The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation by Annie Fellows Johnston

LLOYD hurried down the road to the post-office, her cheeks almost as red / as her coat from her brisk walk in the wintry air. It was too cold to / saunter, or she would have made the errand last as long as possible. / There would be nothing to do after she had called for the mail. The day / before she had had her visit to Mrs. Crisp to fill the morning. It / brought a pleasant thrill now to think of the little woman's gratitude / and the children's pleasure in the dinner she had cooked in the clean / bare kitchen. She wished she could go every day and repeat the / performance, but her family would not allow it. They said it was just as / injurious for her to waste her strength in charity as it was in study, / and she must be more temperate in her enthusiasms.

She wished that Miss Mattie would invite her into the tiny office behind / the rows of pigeonholes and letter-boxes, and let her sit by the window / awhile. Just watching people pass would be some amusement, more than she / could find at home.

She was passing the Bisbee place as she made the wish. It was a white / frame house standing near the road, and commanding a view of both / station and store, as well as the approach to the post-office. To her / surprise, some one tapped on the pane of an up-stairs window. Then the / sash flew up, and Mrs. Bisbee called in her thin, fluttering voice: / "Lloyd! Lloyd Sherman! If you're going to the post-office, I wish you'd / ask if there is anything for me. I don't dare set foot out-of-doors this / cold weather."

Then, fearful of draughts, she banged the window down without waiting / for a reply. Lloyd smiled and nodded, glad of an opportunity to be of / service. As she hurried on, she remembered that Miss Allison had spoken / of this gentle little old lady, with her fluttering voice and placid / smile, as one of the most interesting and "Cranfordy" characters in the / Valley, and that, while she never went out in the winter, and seldom in / the summer, except to church, she kept such a sharp eye on the / neighbourhood happenings from the watch-tower of her window that Mrs. / Walton laughingly called it the "Window in Thrums."

It was with the feeling that she was stepping into a story that Lloyd / opened the gate five minutes later and started up the path. A vigorous / tapping on the window above, and a beckoning hand motioned her to come / up-stairs. Hesitating an instant on the porch, she opened the front door / and stepped into the hall.

"Do come up!" called the old lady, plaintively, from the head of the / stairs. "I've been wishing so hard for company that I believe my wishing / must have drawn you. Now that daughter is married and gone, I get so / lonesome, with Mr. Bisbee in town all day, that I often find myself / talking to myself just for the sake of sociability. Not a soul has been / in for the last two days, and usually I have callers from morning till / night. This is such a good dropping-in place, you know. So central that / I see and hear everything."

She ushered Lloyd into a room, gay with big-flowered chintz curtains, / and quaint with old-fashioned carved furniture. There was a high / four-poster bed in one corner, with a chintz valance around it, and pink / silk quilled into the tester. The only modern thing in the room was a / tiled grate, piled full of blazing coals. It threw out such a / summer-like heat that Lloyd almost gasped. She was glad to accept Mrs. / Bisbee's invitation to take off her coat and gloves. She moved her chair / back as far as possible into the bay-window.

"I reckon you feel it's pretty warm in here," said Mrs. Bisbee. "I have / to keep it that way so that I can sit over here against the window / without catching cold. I couldn't afford to miss all that's going on in / the street. It's my only amusement."

She drew her work-basket toward her and picked up the quilt pieces she / had laid down when she went to welcome Lloyd. She was making a silk / quilt of the tea-chest pattern, and the basket was full of bright silk / scraps and pieces of ribbon.

"It's like a panorama, I tell Mr. Bisbee. Oh, by the way, I've been / aching to find out. Where did you all go that day just before Christmas / when you started off, a whole party of you, traipsing down the road with / a new saucepan and baskets and things? I heard you had a picnic in the / snow. Is that so?"

Lloyd really gasped this time, but not from the heat. She was so / surprised that Mrs. Bisbee should have taken such an interest in her / affairs, or in any of the unimportant doings of their set, as to / remember them longer than the passing moment. Mrs. Bisbee was / associated in Lloyd's mind with solemn churchly things, like the / Gothic-backed pulpit chairs or the sombre brown pews. Lloyd had never / seen her before, except when she was singing hymns, or sitting with / meekly folded hands through sermon-time. It was almost as surprising to / find that she was inquisitive and interested in human happenings as it / would have been to discover that the ivy-covered belfry kept an eye on / her.

In the midst of her description of the picnic, Mrs. Bisbee leaned / forward and peered eagerly out of the window over her spectacles.

"I don't want to interrupt you," she said; "I just wanted to make sure / that that was Caleb Coburn out again. He has been house-bound with / rheumatism ever since Thanksgiving."

Lloyd looked out in time to see a tall, stoop-shouldered man with a / bushy beard go slowly across the road. He was buttoned up in a heavy / overcoat, and limped along with the aid of two canes.

"He's the queerest old fellow," commented Mrs. Bisbee, looking after / him, with a gentle shake of the head. "Lately he has taken to knitting, / to pass the time."

"To knitting!" echoed Lloyd, in amazement. "That big man?"

"Yes. He calls it hooking. He has a needle made out of a ham bone. Fancy / now! Daughter said it was the funniest thing in life to see him propped / up in bed with a striped skull-cap on, hooking his wife a shawl."