Chapter 7 THE COMING OF THE FAIRY GODMOTHER

With the Harlings safely out of their difficulties Christmas, as Carl jestingly observed, was free to approach and approach it did with a speed incredible of belief. A big blizzard a week before it, which transformed the suburban districts into a wonderland of beauty, merely worked havoc however in Baileyville, causing muddy streets and slippery pavements, and wrecking the skating in the park.

"Snow doesn't seem to be made for cities," remarked Mrs. McGregor in reply to Carl's lamentations. "It is an old-fashioned institution that belongs to the past. Here in town there is neither a place for it nor does it do an atom of good to anybody unless it is the unemployed who hail the work it brings."

"I hate the snow," wailed Timmie. "It isn't snow, anyway; it's just slush."

"Ah, laddie, you should see one of the snowstorms of the old country!" protested his Scotch mother reminiscently. "Then you would not say you hated the snow. It turned everything it touched white as a Tartary lamb."

"What's a Tartary lamb, Mother?" inquired Tim with interest.

"A Tartary lamb? Ask your big brother; he goes to school."

"I never heard of a Tartary lamb, Ma," flushed Carl.

"Mary had a little lamb," began Nell, who had caught the phrase.

"So she did, darling," laughed her mother as she picked up the child and kissed her, "and its fleece was white as snow, too, for the song says so; but it wasn't a Tartary lamb, dearie. It was just a common one."

"What is a Tartary lamb, anyway, Ma?" Mary demanded.

Mrs. McGregor paused to put a length of silk into her needle.

"Long ago," began she, "before there were ships and trains, to say nothing of automobiles and aeroplanes people had to stay at home in the places where they happened to be born. Of course they could go by coach or on horseback to a near-by city, but they could not go far; nor indeed did they think of going because they did not know there was anywhere to go. Nobody did any traveling in those days and as a result there were no maps or travel books to set you thinking you must pack up your traps to-morrow and start for some place you never had seen. But by and by the compass was invented, larger and better ships came to be built, and men got the idea the world was round instead of flat (as they had at one time supposed), a discovery that comforted vastly the timid souls who had always been afraid of falling off the edge of it. Therefore, when it was at last proved that should you sail far, far away your ship, instead of dropping off into space, would circle the great ball we live on and come home again, some of those who were brave, adventurous, and had money enough set out on voyages to see what there was to be seen in other lands than those they had been brought up in. Frenchmen thought it would be a grand thing to discover new countries for France; Englishmen wanted new territory for England. So it was all over the world. Thus this one and that one began to travel."

"Just as Columbus came to America, Ma," put in Tim.

"Exactly, dear," nodded his mother. "Now you can imagine what a hero such a traveler became; how people admired his daring; and how half of them wished they were going with him and the other half rejoiced that they weren't. And when he came back there was great excitement to hear where he had been and what he had seen! Every word he spoke was passed from mouth to mouth, each person who repeated it adding to the story until it grew like a snowball. And as was inevitable the more raptly the populace listened the more marvelous became the stories."

"Like Jack Murphy when he gets home from the circus," put in Tim.

"Yes, very much like Jack Murphy, I am afraid; only sometimes these travelers really believed the tales they told. Sometimes the stories had been passed on to them by the natives of the strange countries they visited, and how could they know that all which was told them was not true? Such a tale was the legend of the Tartary lamb."

"Tell it to us, Mother," urged Mary.

"Well, it actually isn't much of a story, my dear. You see, when the travelers from England, France, and other western countries went to the East for the first time, they saw cotton growing, or if they did not really see it, they heard there was such a thing. Now cotton was entirely new to the voyagers and it seemed unbelievable that such a plant could be. Some of the eastern natives told the visitors that in each pod grew a little lamb with soft, white fleece. Orientals were very ignorant in those days. The Tartars went even farther and said the lamb bent the stalk he lived on down to the ground and ate all the food within reach; and when he had nibbled up all the grass and roots around him he died, and then it was that people took his fleece and twisted it into thread, which was woven into garments. Thus the legend became established and the belief in the Tartary lamb became so firm that for several hundred years people even in England thought that in the Far East there grew this wonderful plant with a vegetable lamb sprouting from the top of it."

