What do you buy for someone who's hard to buy for? A young lady makes a surprising purchase which leads to a even more surprising discovery.The four Avery sisters sat on the floor in front of the sitting-room grate, each with her Christmas shopping-list ready for inspection and approval, for Christmas was close at hand.
"Betty," said Adelaide, the eldest of the four, "you are youngest, so read your list first."
"Such a time as I 've had making it!" said fifteen-year-old Betty, unfolding a sheet of pink paper. Betty affected pink in everything. "Christmas money does n't go very far when the thing you want costs twice what you can afford to give. Mine's mostly handkerchiefs, I think."
Betty read her list, which was, as she said, mostly handkerchiefs. It ended with "a handkerchief for Cousin Maria, and something for Aunt Jane."
A shout of laughter went up from the listeners.
"Oh, it's so funny," cried Clara; "that's what my list ends with!"
"Mine, too!" said Janet and Adelaide together, and then they laughed harder than before.
"Well, it 's nothing to laugh about," said the aggrieved Betty. "I 've thought and thought about Aunt Jane,—"
"Yes, we all know that; but,—"
A loud ring of the bell, followed by the sound of a hearty voice, caused Janet to leave her sentence unfinished, and the four to spring to their feet, rush into the hall, and embrace a stout gentleman who was taking off his overcoat.
"Oh, it 's Uncle Otis! it 's Uncle Otis!" they cried, seizing him by the hands and pulling him into the sitting-room and seating him in a big chair before the fire.
"Yes, it 's your Uncle Otis," said the newcomer, "and he 's on his way to New York and stopped off to take one of you girls with him. Whose turn is it this time, and where 's your mother?"
"Oh, it 's my turn, it 's mine!" cried Betty, dancing up and down. "Just think of going to New York at Christmas-time!"
"Yes, yes; but what about school, little miss?" asked Uncle Otis.
"Oh, Adelaide!" implored Betty, turning to her sister, "don't you think Mother 'll let me skip school if I study all vacation? Do ask her, and you ask her, too, dear Uncle Otis!"
The "asking" was evidently effectual, for the next morning the sisters were at the station bidding good-by to Betty and Uncle Otis.
"Now remember," said Janet, giving Betty a parting hug, "be sure you get something for each of us to give Aunt Jane, and remember it must be useful, too."
"I 'm almost sorry we intrusted Betty with the buying of something for Aunt Jane," said Adelaide as they watched the train disappear in the distance. "She 's too young to have good judgment."
"Oh, well," said Clara, "Uncle Otis will help her, and anyway I 'm glad to have it off my mind. I 've thought about Aunt Jane's present till my brains are numb."
"Aunt Jane" was the great-aunt of the Avery girls. She lived alone in a small "salt-box" house on the outskirts of the town. The inside of the house was as unattractive as the outside, and Aunt Jane seemed to fit her surroundings. She wore her hair combed smoothly over her ears and knotted tightly at the back in the fashion of fifty years ago.
The Averys were Aunt Jane's only relatives, and would have been glad to have her make her home with them, but she preferred to live in her own little house on her meager income, and be, as she expressed it, "beholden to nobody." She would not even accept presents which she could not repay in equal value, and the girls found it harder each year to give Aunt Jane something useful and inexpensive of which she did not possess duplicates. No one ever thought of giving anything purely ornamental to Aunt Jane. She sniffed at "foolish furbelows," and apparently cared not at all for the frivolous things of life.
At the time of year when the rest of the world was hurrying to and fro searching for Christmas gifts, Aunt Jane sat by her window and knitted. One year she would knit for each of her grandnieces a pair of gray leggings, and the next year each of them would receive a pair of knitted red "wristlets." This year was "legging year."
It was a very happy Betty who descended from the train at Bennington a week later. Her sisters were there to meet her and to have a word with Uncle Otis, who could not stop over as he wished to spend the holiday in his own home.
