While Prudy was in Indiana visiting the Cliffords, and in the midst of her trials with mosquitoes, she said one day—
“I wouldn’t cry, Aunt ’Ria, only my heart’s breaking. The very next person that ever dies, I wish they’d ask God to please stop sending these awful skeeters. I can’t bear ’em any longer, now, certainly.”
There was a look of utter despair on Prudy’s disfigured face. Bitter tears were trickling from the two white puff-balls which had been her eyes; her forehead and cheeks were of a flaming pink, broken into little snow-drifts full of stings: she looked as if she had just been rescued from an angry beehive. Altogether, her appearance was exceedingly droll; yet Grace would not allow herself to smile at her afflicted little cousin. “Strange,” said she, “what makes our mosquitoes so impolite to strangers! It’s a downright shame, isn’t it, ma, to have little Prudy so imposed upon? If I could only amuse her, and make her forget it!”
“Oh, mamma,” Grace broke forth again suddenly, “I have an idea, a very brilliant idea! Please listen, and pay particular attention; for I shall speak in a figure, as Robin says. There’s a certain small individual who is not to understand.”
“I wouldn’t risk that style of talking,” said Mrs. Clifford, smiling; “or, if you do, your figures of speech must be very obscure, remember.”
“Well, ma,” continued Grace with a significant glance at Prudy, “what I was going to say is this: We wish to treat certain young relatives of ours very kindly; don’t we, now?—certain afflicted and abused young relatives, you know.
“Now, I’ve thought of an entertainment. Ahem! Yesterday I entered a certain Englishman’s house,”—here Grace pointed through the window towards Mr. Sherwood’s cottage, lest her mother should, by chance, lose her meaning—“I entered a certain Englishman’s house just as the family were sitting down to the table—festal board, I mean.
“They were talking about mistle-toe boughs, and all sorts of old-country customs; and then they said what a funny time they had one Christmas, with the youngest, about the mizzle, as he called it: do you remember, ma? do you understand?”
“You mean little Harvey? Oh, yes.”
“Pray do be careful, ma! Then Mr. Sherwood said to his—I mean, the hat said to the bonnet, that there were some wonderful—ahem—legends, about genii and sprites and—and so forth; not printed, but written, which the boy liked to hear when he was ‘overgetting’ the measles. A certain lady, not three inches from your chair, ma, was the one who wrote them; and now”—
Prudy had turned about, and the only remnants of her face which looked at all natural—that is, the irises and pupils of her swollen eyes—were shining with curiosity.
“There, now, what is it, Gracie? what is it you don’t want me to hear?”
Grace laughed. “Oh, nothing much, dear: never mind.”
“You oughtn’t to say ‘Never mind,’ ” pursued Prudy: “my mother tells me always to mind.”
“I only mean it isn’t any matter, Prudy.”
“Oh! do you? Then don’t you care for my skeeter-bites? You always say, ‘Never mind!’ I didn’t know it wasn’t any matter.”
“Now, ma,” Grace went on, “I want to ask you where are those I-don’t-know-what-to-call-’ems? And may I copy them, Cassy and I, into a book, for a certain afflicted relative?”
“Yes, yes, on gold-edged paper!” cried Prudy, springing up from the sofa; “oh, do, do; I’ll love you dearly if you will! Fairy stories are just as nice! What little Harvey Sherwood likes, I like, and I’ve had the measles; but I shouldn’t think his father and mother’d wear their hat and bonnet to the dinner-table!”
“Deary me!” laughed Grace; “how happened that little thing to mistrust what I meant?”
“It would be strange if a child of her age, of ordinary abilities, should not understand,” remarked Mrs. Clifford, somewhat amused. “Next time you wish to ask me any thing confidentially, I advise you to choose a better opportunity.”
“When may she, Aunt ’Ria?” cried Prudy, entirely forgetting her troubles; “when may she write it, Aunt ’Ria, she and Cassy?”
“A pretty piece of folly it would be, wouldn’t it, dear, when you can’t read a word of writing?”
“But Susy can a little, auntie; and mother can a great deal: and I’ll never tease ’em, only nights when I go to bed, and days when I don’t feel well. Please, Aunt ’Ria.”
“Yes, ma, I know you can’t refuse,” said Grace.
Mrs. Clifford hesitated. “The stories are yellow with age, Grace; they were written in my girlhood: and they are rather torn and disarranged, if I remember. Besides, my child, my flowing hand is difficult to read.”
“Oh, mamma, I think you write beautifully! splendidly!”
“Another objection,” continued Mrs. Clifford: “they are rather too old for Prudy, I should judge.”
“But I keep a-growing, Aunt ’Ria! Don’t you s’pose I know what fairy stories mean? They don’t mean any thing! You didn’t feel afraid I’d believe ’em, did you? I wouldn’t believe ’em, I promise I wouldn’t; just as true’s I’m walking on this floor!”
“Indeed, I hope you would not, little Prudy; for I made them up as I went along. There are no fairies but those we have in our hearts. Our best thoughts are good fairies; and our worst thoughts are evil fairies.”
“Oh, yes, auntie, I know! When we go bathing in the ocean, Susy says, ‘Let’s be all clean, so the spirit of the water can enter our hearts.’ And it does; but it goes in by our noses.”