"How silly of them!" sniffed Carl.

"No sillier than lots of the things we now believe, probably," replied his mother. "Aren't we constantly discovering how mistaken some of our cherished beliefs were? That is what progress is. We learn continually to cast aside outgrown notions and adopt wiser and better ones. So it was in the past. The world was very young in those days, you must remember, and people did not know so much about it as we do now. And even we, with all our wisdom, are going to be laughed at years hence, precisely as you are laughing now about those who believed the story of the Tartary lamb. Men are going to say: 'Think of those poor, stupid old things back in nineteen hundred and twenty-three who believed so-and-so! How could they have done it?'"

Carl was silent.

"When you consider this you will understand how it was that the eager readers of the past devoured with wide-open eyes the tale-telling of Sir John Mandeville; and should you ever read that ancient story, as I hope you will sometime, you will be less surprised to hear that even he declared that he had seen cotton growing and that when the pod of the plant was cut open inside it was a little creature like a lamb. The natives of the East ate both the fruit of the plant and the wee beast, he explained. In fact he said he had eaten the thing himself."

"Why, the very idea!" gasped Mary.

"What a lie!" Carl burst out.

"I'm afraid Sir John was either not very truthful or he had a great imagination," smiled Mrs. McGregor. "Still, you see, he was not alone in his belief about the Tartary lamb. So many other people believed the yarn that he probably thought he was telling the truth. And as for eating it-well, he just had a strain of Jack Murphy in him. Besides, there were no schools in 1322 to teach Sir John Mandeville better. And anyway, who was to contradict the fable? Sir John had been to the East and the other people hadn't. Why shouldn't they believe what he and other travelers told them?"

"He did sort of have them, didn't he?" grinned Carl.

"How long was it before the public stopped believing such a ridiculous story?" demanded Mary.

"About three hundred years," answered her mother. "In the meantime much traveling had been done by the peoples of all nations and learning had made great strides. Scientific men began to whisper there could be no such thing as the lamb of the Tartars; it was not possible. Cotton was merely a plant. You can imagine what discussions such an assertion as that raised. The public had come to like the notion of the Tartary lamb and did not wish to give it up; besides, if the story were all a myth, it put the travelers who had told it in a very bad light, and shook the confidence of readers in some of the other tales they had published. Science always upsets us. None of us like to be jolted out of the beliefs we have been brought up with and exchange them for others, no matter how good the new ones are. So it was in sixteen hundred. The populace resented having the Tartary lamb taken away from them."

Mrs. McGregor laughed.

"It was a pity Sir John Mandeville and the rest did not live long enough to learn how mistaken they had been," mused Mary.

"Poor old Sir John! I guess it was as well for him that he didn't, for in his day he was, you see, quite a celebrity. He might not have relished living to see his fame evaporate. At least he had the courage to make a trip to a strange and distant land, and for that we should respect him since it took nerve to travel in those days. Moreover he did his part and was a link in a civilization that went on after he was gone. So the history of the world is built up. Each generation builds on the blunders of the one before it-or should."

"How queer it makes you feel; and how small!" Mary reflected.

"Why?"

"Well, it just seems as if we didn't count for much," sighed the girl.

"On the contrary, dear child, we count for a great deal," instantly retorted her mother. "Each one of us can have a share in the vast plan of the universe and help carry it forward."

"How, Mother?"

"By doing all we can during our lifetime to make the world better," was the answer. "Good men and good women make a good world, don't they? And the better the world the farther ahead will be its civilization. Progress is not all in wonderful discoveries of science, in fine architecture, or in great books; much of it lies in the peoples of the globe learning to live peacefully together and help one another. Kindness to our neighbor, therefore, helps civilization. It cannot avoid doing so if we live it on a large enough scale."

"I never thought of that before," meditated Carl.

"But you can see it is so, laddie," responded his mother. "A lack of kindness and fairness in nations causes wars, and wars put the world backward. It is in the peaceful times that nations grow. You know yourself that you cannot build up anything when somebody else is waiting to knock it down the minute you have it finished. Under such conditions it hardly seems worth while to build at all. So it is with nations the world over. When they are snarling jealously at one another's heels, and coveting what the other possesses, how can progress be made?"

