Chapter XV: The Gift Acknowledged

THE next thing was a stove. The young Tuckers could not believe it possible that one was really coming, but father and mother were agreed that such should be the case.

"It was queer," the mother said, "very queer indeed," but when they were in town day before yesterday, they went into the stove store for a new shovel, and the man had offered them a second-hand stove as good as new, real cheap.

And father had said then: "If we had anything to put with it in the front room, we would buy that stove, for it is a bargain. And I don't know but we better, as it is, for we may never have so good a chance again."

And they had talked about it all the way home, but it had seemed rather foolish to buy a stove when there wasn't another thing to help furnish with. And there, when they reached home, they found the furniture had come!

So the first thing the father did next day was to send word to town that he would take that stove, and now he was going in to see about pipe and bring out the stove. Wonderful times had come to the Tuckers.

I am wrong, though, about the stove being the next thing. The next thing had been the writing of a letter to Mr. Thomas Fletcher. Christie's first letter!

It created a good deal of excitement in the Tucker family. The father himself went to town and bought a quire of nice paper and envelopes to match, and a new steel pen for Christie. She had a penholder, and took daily lessons in writing, but the pen had done good service, and it was decided that for this occasion she ought to have a new one.

"I thought I might as well get a quire while I was about it," Mr. Tucker said, in a half-apologetic tone as his wife looked at the paper, and he fancied he saw surprise in her face at the quantity.

"Christie will be writing other letters, maybe, as she grows older. I would like to have her write to her Uncle Daniel once in a while, and there may be others; this Mr. Fletcher might write to her again."

Nobody thought this very probable, and as for writing to her Uncle Daniel, or rather to his city wife, Aunt Louise, Christie privately thought that she really would much rather write to Mr. Fletcher; she felt better acquainted with him. However, she rejoiced in her box of pretty paper, and gave it a place of honour on the wonderful whatnot, and thereafter was busy during her leisure moments for two days, getting a letter ready to send to Mr. Fletcher. She wrote and re-wrote it on her slate, consulting with Karl over the sentences, until he knew them by heart, and sung them through the house to a popular tune, greatly to Christie's dismay.

At last, the letter was written on one of the new sheets of paper, the envelope addressed by Christie's own hand, the important little green stamp affixed to the right-hand corner, and the document was ready for the mail. Not a bad-looking document either. You girls who dash off a letter every few days to somebody, being careless as to whether each word has the correct spelling, and each capital is in its place, and forgetting the punctuation marks altogether, and filling the lines with descriptions of things that were "perfectly splendid," when you only mean that they were very pretty, or talking of something that was "just horrid," when you only mean that it was rather unpleasant, need not have been ashamed to have had Christie's carefully written letter travel in the same mail bag.

Really, before it is sealed, you shall have a peep at it, just to see what you think of the little girl who had never been to school a day in her life.

"KEWAUNEE, _January_ 18.

"DEAR MR. FLETCHER,—

"I remember you very well. I don't think I ever can forget you. I think of my journey in the cars a great deal. And now I have so many beautiful things to remind me of it all the time! I don't know how to thank you, but mother says if you knew how glad I was over them every day, she thinks you would be thanked. There was carpet enough for the front room and my room, and a nice large piece left over for mother's room. I wanted mother to have the whole one for hers, but she said that would not be polite to you, and that she would rather I had it anyway. I knew that, because she would rather we children should have things than to have them herself. I suppose mothers are always so.

"The carpet is the—I was going to say the prettiest one I ever saw, but I never saw one before, only a rag carpet, and this doesn't look any more like a rag carpet, it seems to me, than the sky looks like our blue washtub!

"It is most the prettiest thing I ever saw in my life. Except the moss, and the real true berries out in the woods in the spring, I think it is 'quite' the prettiest. I would like to have you look in our front room, it is so nice. My brother Karl says he should not know that he had ever seen the room before, it is so changed.

"The sofa just fits a place between the mantelpiece and a window, and the two lovely chairs are by the south window, and when the sun shines on them, they look as though they were made of moss. I don't let the sun shine on them much for fear it will fade them; only once in a while, to make a picture. My little sister Nettie is trying to make a picture on her slate of one of the chairs, and she made one so natural that father said he could most sit down on it. The chair is large enough for mother and Nettie and the baby, and when father takes the other one, and has Karl on one side and me on the other, he says, 'Now, mother, we are seated in our treasures, and our treasures are seated with us; who so happy as we?'

"And we are truly very happy indeed, and you did it all! I cannot think
why you and the Governor were so good.

