to give a play for the benefit of the Women’s and Children’s Hospital. Each member of the Corner House quartette had a part in the play, and the performances of The Carnation Countess had but just been given during the fore part of this very Christmas week.
The narrative of these recent occurrences may be found in the fourth volume of the series, the story immediately preceding this one, called “The Corner House Girls in a Play.” Three thousand dollars was raised for the hospital, and Mrs. Eland – Tess’ “little gray lady” – is assured of the continuation of her situation as matron.
This fact is particularly happy at this time, for Mrs. Eland’s sister, Miss Pepperill, Tess’ school teacher, is ill, and Mrs. Eland is nursing her back to health. One reason for the decorating of the Corner House dining room is that the reunited sisters, Mrs. Eland and Miss Pepperill, have been invited to eat their Christmas dinner with the Corner House girls.
All this while the sooty bundle was lying on the brick hearth at the feet of the startled Corner House girls. As it squirmed, and the sooty dust arose from it, they saw that it was certainly alive.
It wore a long cloak and a hood, now of a sooty red, and trimmed with what was once white cotton-wool “fur.” Leggings of the same material and trimming covered a pair of stout nether limbs; and upon these legs the little figure finally scrambled, revealing at last to the Kenway sisters and to Mrs. MacCall a face as black as any negro’s.
“For pity’s sake!” exclaimed the housekeeper. “What d’ you call that, anyway?”
“It – it’s Sammy,” said Tess, boldly.
“If it is Santa Claus,” said Ruth, smiling, “it is one that is not grown.”
“It’s a perfectly savage one,” chuckled Agnes. “This must be a young Santa Claus in his wild and untamed state.”
“He is unfamiliar with the best methods of descending folks’ chimneys, that is sure,” Ruth pursued. “I don’t think this Santa Claus has learned his trade yet.”
“And – and how black he is!” murmured Dot. “Are – are all Santa Clauses so black?”
“Aw, you girls make me sick!” growled the much abashed Santa Claus.
“I declare – he talks our language!” cried Agnes.
“Why, of course,” said Tess, the literal. “He’s in my class at school, you know.”
“You think you are all so smart!” sneered Sammy Pinkney, and that sneer was something awful to behold. Dot fairly shuddered.
“You wait!” snarled Sammy. “When I run away and get to be a pirate, I’ll – I’ll – I’ll – ”
Sammy’s emotion choked him for the moment. Mrs. MacCall sniffed; Ruth began to speak soothingly; Agnes giggled; Tess looked her disapproval of the savage young Santa Claus; while Dot, who had caught up the Alice-doll and squeezed her protectingly to her breast, gasped:
“Oh! Oh! Isn’t he dreadful?”
Sammy’s sharp ear evidently caught the smallest Corner House girl’s whisper, for he rolled an approving eye in Dot’s direction, and finally finished his fearsome peroration with true piratical savagery:
“I’ll come back and I’ll make every one of you walk the plank!”
“What ever that may mean,” murmured Agnes, quite weak from laughter. But as Sammy Pinkney started for the door she cried: “Oh, Sammy!”
“Well? What’s the matter?” growled the savage young Santa Claus.
“Tell us – do! How did you get in the chimney?” asked Agnes.
“The skylight was open when I followed you girls upstairs, so I got up on the roof and crawled in at the top of the chimbley. It was all right coming down, too,” said the young rascal, “till I got to the second story. There was irons in the chimbley for steps; but one was loose and fell out when I stepped on it. Then I – I slipped.”
He stalked out. Dot said ruminatively: “We’d better have that step fixed before to-morrow night, hadn’t we, Ruthie? Before Santa Claus comes, you know. He might fall and hurt himself.”
“Very true, Dottums,” declared Agnes, with a quickly serious face. “I’ll speak to Uncle Rufus about it.”
But Agnes must have forgotten, or else Uncle Rufus did not attend to the missing step in the chimney. At least, so Dot supposed when she awoke in the dark the very next morning and heard something going “thump-thumpity-thump” down the chimney again.
The smallest Corner House girl was not in the habit of waking up when it seemed still “the middle of the night,” and her small head was quite confused. She really thought it must be Christmas morning and that good Kris Kringle has suffered a bad fall.
“Oh-ee! if he’s brought Alice-doll her new carriage, it will be all smashed!” gasped Dot, and she slipped out of bed without disturbing Tess.
She shrugged on her little bathrobe and put her tiny feet into slippers. Somebody ought to go to see how bad a fall Santa Claus had – and see if all his presents were smashed. Dot really had forgotten that there was still another day before Christmas.
The little girl padded out of her room and along the hall to the front of the house. Nobody heard her as she descended the front stairs.
Dot came to the foot of the stairs, where a single dim gaslight flickered. She pushed open the dining room door.
As she did so, there sounded the faint clink, clink, clink of metal against metal. A spotlight flashed and roved around the room – touching ceiling and walls and floor in its travels. But it did not reveal her figure just inside the door.
She saw no good Kris Kringle standing on the hearth, with his bag of toys. Nothing but a broken brick lay there – probably loosened by Sammy Pinkney in his course down the chimney-well the previous afternoon.
There was a shadowy figure – she could not see its face – stooping over a cloth laid upon the floor; and upon that cloth was stacked much of the choice old silver which Uncle Rufus always packed away so carefully after using in the locked safe in the butler’s pantry.
CHAPTER III – DOROTHY’S BURGLAR
Dot Kenway had heard about burglars. That is, she knew there were such people. Just why they went about “burgling,” as she herself phrased it, the smallest Corner House girl did not understand.
But she thought, with a queer jumping at her heart, that she had found a “really truly” burglar now.
He was just putting their very best sugar-bowl on the top of the pile of other silver, and she expected to see him tie up the cloth by its four corners preparatory to taking it away.
Dot really did not know what she ought to do. Of course, she might have screamed for Ruth; but then, she knew that Ruthie would be awfully scared if she did.
Why, Tess, even, would be scared if she came across a burglar! Dot was quite sure of that; and she felt happy to know that she was really not so scared as she supposed she would have been.
The burglar did not seem any more fearful in appearance than the iceman, or the man who took out the
