Hesba Stretton - The Ultimate Christmas Library - 100+ Authors, 200 Novels, Novellas, Stories, Poems and Carols

“My goodness! Can’t you see the train at all from up there?” Bess demanded. “Is it all covered up?”

“I reckon the ingin’s out o’ the snow. She’s steamin’ and of course she’d melt the snow about her boiler and stack,” the farmer said. “But I didn’t look that way.”

“Say!” demanded Bess, with some eagerness. “Is that Peleg’s house near?”

“Peleg Morton? Why, ’tain’t much farther than ye kin hear a pig’s whisper,” said Mr. Snubbins. “I’m goin’ right there, myself. My woman wants ter know is Celia all right. She’s some worrited, ’cause Celia went over to visit Peleg’s gal airly yesterday mornin’ an’ we ain’t seen Celia since.”

Mr. Carter came back with one of the brakemen just then, bearing a can of milk. The kindly conductor had found a tin plate, too— a section of the fireman’s dinner kettle— and into this he poured some of the milk for the hungry little spaniel.

“There you are, Buster,” he said, patting the dog, beside which Nan knelt to watch the process of consumption— for the puppy was so hungry that he tried to get nose, ears and fore-paws right in the dish!

“You’re awfully kind,” Nan said to Mr. Carter. “Now the little fellow will be all right.”

“You better get him out of the way of that fat man,” advised the conductor. “He owns the dog, you know. Bulson, I mean. He’s forward in the other car, gourmandizing himself on a jar of condensed milk. I let him have one can; but I’m going to hold the rest against emergency. Now that the snow has stopped falling,” he added cheerfully, as he passed on, “they ought to get help to us pretty soon.”

The puppy was ready to cuddle down in his carrier and go to sleep when he had lapped up the milk. Nan wiped his silky ears with her pocket handkerchief, and his cunning little muzzle as well, and left him with a pat to go and seek Bess.

She found her chum still talking with Mr. Snubbins in the opening between the two cars. “Oh, Nan!” cried the impulsive one, rushing to meet her chum. “What do you think?”

“On what subject, young lady— on what subject?” demanded Nan, in her most dictatorial way, and aping one of the teachers at Lakeview Hall.

“On the subject of eats!” laughed Bess.

“Oh, my dear! Don’t talk about it, please! If you drew a verbal picture of a banquet right now,” Nan declared, “I’d eat it, verb and all.”

“Do be sane and sensible,” said Bess, importantly. “We’re going out to supper. Now, wait! don’t faint, Nan. This Mr. Snubbins is a dear! Why, he is a regular angel with chin whiskers— nothing less.”

“He’s never invited us to his house for supper?”

“No. His home is too far. But he says we can come along with him to Peleg’s house and they will welcome us there. They are very hospitable people, these Mortons, so our angel says. And he and his daughter, Celia, will come back with us. And we can buy something there at the Mortons’ to help feed the hungry children aboard the train.”

That last appealed to Nan Sherwood, if nothing else did. There was but a single doubt in her mind.

“Oh, Bess!” she cried. “Do you think we ought to go? Shouldn’t we ask permission?”

“Of whom?” demanded Bess, in surprise. “Surely the train won’t steam off and leave us,” and she broke into a laugh. “Oh, come on, Miss Fussbudget! Don’t be afraid. I’ve been asking permission a dozen times a day for more than three months. I’m glad to do something ‘off my own bat,’ as my brother Billy says. Come on, Nan.”

So Nan went. They found Mr. Si Snubbins, “the angel with chin whiskers,” ready to depart. He climbed up first and got upon the crust of the snow; then he helped both girls to mount to his level. So another adventure for Nan and Bess began.

The almost level rays of a sinking sun shone upon a vast waste of white when the two girls from the snow-bound train started off with the farmer toward the only sign of life to be seen upon the landscape— a curl of blue smoke rising from a chimney of a farmhouse.

“That’s Peleg’s place,” explained Mr. Snubbins. “He’s a right well-to-do man, Peleg Morton is. We don’t mind havin’ our Celia go so much with Sallie Morton—though her mother does say that Sallie puts crazy notions into our Celia’s head. But I reckon all gals is kinder crazy, ain’t they?” pursued the farmer, with one of his sly glances and chuckles.

“Always!” agreed Bess, heartily. “Half of our girls at Lakeview Hall have to be kept in straightjackets, or padded cells.”

“Mercy, Bess!” whispered Nan. “That’s worthy of extravagant Laura Polk herself.”

“Thank you,” responded Bess, as the farmer recovered from a fit of “the chuckles” over Bess Harley’s joke. Bess added this question:

“What particular form of insanity do your daughter and Sallie Morton display, Mr. Snubbins?”

“Movin’ picters,” ejaculated the farmer. “Drat ’em! They’ve jest about bewitched my gal and Sallie Morton.”

“Goodness!” gasped Nan. “There aren’t moving picture shows away out here in the country, are there?”

“Oncet a week at the Corner,” said Mr. Snubbins. “An’ we all go. But that ain’t so much what’s made Celia and Sallie so crazy. Ye see, las’ fall was a comp’ny makin’ picters right up here in Peleg’s west parster. Goodness me! there was a crowd of ’em. They camped in tents like Gypsies, and they did the most amazin’ things— they sure did!

“Dif’rent from Gypsies,” pursued the farmer, “they paid for all they got around here. Good folks to sell chicken an’ aigs to. City prices, we got,” and Mr. Snubbins licked his lips like a dog in remembrance of a good meal.

“An’ I vow ter Maria!” the man went on to say, with some eagerness. “We ’most all around here air in them picters; ya-as’m! Ye wouldn’t think I was an actor, would ye?” And he went off into another spasm of chuckles.

“Oh, what fun!” cried Bess.

“Paid us two dollars a day for jest havin’ our photographts took, they did,” said Mr. Snubbins.

“And they paid three to the gals, ’cause they dressed up. That’s what set Celia and Sallie by the ears. Them foolish gals has got it in their heads that they air jest cut out for movin’ picter actresses. They wanter go off ter the city an’ git jobs in one o’ chem there studios! Peleg says he’ll spank his gal, big as she is, if she don’t stop sich foolish talk. I reckon Celia won’t go fur without Sallie.”

“My! it must be quite exciting to work for the pictures,” said romantic Bess.

“Sure it is,” chuckled the farmer. “One feller fell off a hoss while they was up here an’ broke his collarbone; an’ one of the gals tried ter milk our old Sukey from the wrong side, an’ Sukey nigh kicked her through the side of the shed,” and Mr. Snubbins indulged in another fit of laughter over this bit of comedy.

He was still chuckling when they climbed down from the hard eminence of a drift into a spot that had been cleared of snow before the Morton’s side door. At once the door was opened and a big, bewhiskered man looked out.

“Well, well, Si!” he ejaculated. “I thought them was your Celia and my Sallie. Them girls air strangers, ain’t they? Some more of that tribe of movin’ picture actresses?”

“I vow ter Maria, Peleg!” ejaculated Mr. Snubbins. “What’s happened to Celia? Ain’t she here?”

“No. Nor no more ain’t Sallie,” Mr. Morton said. “Come in. Bring in them young ladies. I’ll tell ye about it. Sallie’s maw is mighty upsot.”

“But ain’t Celia here ?” reiterated Mr. Snubbins, as he and the chums from Tillbury passed into the warm, big kitchen.