"Father thinks perhaps I ought to write a letter to the Governor and thank him, but I am afraid to do that, for I don't know him so well as I do you, and if you would only be so kind as to tell him when he comes to see you, how much we thank him, I will be very glad, and I am sure he will like that better than to be troubled with a letter. The bedstead fits right into a niche in my room. Karl thought it would; he measured it with his eye. I didn't think so, but Karl was right; father says he has a very true eye, and that he ought to have a chance to learn mathematics. Karl says he is going to learn them without a chance; that he hasn't time to wait for any chances. The flowers on the bedstead and bureau are so natural that my little sister tries hard to pick them, and she tries to pick the berries from the carpet, too, and looks so surprised when they won't come.

"We are going to have a stove in the front room, and once in a while have a fire, so we can enjoy looking at all the lovely things. And now that we have the front room so pretty, we are going to invite the minister to tea. I wish you could come and visit with him; I know you would like him. His name is Mr. Keith. Mother thinks I am making my letter too long, and I do too; and it seems to me that I haven't thanked you much after all. I don't seem to know how to do it. But I do feel so truly thankful in my heart, that I most want to cry sometimes, I am so happy. I want to ask you, sir, if you ever hear anything of that dear baby? I did love him so! I would like to see his sweet face and hear his pretty voice. I do hope he is well, and has kept his mother safe.

"Your grateful little 'sister,'

"CHRISTIE TUCKER."

"For pity's sake, child!" the mother had said. "You are making that letter too long altogether."

"I know it," said Christie meekly. "But you see, mother, I don't know how to write a letter; I only just know how to talk to him as I did in the cars. And he is different from other people; he seems to like talk."

"I don't know about your telling him all that about your father and all of us sitting in the chairs, and about the children with their queer fancies, it sounds rather familiar. What will he care about all that?"

"I don't know why he cares," said Christie, positively, "but he did care to hear about us all, and asked questions, how old Nettie was, and how the baby looked, and all that. Why, mother, he is different from other people, you know. Why did he care to send me all those nice things, do you suppose?"

And then the mother said, "Sure enough, and perhaps he would like the letter; she should, she knew, if she were away from home and it were written to her."

And Christie said that her desire had been to let him see things in the front room and see how nice they looked, so that he would be pleased with all his work.

"You might have left that out about my having a true eye, and meaning to study mathematics. He certainly doesn't care for that, and it would have made the letter several lines shorter."

This was Karl's suggestion.

But Christie declared that she wanted to say that, she didn't know why, she just felt as though it ought to go in and she meant to put it in. Still the letter did seem very long, and I don't know that it would have been sent, had not Mr. Keith come out to make a call on the very evening when they were talking it over, and what did the father do but say:

"Let's leave it to Mr. Keith, he is used to letters. Christie, read out your letter to him and see if he thinks it is too long or too familiar."

Then had Christie's cheeks grown very red, and she had whispered to her mother that she was sure she couldn't do that.

But Mr. Keith had seemed to be very much interested, and had urged the reading, and besides Christie was in the habit of obeying her father.

And her mother whispered to her that she might leave that part out about inviting him to tea.

So with a frightened little voice, she began reading.

Nobody knew what was the matter with Mr. Keith; he got out his white handkerchief, and coughed, and wiped his mouth and his nose and his eyes. Certainly he seemed to have taken a hard cold since he came into the warm, bright kitchen! But no sooner was the letter finished than he cleared his voice to say that not a line of it ought to be omitted. He thought the old gentleman would be grieved if there were one word less than had been told him.

"I don't understand writing letters very well," Christie explained; "this is the first one I ever wrote, and I kept forgetting it was a letter and thought I was talking with him. He talked to me a good deal in the cars, and seemed to want to know about the children and everything."

"Of course he did," Mr. Keith said, and then he added something over which Christie pondered curiously for many a day. "See here, Christie, if were you, I would not try to learn how to write letters, I would just keep on talking to people when I wrote to them; I think it is the best way for you."

Did he mean that she would never know enough to write regular letters? Christie wondered.

This settled the matter of shortening the letter.

After Mr. Keith had gone, Karl sat looking thoughtfully at it, and at last burst forth with a new idea.

"Chris, they most always have postscripts in letters."

"What are postscripts?"

"Why, things that you put in after you think that you are all through. Down at the depot, while I am waiting for the milk train, the man at the desk is always reading letters; he reads aloud and the other one makes speeches. In almost every letter there is a postscript. Yesterday he was reading one about some corn that was to be shipped, and the other man said:

"'Doesn't he say anything about the bill? That is queer business.'