"I suppose when they get mad they forget about the work of the world," Tim announced.

"That is just the trouble," agreed his mother. "Engrossed in their own little squabbles, they lose sight of the splendid big thing they were put here to do. In other words they forget their job, which is to make the world and themselves better."

Slowly she glanced from one earnest face into another.

"Well, I've read you quite a sermon, haven't I?" smiled she. "And it was all because of the Tartary lamb. Now suppose we talk of something else-Christmas. It will be here now before we know it. What shall we do this year? Shall it be a tree? Or shall we hang our stockings, go without a tree, and put the money into a Christmas dinner?"

Inquiringly she studied her children's faces.

"I suppose a tree does cost quite a lot before you are through with it," reflected the prudent Mary.

"And we have the municipal tree in the park, anyway," Carl put in in an attempt to be optimistic.

"But that tree isn't ours, our very own tree," Tim began to wail.

"It is lots bigger than any tree we could have, Timmie," asserted his older brother. "And think of the lights! They are all electric. We couldn't have lights like those here at home."

"I know," grieved Tim. "But it isn't our tree-just ours-in our house."

"A Christmas tree costs ever so much money, Timmie," Mary explained gently. "Mother can't buy us a tree always and a dinner, too."

"Oh, I could manage a small tree, perhaps," interrupted Mrs. McGregor, touched at seeing the child so disappointed. "There are little ones at the market."

"But I don't want a little one," objected Tim stubbornly. "I want a big, big Christmas tree."

"Big as the ceiling-big as Mulberry Court," interrupted Martin, extending his chubby arms to their full length.

"I wants a big tree, too," lisped Nell.

Mrs. McGregor sighed to herself. Evidently it was not going to be as easy to coax her flock away from their established traditions as she had at first supposed. Each year she had made a stupendous effort to keep Christmas after the old fashion; and each season the ceremony, before it was over, made appalling inroads on her slender purse. This time it had been her plan to curtail expenses and put what was spent into the more substantial and lasting things. But now as she glanced about her her heart misgave her. Even Carl and Mary, valiantly as they fought for economy, and grown up though they were, could not altogether conceal the fact that they were disappointed; and as for the younger children, they were on the brink of tears.

"Well, we won't decide to-day," announced their mother diplomatically. "We will think it over until to-morrow. By that time perhaps some way can be found--"

A knock at the door interrupted her.

"Run to the door like a good boy, Timmie," said she. "Very likely it's the boy from the corner grocery with the bundles of wood I ordered."

Tim rose with importance. Visitors to the fifth floor of Mulberry Court were so few that to admit even so prosaic a one as the grocer's boy never ceased to thrill him.

To-day, however, it was not the grocer's boy who stood peering at him from the dim hallway. In fact, it was no one he had ever seen before. A little old man stood there, a man with ruddy cheeks, a stern mouth, and blue eyes whose sharpness was softened by a moist, far-away expression. From beneath a nautical blue cap strayed a wisp or two of white hair. Otherwise, he was buttoned to his chin in a great coat, fastened with imposing brass buttons, dulled by much fingering.

Apprehensive at the sight, Tim backed into the room. Brass buttons, in his limited experience, meant either firemen or policemen and either of these dignitaries was equally terrifying.

"You don't know your Uncle Frederick, do you, sonny?" observed the stranger.

The voice, more than the words, brought Mrs. McGregor to her feet in an instant, and what a rush she made for the door! Gauze, spangles, scissors, and spool flew in all directions and the children, deciding that some unprecedented evil had befallen, stampeded after her.

Open-mouthed, they watched, while in the arms of the little old gentleman she laughed, cried, and uttered broken nothings quite unintelligible to anybody.