"I 'm just brimming over with curiosity to know what you 've bought for Aunt Jane," said Janet, when, after supper, Betty, the center of interest in the home group, was eagerly telling the story of her outing.
"Let me show what 's in this box first, before I tell," answered Betty, beginning to untie a package. Its fragrance penetrated even the paper wrapper.
She opened the box and took from it a large square of creamy silk so filmy that it floated in the air as she shook it out and tossed it into her mother's lap. To her father she handed a square box of shining lacquer decorated in quaint and artistic fashion. Then she took from the package a small pasteboard box covered with strange characters, and opening it disclosed a bird of shining metal and a bunch of green leaves and a bunch of flowers which she placed on the table. Last of all she drew from its many wrappings what looked like a jumble of beads and glass and tinted paper. She held it aloft by a string and it disclosed itself as a hoop covered with beads from which depended long slender strips of glass painted with graceful flowers. In the center was a hollow crystal ball with red fishes depicted on it, looking as if they were alive and swimming in a tiny globe. A long bead of glass with a rose-colored streamer attached was strung through the globe and when the streamer waved to and fro, it caused the bead to tinkle against the globe. As Betty moved the hoop all the glasses clashed together, making a pleasing musical sound.
"Oh, Betty, Betty," cried Janet, "where did you get that darling thing and what is it for? Do tell us about it!"
"It 's a Japanese wind-bell," said Betty. "You hang it in the window and when the wind blows, the glasses jingle and tinkle and make such soft pretty sounds,—and this little bird is an incense-burner. See, you take one of these leaves or one of the flowers, put it in the bird's bill, set it burning and it scents the whole room. That box Papa is holding is Japanese lacquer and the picture on top is of Fuji-yama, the sacred mountain of Japan, and the flowers on the sides are Japanese plum blossoms. The scarf on mother's lap is Japanese crepe, and this—" dipping into the box once more—"is a spray of Japanese cherry blossoms. Don't they look as if they were real?" And Betty waved aloft in pride and admiration a beautiful branch of what looked like real pink flowers.
"Oh, they 're the dearest things I ever saw!" said Adelaide, "but, Betty, why did n't you wait till to-morrow? We never have our presents till Christmas morning, and–"
"They 're not your presents at all," said Betty. "They 're for Aunt Jane."
"For Aunt Jane? Why Betty Avery, what made you? She 'll never—"
"Tut, tut, Adelaide," said Mr. Avery, seeing Betty's lip quiver. "Tell us about it, Betty."
"Why, 't was this way," said Betty, standing with her back against the table and speaking rapidly. "We left Aunt Jane's things till the last day, and then Uncle Otis had a telegram to see about some more business and he could n't go with me, so he took me to a wonderful store where they had things such as you read about in Arabian Nights." He left me in charge of a girl just about my age, and she showed me the most beautiful things,—why they just took your breath away almost, they were so lovely,—and I just made up my mind I 'd get something for Aunt Jane in this very store, and it could be useful, too, and these things are. You know Aunt Jane hangs strips of paper in the window in the summer to keep the flies out, and she can use the wind-bell, and it 'll scare them twice as well; and she always thinks the hall is musty and burns coffee for it. Now she can burn a leaf or flower. Her handkerchief-box is pasteboard and broken and that lacquer box is wood and will last her years to keep handkerchiefs in. and I thought these cherry blossoms would be nice to put on her Jerusalem cherry-tree when its blossoms were gone. And the silk, well you know we think she looks like the picture of Great-grandmother Barnett, and she likes to have us say so, I 'm sure. If she would turn in her black silk dress in a "V" and fold this silk handkerchief inside it like Grandmother's picture, she 'd look almost exactly like her. I want you all to like the things. I 'm sure they 're just as useful as they can be," and the tears which had been glistening in Betty's eyes brimmed over, and she hid her face on her father's shoulder.