"'No,' Mr. Jones said. 'Or, hold on!' And he turned over the leaf. 'Here's a postscript.'

"'P. S. You may draw on Jenkins and Company for the amount due.'

"And the man over by the safe said: 'He always puts the important part of his letter in a postscript.'

"And they most always have them, don't they, father?"

Mr. Tucker was laughing. There were things about his boy and girl which seemed to amuse him very much. "Why, if they have forgotten something that they ought to have said, they add it in that way," he explained at last.

"But I want to know what it means," persisted Christie. "I don't know the word, and it sounds queerly; it has nothing to do with a post as I see."

Whereupon Karl went to the shelf in the corner cupboard and brought out a little fat brown book with one cover gone, the old copy of Webster's "Dictionary" that had come with them from their Eastern home. One of Mr. Tucker's dreams of future greatness was to own a Webster's "Unabridged," but every year there were so many necessary things to buy that Webster stayed behind.

"Postscript: a paragraph or part added to a writing."

This he read in triumph. But Christie remarked plaintively that it did not tell her "why."

"I suppose Webster 'Unabridged' would tell."

This the father said, and Karl added that he did wish that they had him under a bridge, or on a bridge, or "somehow." Then they all laughed and felt better.

"They do have them, anyhow," affirmed Karl. "I've heard the men talking about postscripts often. And seeing you don't know when you will write another letter, I think it would be nice to put one in."

"Well," said Christie, meditatively, "there is something I have forgotten. Would you put it in a postscript, mother?"

"If I wanted to," said the mother, who often didn't know whether to laugh or cry over her children.

Theirs was such a different childhood from hers. The old home had been full of books and papers, and letters coming and going were not unusual things. She might have known much about Webster's "Unabridged" to tell her children now if only she had cared to study it in her youth. What a pity it seemed to her sometimes that she could not have known in those old days in New England how much she would want to know to tell Karl and Christie some day. This mother had had chances, and had neglected some of them; her children certainly were not doing that. But bless your heart! I know children who are doing it to-day; and the time is coming to them swiftly when they will be "so" sorry!

"They don't write it out in full," explained Mr. Tucker, seeing that preparation was being made to add the postscript. "They use an abbreviation: a capital 'P' and a capital 'S,' with periods after them."

"Is that so?" replied Karl, speaking very respectfully.

Every little while he discovered a mine of unexplored knowledge in his father, and felt his admiration of him rising.

And this was the way that Christie Tucker's already long letter came to have a P.S. added:

"P.S. I have thought a great deal about what you said about my using the pretty carpet and the chairs, and all the lovely things, to honour Jesus with, but I don't think I know how to do it, only there is a boy and girl who live pretty near us—their names are Lucius and Lucy Cox—and they are very poor, and their kitchen isn't nice and bright and neat like ours, and they never have nice things to eat; and I was thinking, maybe if I let them see all the pretty things, and helped them have a good time, it would be using the things in a way to please the Elder Brother, but I don't know as it would."

"How shall I end it?" she asked at this point. "Do they end it again?"

But this Karl did not know. He had never seen postscripts, only heard of them; neither was the father sure whether it was proper to sign the name again.

"Dear!" said Christie. "I wish I knew! I had such a time finding a good way to sign the letter!"

And truly she had! It took a half-hour of discussion, and of trying the look of various ways on the slate, until she had settled down to the nice-sounding sentence:

"Your grateful little sister,

"CHRISTIE TUCKER."

It certainly could not be right to put all that down again.

Then did the mother rouse from her musings. There had come before her as plainly as though written on the blank sheet of Christie's paper which lay in her lap, the memory of a letter received many years ago from an old uncle who had been in Heaven for fifteen years. A business letter it had been, short and to the point, as the old uncle's work always was; and his name had been signed in full:

"Your uncle,

"ELIAB PERKINS HOWE."

At the foot of the page there had been this:

"P.S. Niece Christine, have you given yourself, soul and body, for time and for eternity, to the Lord; and do you live as though you always belonged to Him?

"E. P. H."

"You sign your initials," said Mother Tucker; "just the initials of your name—'C. H. T.,' and nothing else."

"Do you?" said Christie, relieved and pleased. "Well, I can make a pretty 'H,' I think. I like that."

And while she carefully made her pretty "H" and Karl looked over her shoulder and advised, the mother went back to the postscript of long ago, and remembered how far, how very far short she had come of living as though she belonged soul and body to the Lord, and wondered what she could do to make the fact surer to her own heart and to the eyes of her family. How industriously that new furniture was working for His glory! And nobody knew it.