"Who ever would have thought to see you, Frederick!" gasped she at last, as wiping her eyes on the corner of her apron she dragged her visitor into the room. "Children, come here one by one and speak to your Uncle James Frederick Dillingham. This is Carl, the oldest one-a good boy as ever lived (if he is always tearing his clothes). The next is Mary; she's going on thirteen and is quite a little housekeeper even now. Timmie, who let you in, is nine. And here are Martin and Nell-the mites! James Frederick is asleep but when you see him you'll see the finest baby you ever set your two eyes on. Kiss your uncle, children. You know it's him you have to thank for many, many things."

Slowly the children advanced, wonder (and if the truth must be told) no small measure of chagrin in their crestfallen countenances.

Was this apparition the fairy prince of their imaginings-this little gray man with his long coat and oilskin bundle? Why, he might be Mike Carrigan, the butcher; or Davie Ryan, the proprietor of the fruit stand, for anything his appearance denoted. Their dreams were in the dust. Still, youth is hopeful and they did not quite let go the expectation that when the long coat that disguised him had been removed and the magic bundle opened Uncle Frederick Dillingham would issue forth in a garb startling, resplendent, and more in accordance with their mental pictures of him. But to their profound disappointment, when the great coat was tossed aside, it concealed no ermine-robed hero; nor was there crown or scepter in the bundle. Instead there stood in their midst a very plain, kindly little man arrayed in a shiny suit of blue serge that was almost shabby. The buttons, to be sure, had anchors on them; but they were dim, lusterless old anchors that looked as if they had been sunk in the depths of the sea until their golden glory had been tarnished by the washings of a million waves.

Nell eyed him and at length began to cry.

"Policeman!" she whimpered, hiding her face in her mother's skirt.

"Hush, girlie! Don't be silly," protested Mrs. McGregor hurriedly. "Your uncle is no policeman, though he may get one if you don't stop that noise."

At that the little old man laughed a hearty, ringing laugh, so good to hear that in spite of themselves the whole family joined in it. After that, everything was easy. Uncle James Frederick Dillingham tucked his coat, cap, and bundle away in a corner and allowed his sister to seat him in the rocking-chair before the stove.

"Put another shovelful of coal on the fire, Carl," said she briskly. "And Mary, do you slip out to the market and fetch home a beefsteak and some onions. You were ever fond of a steak smothered in onions, Frederick. Timmie, you shall set the table with a place for your uncle Frederick at the head, remember. And Nell, trot to the shed, darling, and bring mother a nice lot of potatoes. Go softly so not to waken James Frederick."

Promptly her host sprang to obey her.

"Well, well, Brother," murmured she, "I've scarcely got my breath yet. I never was so surprised in all my born days as to see you standing there on the mat! Wherever did you come from? We've not heard from you for weeks and I had begun to fear something might have gone amiss."

Captain Dillingham patted her hand with his horny one.

"We had a long trip home, Nellie, because of strong head winds," explained he. "Then, too, there were ports to stop at and cargo to unload. Add to this a fracas with the engine and you'll readily understand why I had only scant time for letter writing. I never was any too good at it, at best, you know."

"Men never are," returned Mrs. McGregor cheerily over her shoulder as she hustled out of the pantry with a clean tablecloth. "But it matters not now; the ship is safe in port and you are here in time for Christmas-a miracle that's never happened before in all my memory."

"But--," began her brother doubtfully.

"But what? Surely you're not going to say you are putting straight off to-morrow for India or some other heathen spot! No shipowners would be so heartless as to ask you to do that. Besides, very like the Charlotte must need repairing after such a stiff trip. Oughtn't her seams to be caulked or something?"

Captain Dillingham's eyes twinkled and the corners of his mouth curved upward.

"You're quite knowing in nautical matters, Nellie," observed he with amusement. "Aye, the Charlotte will have to lay to and be overhauled some. She had a tough voyage. Still, she don't mind it much. She's a thoroughbred that takes what comes without whimpering. That's the lady of her. I never have to offer excuses or apologies for her-no, siree! Tell her what you want done and you can count on her doing it every time."

"I'm sorry you didn't have a better voyage home," ventured his sister.

"Oh, the voyage was all right enough. You can't expect a marble floor to sail on in December. Indeed a trip such as that would be almost too tame for me. I like the kick of the sea. Still, heavy winds that hold you back all the way over as these held us, are trying. You make but slow progress against them. Nevertheless the Charlotte put up a stiff fight and don't you forget it."