"Never you mind, Betty, child," said her father, putting his arm around her. "These presents shall go to Aunt Jane, and you girls go now and write the notes to put with them, and I 'll take them out to her right away, along with Mother's preserves and pickles. And by the way, perhaps you better explain what each is for."
"I hate to go in, don't you?" said Clara, as next morning the four girls walked up the path to Aunt Jane's door.
"Yes, I do," answered Adelaide; "but let's get it over with. The sooner an aching tooth is out the quicker the pain stops"; but before Adelaide could give her. announcing rap the door was opened by Aunt Jane.
"Come right in, it 's a proper cold morning, an' go right in my bedroom an' take off your things, an' then come an' git warm."
The girls had time for only a hasty glance as they passed through the sitting-room into the bedroom, but that had sufficed to show them a bird on the table with a leaf in its mouth, the glasses of a wind-bell glistening in the window, and a lacquer box on a stand and beside it a pile of neatly folded handkerchiefs.
Adelaide pointed to a chair in the bedroom and there was Aunt Jane's black silk waist and over it lay the shimmering square of Japanese crepe.
When the girls went into the sitting-room Aunt Jane was on her knees before the stove stirring the fire.
"My, such surprisin' Christmas presents I never had in all my born days!" she said brusquely, giving the fire an extra poke.
"Did—did n't you like 'em ?" began Betty, timidly.
"Well, I don't s'pose I 'd ought, but I do," said Aunt Jane, still poking at the fire. "I s'pose livin' as I do from hand to mouth as you might say, I 'd ought n't to even want anything pretty, lettin' alone havin' it, but now I 've got 'em, I might as well tell you I 've just hankered fer some o' the pretty things you girls have, an' I've just hated,—fer I might as well own up to the whole thing,—I 've hated the holders an' aperns an' dusters an' dish-towels. Why, I 've got enough to last me twice as long as I shall live. Look here," and rising, Aunt Jane opened the lower drawer to her high-boy, disclosing to the astonished gaze of her nieces, the drawer packed with dusters, holders, and wiping towels, the accumulation of many Christmases of "useful things."
"Look at them holders, I could n't never use 'em up. Two lasts me a year, an' I 've had a dozen every year since I 've lived alone, but thanks be, I ain't got a blessed holder this year; and you go get your presents, they 're on the table in the best room."
Four small packages lay side by side on the table, and as they looked at them Adelaide whispered:
"It's wristlets, I can tell by the size. She forgot 't was 'legging year.'"
"I 'm going to put mine right on then," said Betty, breaking the string of the package, but instead of wristlets out fell a handkerchief with a lacy border; and the others hastening to undo theirs found that each package held a pretty, dainty gift of the same kind!
"Oh, oh, Aunt Jane!" exclaimed Adelaide, "wherever did you find these lovely handkerchiefs?"
"Made 'em," answered Aunt Jane, stooping to pick from the carpet a thread that was invisible.
"Made them? But you surely did n't make the borders!"
"Oh, yes, I did. It's tattin' made out of number hundred thread, that 's what makes it so fine. Last summer I was lookin' over an old box an' found my tattin' shuttle. I thought I 'd forgot how to use it, but I had n't, and then I decided I 'd tat 'stead o' knittin' this Christmas."
"But, Aunt Jane, I 've seen you knitting every time I've been here."
Aunt Jane had hitherto made no pretense of hiding her Christmas work.
"Well, I thought I'd surprise you for once, and I 'm the one that 's surprised. Jes' look at them flowers! They look as if they was growin'. Talk about makin' the desert blossom like the rose! I 'll tell you there 's folks that has lives like the desert an' nobody ever thinks o' so much as plantin' a dandelion in 'em, let alone a rose-bush. But I ain't goin' to talk 'bout my desert. If one o' you 'll pin that handkerchief in my dress I 'll wear it up to dinner this evening, an' you might tell your mother that I 'll bring along a change, an' if she wants me to, I think I may stay with you till after New Year's over."
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