyway, Nan?” Bess Harley asked.

  This was late in the evening, after the porter had made up their berths again in the Pullman. The baskets of food had been welcomed by the snow-bound passengers with acclaim. The two girls were thanked more warmly for their thoughtfulness than Nan and Bess believed they really deserved.

  Bess Harley’s question, of course, referred to Sallie Morton and Celia Snubbins, the girls who had run away from home to become moving picture actresses. Nan replied to her chum’s query:

  “That Sallie Morton must be a very silly girl indeed to leave such a comfortable home and such a lovely mother. Perhaps Celia Snubbins may not have been so pleasantly situated; but I am sure she had no reason for running away.”

  Bess sighed. “Well,” she murmured, “it must be great fun to work for the movies. Just think of those two country girls appearing in a five-reel film like ‘A Rural Beauty.’”

  “Well, for goodness’ sake, Bess Harley!” cried Nan, astonished, “have you been bitten by that bug?”

  “Don’t call it ’bug’— that sounds so common,” objected Bess. “Call it ‘bacilli of the motion picture.’ It must be great,” she added emphatically, “to see yourself acting on the screen!”

  “I guess so,” Nan said, with a laugh. “A whole lot those two foolish girls acted in that ‘Rural Beauty’ picture. They were probably two of the ‘merry villagers’ who helped to make a background for the real actresses. You know very well, Bess, that girls like us wouldn’t be hired by any film company for anything important.”

  “Why— you know, Nan,” her chum said, “that some of the most highly paid film people are young girls.”

  “Yes. But they are particularly fitted for the work. Do you feel the genius of a movie actress burning in you?” scoffed Nan.

  “No-o,” admitted Bess. “I think it is that hard boiled egg I ate. And it doesn’t exactly burn.”

  Nan went off in a gale of laughter at this, and stage-struck Bess chimed in. “I don’t care,” the latter repeated, the last thing before they climbed into their respective berths, “it must be oodles of fun to work for the movies.”

  While the chums slept there were great doings outside the snow-bound train. The crew turned out with shovels, farmers in the neighborhood helped, and part of a lately arrived section gang joined in to shovel the snow away from the stalled engine and train.

  Cordwood had been bought of Peleg Morton and hauled over to the locomotive for fuel. With this the engineer and fireman managed to make sufficient steam to heat the Pullman coach and the smoking car. Nan and Bess had brought little “Buster,” as the spaniel had been named, into their section and, having been fed and made warm, he gave the girls hardly any trouble during the night.

  Selfish Mr. Bulson, who had shipped the puppy home to his little boy, seemed to have no interest whatsoever in Buster’s welfare.

  It was not until the great snow-plow and a special locomotive appeared the next morning, and towed the stalled train on to its destination, and Nan Sherwood and her chum arrived at Tillbury, that Nan learned anything more regarding Mr. Ravell Bulson.

  Mr. and Mrs. Sherwood had been more than a little worried by Nan’s delay in getting home and Mr. Sherwood was at the station to meet the train when it finally steamed into Tillbury.

  Owneyville, which the girls knew to be Mr. Bulson’s home town, was a station beyond Tillbury, and a much smaller town. The fat man had to change cars, so it was not surprising that he stepped down upon the Tillbury platform just as Nan ran into her father’s arms.

  “Oh, Papa Sherwood!” Nan almost sobbed.

  “My dear Nancy!” he returned, quite as much moved.

  And just then Mr. Bulson appeared beside them. “Well, Sherwood!” the fat man growled, “have you come to your senses yet?”

  Robert Sherwood’s face flushed and he urged Nan away along the snowy platform. “I don’t care to talk to you, Bulson,” he said shortly.

  “Well, you will talk to me!” exclaimed the angry fat man. “I’ll get you into court where you’ll have to talk.”

  Mr. Sherwood kept right on with Nan and Bulson was left fuming and muttering on the platform. Bess had already been put into the family sleigh and was being whisked home. Nan and her father tramped briskly through the snowy streets toward “the little dwelling in amity,” which Nan had not seen since leaving Tillbury for her Uncle Henry Sherwood’s home at Pine Camp, ten months before.

  “Oh, dear, Papa Sherwood!” gasped Nan. “What is the matter with that horrid man? He says the most dreadful things about you!”

  “What’s that?” demanded her father, quickly. “What do you know about Bulson?”

  “More than I really want to know about him,” said Nan, ruefully. She related briefly what had happened a fe
w days before on Pendragon Hill. “And when he called you a rascal, I— oh! I was very, very angry! What did he mean, Papa Sherwood?”

