CHAPTER X
THE HOME THAT WAS LOST ON CHRISTMAS DAY
"What is going to happen?" asked Hannah pausing at Mr. Hodgkins's front gate and speaking to Stubbins. "I guess he's going to have company. The front door's open, and the window's open, and the side door's open! What shall we do, Stubbins?"
"Do what ma thed, and give him the cake, and leth get a look at the company."
"Shall we go to the front door or the back door?"
"Leth go to the front door, and get a look at hith houthe, too."
One glance at the long, gloomy hall and Hannah turned away. "You can stay there and knock if you want to," she said, "but it's too lonesome for me. I am going to the kitchen door."
"Well, thay, wait, tho I am too. There he ith, Hannah, ther ith Mithter Hodgkinth thanding by the well."
"What's he looking at?"
The man greeted the children with a smile. "Good morning," he said, "come here and see my brother."
"Why, thath a mud turtle," exclaimed Stubbins, plainly disappointed in the brother. "Thath a mud turtle 'cauth Mith Randall thed tho."
"Now, watch," continued Mr. Hodgkins. "You see, children, this old mud turtle is going on about his business just as all the creatures around here are doing, only he moves a little slowly, to be sure. Now I am going to give this brown hen over here a touch with my stick and you'll see what will happen."
"It'll thquawk!" predicted Stubbins, and he was right. The brown hen made herself heard all over the yard as she flew away.
"Made the feathers fly, didn't she?" laughed the man. "Now we'll see what the mud turtle will do. I won't hit him a bit harder than I did the hen."
A knock on the mud turtle's back; he stopped crawling and in went his head.
"You'd think he was killed!" Hannah exclaimed.
"Well, he ith a queer one," commented Stubbins.
"Now you know why I call the mud turtle my brother," declared Mr. Hodgkins. "Most people are like hens. When something strikes them hard they make a big fuss about it, and after they flutter around a while they go about their business exactly as they did before. I'm like the mud turtle. I crawled into my shell, and now they say I'm a queer one, as Stubbins says of the turtle."
Hannah turned red. How did Mr. Hodgkins know that the neighbours called him queer, and why was he a friendless man?
"Did something strike you hard, Mr. Hodgkins?" she asked, in tones of sympathy.
"I should like to tell you and your little brother about it if you care to listen," was the reply. "You children seem like old friends. I've stayed so long in my shell I seem to have forgotten who my friends were, and I once had plenty of them. I suppose I have myself to thank, but do you know I don't suppose there's any one left in the world who ever gives me a kindly thought."
Hannah suddenly remembered her errand. "Ain't there, though?" she cried. "Didn't ma go and bake this gingerbread yesterday for you, and don't she say you're the best man that ever breathed?"
"Yeth, thath what," added Stubbins.
Mr. Hodgkins looked pleased. "Did she do that for me?" he asked, taking the gingerbread from Hannah, "well, your mother is a good woman."
"Thath what," assented Stubbins, "and uth kidth are nithe kidth too."
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," chided Hannah, but the three laughed and the sunlight danced among the leaves. It was a bright Sunday.
"To-day," began Mr. Hodgkins, "I have opened my house for the first time in many a long year. Come with me and see what a big pleasant home I used to have."
"Ain't you got it now?" demanded Stubbins.
"No," was the response, "I have the house, my boy, but the home was lost one Christmas day."
"Lotht your home on Chrithmuth?" questioned the child.
"Come, I will show you a room that the sunlight has never shone upon since that same Christmas."
Silently the children followed Mr. Hodgkins in the house, through the kitchen, into the hall.
"This was my home when I was a boy," he went on, "and here I brought my wife before my father and mother died. We'll go in the parlour first and I'll show you a picture. You see, I've opened the parlour."
By this time even Stubbins was speechless with wonder, and clung to Hannah as though he feared to lose her in the strange man's house. Everything in the parlour was covered with dust. In spite of the feeling of awe that stole over her, Hannah noticed the good furniture and all that the room contained.
"Here's the picture, children," said Mr. Hodgkins, opening an album.
Without speaking, Hannah and Stubbins gazed at the photograph.
"They were mine," said the man, softly, "my little girl, my little boy, and their mother."
It seemed to Hannah that if her life had depended upon it, she could not have said a word.
"Come," suggested Mr. Hodgkins at last, as he closed the door and left the parlour, closely followed by the children. "This was our sitting-room," he continued, pausing before a locked door. "This is the first time in ten years that I have ever turned the key."
Hannah's impulse was to run, but when the door was opened she felt as if her feet were growing into the floor. As for Stubbins his eyes came so near popping out of his head they really ached for an hour afterward. What the children saw was a Christmas tree yellow with age. It was a pitiful sight and belonged in a darkened room where Santa Claus might not stumble upon it.
"We'll have some air and light," said Mr. Hodgkins, raising the shades and opening the windows.
The tree looked ghastly in the sunshine as it stood revealed with all its faded, dusty trimmings. Here and there among the branches were children's treasures, a small china doll, a tin horn, a drum and a calico elephant. Beside the tree were two small rocking-chairs and on the floor were books.
"Oh, dear," whispered Hannah.
"There, child," sympathized Mr. Hodgkins, "I didn't bring you in here to make you sad, but this is my secret, and I thought if you could see this room perhaps we might be better friends. I thought perhaps you would understand your queer neighbour."
"How did it happen?" asked the child, crossing the threshold and standing near the tree, still clinging to Stubbins.
"This room is just as we left it that Christmas Day. We drove to a neighbour's in the afternoon, and while there our little ones went on the ice to play and were drowned. I came into the house before their mother, and the first thing I did was to close this door. The piano was left open just as you see it now. We sang a Christmas hymn that morning. Two months later the children's mother died, and I was left alone.
"All this our neighbours know, but Hannah and Stubbins, no one ever knew we had a Christmas tree. At first I couldn't take it down nor touch a thing and so the months went by, and at last the years, until like the turtle I have crawled more and more into my shell."
"Oh, dear, dear!" repeated Hannah, no longer trying to keep back the tears.
"Don't cry, Hannah, don't cry, or I shall be sorry you know my secret. Now we'll shut the room again and forget it."
"Don't—don't shut the room up again, Mr. Hodgkins. I wouldn't, if I were you," declared Hannah. "Do you know what I'd do?" she continued, brushing away the tears and speaking earnestly.
"No, what would you do?"
"I'd take away the tree, and then I'd clean the room and use it."
"I've often thought of it, Hannah, but some way I can't do it; and here the old tree stands just as we left it. It's no use, and yet—see here, children, tell your mother I'll give her five dollars if she'll come over to-morrow when I've gone to town, and—and tend to this room. You may come with her and go all over the house if you choose."
"And then," agreed Hannah, "you and us'll go visiting. Sometimes you come over to our house to see us in our sitting-room, and next day or the next we'll all come over here and visit you in your sitting-room, and we'll be folks. And Mr. Hodgkins, don't you think you're the only man that's had to get along without Christmases, because us kids never had a Christmas in our lives until last year."
"You mean you never had a Christmas tree before, don't you, Hannah?"
"No, I mean we never had a Christmas. We never even knew folks had trees in their houses until now, but you just wait! This year we're going to have one of our own."
"Yeth, and I geth you better come and help uth get it ready," put in Stubbins, "becauthe you know about the way to fixth 'em."
"Thank you," said Mr. Hodgkins, "I'll think about it."