Uncle Noahs Christmas Inspiration | Page 7

and nuts, celery and raisins, cigars for the Colonel, a box of candy for Mrs. Fairfax, huge bunches of holly and mistletoe, Christmas wreaths for the windows, and a great bag of cracked corn for the reprieved tyrant gloomily roosting in the ruined hut.
As Uncle Noah carefully counted out the money required to purchase this astonishing outlay the bulky proprietor tasked pleasantly: "Uncle Noah, do you happen to know where I can get a good woman to scrub up my store every morning?"
Uncle Noah fingered his scarfpin uncertainly. "How much do yoh pay foh de work?" he queried.
"Fifty cents a day."
The negro leaned forward in tense expectancy. "Do yoh 'spect I could do it?" he demanded excitedly.
The proprietor, secretly astonished by the old man's manner, nodded assuringly. "Why, yes, you could easily; it's nothing much; but the Colonel--"
"Colonel doan have foh to know," exclaimed Uncle Noah. "I comes yere mornin's foh he's up--an I 'clare to goodness, sah, I needs de money mos' powahful."
The proprietor was easy-going and too phlegmatic to harbor curiosity. So the bargain was straightway sealed under a pledge of deepest secrecy.
Somewhat confused by the unusual series of events, Uncle Noah, his eyes shining with a strange excitement, started for the door, quite forgetting the countless packages on the counter.
The proprietor recalled him with a hearty laugh. "Uncle Noah," he called, "you've forgotten one or two little bundles here."
With a smothered gasp the old negro hurried back. But try as they would, room for all the numerous bundles could not be found. The proprietor energetically tucked bundles into all of Uncle Noah's pockets, piled them tower fashion upon his arms, and even hung a collection bound together with a string over his shoulder, while Uncle Noah wheezed and groaned and struggled to find new and unsuspected storage space in his clothes, but still there remained bundles and bundles at which Uncle Noah gazed over his spectacles in growing discomfiture.
"Whut am I a-goin' to do?" he demanded. "I nevah can come all de way hack yere in de snow wif dese yere ol' legs o' mine."
"Get one of them station cabs," advised the grocer; and so, after considerable discussion, the bundle problem was solved.
Ten minutes later Uncle Noah entered a hired carriage for the first time in his life. At the town florist's he rapped a timid signal to the driver to stop, and, glowing with anticipation, spryly shuffled into the warm, scented air of the little shop. Here, to the smiling clerk's astonishment, he ordered a bunch of violets to be delivered Christmas morning to "de young lady wif de gray eyes whut's at Major Verney's."
"Surely," smiled the clerk, "you don't want that on the card?"
But Uncle Noah was stubborn; more, he insisted on writing the inscription himself, his orthography quite as quaint as his penmanship, and so the card went to be read by the wonderful gray eyes in the morning.
Back through the snow in his rickety carriage rolled Uncle Noah, rattling home along the snowy road down which he had trudged in the early evening, chuckling now intermittently in a mental rehearsal of his new plan.
"Fifty cents a day!" he thought, "an' to-morrow I'se a-goin' to slip over to Fernlands in de mornin' an' ask her to lemme buy maself back on de 'stallment plan. Mos' likely she'll take a dollar a week, an' wid all de rest o' dat grocer money ol' Mis' doan have to know whut de Colonel an' me is a-goin' through."
In accordance with Uncle Noah's whispered directions the cab crept gently up the driveway at Brierwood and paused at the kitchen door, where the driver, who had taken a great fancy to Uncle Noah, became transformed into a benevolent stevedore, tiptoeing in and out of the kitchen with the bundles which the old darky drew from the cavernous pit of the cab. Job's understudy came last, and Uncle Noah, tightly pressing the precious fowl in his arms, watched the carriage drive slowly away. Then, after an interval in the kitchen devoted to hiding his purchases, he sought the library, striving to simulate a decent depression over the assumed decapitation of Job.
Colonel Fairfax looked up inquiringly as he entered.
"I'se jus' come to tell yoh, sah," said Uncle Noah with a meaning glance at Mrs. Fairfax, "dat I has de turkey all ready foh de oven."
A faint red crept through the Colonel's skin, but he met the darky's eyes squarely. "Thank you, Uncle Noah!" he said, and the negro shuffled hurriedly away.
In his old rocking-chair by the kitchen fire Uncle Noah, alert and excited, waited until he heard the Colonel and Mrs. Fairfax go up to bed; then, chuckling to himself, he extinguished the kitchen lights, and, carrying one of his Christmas bundles, plodded across the field to Job's nocturnal hermitage. The