  But her father postponed his explanation until later; and it was really from her mother that Nan heard the story of Mr. Sherwood’s trouble with Ravell Bulson. Mrs. Sherwood was very indignant about it, and so, of course, was Nan.

  A week or more before, Mr. Sherwood had had business in Chicago, and in returning took the midnight train. The sleeping car was side-tracked at Tillbury and when most of the passengers were gone the man in the berth under Mr. Sherwood’s began to rave about having been robbed. His watch and roll of banknotes had disappeared.

  The victim of the robbery was Mr. Ravell Bulson. Mr. Bulson had at once accused the person occupying the berth over his as being the guilty person. Nan’s father had got up early, and had left the sleeping car long before Mr. Bulson discovered his loss.

  The railroad and the sleeping car company, of course, refused to acknowledge responsibility for Mr. Bulson’s valuables. Nor on mere suspicion could Mr. Bulson get a justice in Tillbury to issue a warrant for Mr. Sherwood.

  But Ravell Bulson had been to the Sherwood cottage on Amity Street, and had talked very harshly. Besides, the fat man had in public loudly accused his victim of being dishonest.

  Mr. Sherwood’s reputation for probity in Tillbury was well founded; he was liked and respected; those who really knew him would not be influenced by such a scandal.

  But as Mr. Sherwood was making plans to open an agency in Tillbury for a certain automobile manufacturing concern, he feared that the report of Mr. Bulson’s charge would injure his usefulness to the corporation he was about to represent. To sue Bulson for slander would merely give wider circulation to the story the fat man had originated.

  Ravell Bulson was a traveling man and was not often in Tillbury— that was one good thing. He had a reputation in his home town of Owneyville of being a quarrelsome man, and was not well liked by his neighbors.

  Nevertheless a venomous tongue can do a great deal of harm, and a spiteful enemy may sometimes bring about a greater catastrophe than a more powerful adversary.

  Adventures In A Great City

  “Now! what do you know about this?” Bess Harley demanded, with considerable vexation.

  “Of course, it’s a mistake— or else that big clock’s wrong,” declared Nan Sherwood.

  “No fear of a railroad clock’s being wrong,” said her chum, grumpily. “That old time table was wrong. They’re always wrong. No more sense to a time table than there is to a syncopated song. It said we were to arrive in this station three-quarters of an hour ago— and it turns out that it meant an entirely different station and an entirely different train.”

  Nan laughed rather ruefully. “I guess it is our own fault and not the time table’s. But the fact remains that we are in the wrong place, and at the wrong time. Walter and Grace, of course, met that other train and, not finding us, will have gone home, not expecting us till to-morrow.”

  “Goodness, what a pickle!” Bess complained. “And how will we find the Mason’s house, Nan Sherwood?”

  The chums had the number and street of their friends’ house, but it occurred to neither of them to go to a telephone booth and call up the house, stating the difficulty they were in. Nor did the girls think of asking at the information bureau, or even questioning one of the uniformed policemen about the huge station.

  “Now, of course,” Nan said firmly, “some street car must go within walking distance of Grace’s house.”

  “Of course, but which car?” demanded Bess.

  “That is the question, isn’t it?” laughed Nan.

  “One of these taxi-cabs could take us,” suggested Bess.

  “But they cost so much,” objected her friend. “And we can’t read those funny clocks they have and the chauffeur could overcharge us all he pleased. Besides,” Nan added, “I don’t like their looks.”

  “Looks of what— the taxis?”

  “The chauffeurs,” responded Nan, promptly.

  “We-ell, we’ve got to go somehow— and trust to somebody,” Bess said reflectively. “I wonder should we go to that hotel where we stayed that week with mother? They would take us in I suppose.”

  “But goodness! why should we be so helpless?” demanded Nan. “I’m sure two boys would start right out and find their way to Grace’s.”

  “Would you dare?” cried Bess.

  “Why not? Come on! We don’t want to spend all our money in taxi fares. Let’s go over there and ask that car man who seems to be bossing the conductors and motormen.”

  The girls, with their handbags, started across the great square before the station. Almost at once they found themselves in a tangle of vehicular traffic that quite confused Bess, and even troubled the cooler-headed Nan.

  “Oh, Nan! I’m scared!” cried her chum, clinging with her free hand to Nan’s arm.

  “For pity’s sake, don’t be foolish!” commanded Nan. “You’ll get me excited, too— Oh!”

