Chapter 8: Mrs. Wiggs at Home

“She had a sunny nature that sought, like
a flower in a dark place, for the light.”
ON Christmas day Lucy Olcott stood by the library window, and idly scratched initials on the frosty pane. A table full of beautiful gifts stood near, and a great bunch of long-stemmed roses on the piano filled the room with fragrance. But Lucy evidently found something more congenial in the dreary view outside. She was deep in thought when the door opened and Aunt Chloe came in with a basket and a note.

The old darky grinned as she put the basket on the floor. “You might ‘a’ knowed, it wuz fum dem Wiggses,” she said.

Lucy opened the note and read: “Dear miss Lucy the basket of cloths and vittles come. We or so mutch obliged, and asia wore the read dress to the soshul and enjoyed her selph so. Much I wish you could a went. Billy liked his hock and ladar and romcandons. Me and the childern want to send you a crismas mess of some of all we lade in for to live on. They is pertaters 2 kines, onions, termaters, a jar vineger and a jar perservs. I boughten the peeches last sumer, they was gitting a little rotting so I got them cheep. Hope you will Enjoy them. I send some of all we got but Cole and Flower. Thankes thankes to you for your kind fealings. “From yours no more “MRS. WIGGS.”

“Bless her old heart!” cried Lucy; “that’s the biggest widow’s mite I ever saw. Put the basket there with my other presents, Aunt Chloe; it’s worth them all.”

She went over to the fire, and held her hands to the friendly blaze; there was a restless, discontented look in her eyes that proved only too plainly that her Christmas was not a happy one.

“I wish it was night,” she said. “I hate Christmas afternoon! Mother is asleep; it’s too early for callers. I believe I’ll go down to the Cabbage Patch.”

Aunt Chloe stuck out her lip and rolled her eyes in deprecation.

“Don’ you do it, honey. What you wanter be foolin’ ‘round wif dat po’ white trash fer? Why don’ you set heah by de fiah an’ bleach yer han’s fer de party to-might?”

“Bother the old party!” said Lucy, impatiently. She had begun disobeying Aunt Chloe when she was a very little girl.

Fifteen minutes later she was tramping through the snow, her cheeks glowing and her spirits rising. The Wiggses, while always interesting, had of late acquired a new significance. Since seeing them in the theater lobby with Robert Redding she had found it necessary to make several visits to the Cabbage Patch, and the chief topic of conversation had been Mr. Bob: how he had taken them to the show; had made Billy his office-boy; had sent them a barrel of apples, and was coming to see them some day. To which deluge of information Lucy had listened with outward calmness and inward thrills.

To-day, as she entered the Wiggses’ gate a shout greeted her. Billy let himself down from the chicken-coop roof, and ran forward.