"Had you any storms this trip?"

"Storms? Oh, I believe we did strike a gale or two, now I come to think of it. I recall there was a nasty typhoon in the Indian Ocean that kept us busy for a while. But such happenings are all in the day's work and after they are over are forgotten."

Carl, busy at his task of slicing the bread, gasped. Gales and typhoons! And the Indian Ocean to boot! And his uncle mentioned them all as if they were no more than flies on the wall. He had seen the Indian Ocean on the map-an area of blue edged about with patches of pink, green, and yellow; but he certainly had never expected to meet in the flesh anybody who had sailed its waters.

Uncle Frederick Dillingham suddenly began to take on in his eyes an aspect quite new; an aspect so alluring that when contrasted with the myth of purple and ermine the latter tradition shriveled into something very minor in importance. Was not the master of a ship a far more intriguing character than a dull old king who did nothing but sit on a crimson velvet throne and wave a scepter?

"You'll have much to tell us, Frederick," declared Mrs. McGregor, putting the potatoes into the oven. "The children know little of foreign lands. Nor do I know as much of them as I would. 'Twill be grand to hear where you've been and what you've seen."

"Did you go to China, Uncle Frederick?" Carl inquired timidly.

"Aye! And to India and Japan, laddie."

The boy's eyes glowed with excitement.

"Oh, wouldn't I like to sail on a big ship to some place that was different from Mulberry Court!" cried he.

"The places I've been in lately were certainly different from Mulberry Court!" sighed Captain Dillingham. "And perhaps had you seen them you would be as glad as I am to be at Mulberry Court."

"Maybe! I'd like a peep at something else, though."

"Maybe some day you'll be having it," returned the sea captain jocosely. "Who knows! I may be taking you to India with me when you're older."

"Frederick!" came from Mrs. McGregor in a horrified tone.

"You wouldn't like to see the shaver starting off for India, Nellie? And why not?" laughed her brother. "India is a fine country. Besides, traveling the world is a great way to study its geography. I'll be willing to wager, now, that not one of these older children, though they have been to school since they were knee high, could tell me offhand where the Suez Canal is."

Consternation greeted the assertion and there was dead silence.

"There! What did I tell you?" returned Captain Dillingham triumphantly. "And should I try them on the Bay of Biscay or the Ganges it would be no better."

The stillness was oppressive.

"Aren't there-didn't I read somewhere that there are crocodiles in the Ganges?" Carl managed to stammer.

His uncle chuckled.

"There's hope for you, son," he answered. "To know there are crocodiles in the Ganges is something. Perhaps I shall make a tourist of you yet. But you will have to know a little more about this globe of ours before I can do it, I'm afraid."

"I hate geography," announced Tim, who had been listening and now with disconcerting frankness proclaimed his aversion in no uncertain terms. "All it is is little squares of color."

Captain Dillingham glanced toward his sister and met her wry smile.

"That's what books do for you," acclaimed he. "They make the romance of the Orient nothing but patchwork." Then to Tim he continued, "I can teach you better geography than that, laddie. Countries aren't just little pieces of pink, yellow, or blue paper laid together. They are people, rivers, mountains; tea, sugar, and cotton; ivory, elephants, and carved temples."

The children had drawn closer around his knee.

"Tell us about the elephants," pleaded Tim, with shining eyes.

"There, you see! You are begging already for a lesson in geography-much as you dislike it!" teased his uncle.

"There can be no geography lessons now," objected Mrs. McGregor. "The steak is done and mustn't be spoiled with waiting. Show your uncle where to sit, Mary. And, Timmie, bring the salt. It's been forgotten. You'll have to bring a chair from my room, Martin. Remember James Frederick and go on your toes."

"Now, Frederick," smiled his sister mischievously, "admit that even in India you've seen nothing better than this beefsteak."

"'Twill take no coaxing to make me admit that, my dear," returned Captain Dillingham. "Not all the sultans of the east could produce a dish as royal as this one."