  An automobile swept past, so near the two girls that the step brushed their garments. Bess almost swooned. Nan wished with all her heart that they had not so recklessly left the sidewalk.

  Suddenly a shrill voice cried at her elbow: “Hi, greeny! you look out, now, or one of these horses will take a bite out o’ you. My! but you’re the green goods, for fair.”

  Nan turned to look, expecting to find a saucy street boy; but the owner of the voice was a girl. She was dirty-faced, undersized, poorly dressed, and ill-nourished. But she was absolutely independent, and stood there in the crowded square with all the assurance of a traffic policeman.

  “Come on, greenies,” urged this strange little mortal (she could not have been ten years old), “and I’ll beau you over the crossing myself. Something’ll happen to you if you take root here.”

  She carried in a basket on her arm a few tiny bunches of stale violets, each bunch wrapped in waxed paper to keep it from the frost. Nan had seen dozens of these little flower-sellers of both sexes on the street when she had passed through Chicago with her Uncle Henry the winter before.

  “Oh, let’s go with her,” cried the quite subdued Bess. “Do, Nan!”

  It seemed rather odd for these two well-dressed and well-grown girls to be convoyed by such a “hop-o’-my-thumb” as the flower-seller. But the latter got Nan and Bess to an “isle of safety” in a hurry, and would then have darted away into the crowd without waiting to be thanked, had not Nan seized the handle of her basket.

  “Wait!” she cried. “Don’t run away.”

  “Hey!” said the flower-seller, “I ain’t got time to stop and chin-chin. I got these posies to sell.”

  “Sell us two,” Nan commanded. “Wait!”

  “Aw right. ’F you say so,” said the small girl. “Fifteen a bunch,” she added quickly, shrewdly increasing by a nickel the regular price of the stale boutonnières.

  Nan opened her purse to pay for both. Bess said, rather timidly: “I should think you would be afraid of getting run over every time you cross the street— you’re so little.”

  “Aw— say!” responded the strange girl, quite offended. “What d’ye think I am— a kid? I live here, I do! I ain’t country, and don’t know me way ’round.”

  “Meaning that we are, I suppose?” laughed Nan.

  “Well,” drawled the girl, “it sticks out all over you. I can tell ’em a block away. An’ I bet you’re lost and don’t know where you’re goin’. You two didn’t come here to be pitcher actors, did ye?”

  “Why— no!” gasped Bess.

  Nan was moved to ask. “What put that idea in your head, honey?”

  “I guess ‘most girls that run away from home nowadays are lookin’ to make a hit in the pitchers— ain’t they?”

  “You ridiculous child, you!” laughed Bess. “We haven’t run away.”

  “No? Well, I thought mebbe youse did,” said the flower-seller, grinning impishly. “I see a plenty of ’em comin�
�� off the trains, I do.”

  “Runaway girls?” cried Nan,

  “They don’t tell me they have run away. But they are all greenies— just as green as grass,” this shrewd child of the street declared.

  “Have you seen any girls lately who have come to the city to be picture actresses?” Nan asked with sudden eagerness.

  “Yep,” was the reply.

  “Sure?” cried Bess. “You don’t mean it!”

  “Yes, I do. Two girls bigger’n you. Le’s see— it was last Friday.”

  “The second day of the big blizzard?” cried Nan.

  “That’s the very day,” agreed Bess. “It’s when Sallie and Celia would have got here if they were coming to Chicago.”

  “Hi!” exclaimed the flower girl. “What’s you talkin’ about? Who’s Sallie and Celia?”

  “Girls whom we think came to the city the other day just as you said,” Nan explained. “They have run away to be moving picture actresses.”

  “Hi!” exclaimed the flower-seller again. “What sort o’ lookin’ girls?”

  “Why— I don’t know exactly,” confessed Nan. “Do we, Bess? Mrs. Morton said Sallie took with her those photographs that were taken while the girls were playing as extras in ‘A Rural Beauty.’”

  “That’s it!” suddenly interrupted the flower-girl. “I bet I seen those two. They didn’t call each other ‘Sallie’ and ‘Celia’; but they had some fancy names— I forgot what.”

  “Oh! are you sure?” cried Bess.

  “They had them photographs just like you say. They showed ’em to me. You see,” said the little girl, “I showed ’em where they could eat cheap, and they told me how they was going to join a movie company.”

  The First Clue

  Nan and her chum were wildly excited. During their brief stay at Tillbury over Christmas they had been so busy, at home and abroad, that they had not thought much about Sallie Morton and Celia Snubbins, the two runaways.