Mrs. Clifford had tacitly given her consent to Grace’s copying the stories. This task was performed accordingly, much to the disgust of Horace, who declared that of the whole number only the tale of “Wild Robin” was worth reading.
“And ‘Wild Robin,’ ” said Grace, instructively, “is the only one that has a moral for you, Horace. When our soldiers are starving so, it is really dreadful to see how you dislike corned beef and despise vegetables! Such a dainty boy as you needs to be stolen a while by the fairies.”
“Well, Gracie, I reckon you’d run double-quick to pull me off the milk-white steed. You couldn’t get along without me two days. Look here! what story has a moral for you, miss? It’s the ‘Water-kelpie.’ You are like the man that married Moneta: you’re always wanting money.”
“But it’s for the soldiers, Horace,” said Grace, with a smile of forbearance toward her brother. “I’m willing to give all my pocket-money; and I mean the other girls shall. If we’re stingy to our country these days, we ought to be shot! ‘Princess Hilda’s’ the best story in the book. I wish Isa Harrington could read it! She wouldn’t make any more mischief between Cassy and me!”
“I like ‘The Lost Sylphid’ the best,” said Prudy; “but was she a great butterfly, do you s’pose? The stories are all just as nice; just like book stories. I shouldn’t think anybody made ’em up. Aunt ’Ria can write as good as the big girls to the grammar-school. I promised not to believe a single word; and I sha’n’t. I’m glad she called it my Fairy Book.”
Long ago, in fair Burgundy, lived a lad named Cristobal. His large dark eyes lay under the fringe of his lids, full of shadows; eyes as lustrous as purple amethysts, and, alas! as sightless.
He had not always been blind, as perhaps a wild and passionate lad, named Jasper, might have told you. On a certain Christmas Eve, a merry boy was little Cristobal, as he pattered along to church, trying with his wooden shoes to keep time to the dancing bells. In his hand he carried a Christmas candle of various colors. Never, he thought, was a rainbow so exquisitely tinted as that candle. Carefully he watched it when it winked its sleepy eye, eagerly begging his mamma to snuff it awake again. How gayly the streets twinkled with midnight lanterns! And how mortifying to the stars to be outdone by such a grand illumination!
A new painting had just been hung in the church—the Holy Child, called by the people “Little Jesus,” with an aureola about his head. Cristobal looked at this picture with reverent delight; and, to his surprise, the Holy Child returned his gaze: wherever he went, the sweet, sorrowful eyes followed him. There was a wondrous charm in that pleading glance. Why was it so wistful? What had those deep eyes to say?
The air was cloudy with the breath of frankincense and myrrh. Deep voices and the heavy organ sounded chants and anthems. There were prayers to the coming Messiah, and the sprinkling of holy water; and, at last, the midnight mass was ended.
Then, in tumult and great haste, the people went home for merry-makings. Cristobal, eager to see what the Yule-log might have in store for him, rushed out of the church with careless speed, stumbling over a boy who stood in his way—the haughty, insolent Jasper. Jasper’s beautiful Christmas-candle was cracked in twenty pieces by his fall.
“I’ll teach you better manners, young peasant!” cried he, rushing upon Cristobal in a frenzy, and dealing fierce blows without mercy or reason.
It was then that Cristobal’s eyes went out like falling stars. Their lustre and beauty remained; but they were empty caskets, their vision gone.
Then followed terrible anguish; and all Cristobal’s mother could do was to hold her boy in her arms, and soothe him by singing. At last the fever was spent; but the pain still throbbed on, and sometimes seemed to burn into Cristobal’s brain. He cried out again and again, “What right had that fierce Jasper to spring upon me so? I meant him no harm; and he knew it. Oh, I would like to see him chained in a den! He is like the wicked people who are turned into wolves at Christmas-tide. I would cry for joy if I could hear him groan with such pain as mine!”
Poor Cristobal never hoped to see again. He carried in his mind pictures of cities and hamlets, of trees, flowers, and old familiar faces; but oftenest came Jasper’s face, just as it had last glared on him with blood-thirsty eyes. It was a terrible countenance. Only one charm could dispel the horror—the remembrance of the beautiful Child in the church. That picture blotted out every thing else. It was like the refrain in the Burgundy carols, “Noel, Noel,” which comes again and again, and never tires of coming.
A whole year passed away. Cristobal’s mother only prayed now that her boy might suffer less: she had ceased to pray for the healing of his blindness.
Now it was Christmas-tide again. Ever since Advent, people had been clearing their throats, and singing carols. They roasted chestnuts, drank white wine, and chanted praises of the “Little Jesus,” who was soon to come, bringing peace on earth, good-will to men.
In the streets, one heard bagpipes and minstrels; and, by the hearthstones, the music of the wandering piper. The children began to talk again of the Yule-log, and to wonder what gifts Noel would bring to place under each end of it; for these little folks, who have no stocking-saint like our Santa Claus, believe in another quite as good, who rains down sugar-plums in the night.
Everywhere there was a joyful bustle. Housewives were making ready their choicest dishes for the great Christmas-supper; fathers were slyly peeping into shop-windows, and children hoarding their sous and centimes for bonbons and comfits.
Everybody was merry but Cristobal; or so thought the lad. He had no money to spend, and little but pain for his holiday-cheer. A patch here and there in his worn clothes was the best present his thrifty mother was able to make; always excepting the little variegated taper, which few were too poor to buy.