Treffie looked at Miss Elizabeth, her eyes wet and drawn; she didn't answer.
“Take your elbows off the table, Trophenia,” the mistress said, tilting her head towards the little girl. Treffie jerked her arms away so quickly her glass tipped over, spilling water over the table. Her shoulders began to shake, and her little hands shot up to cover her face.
“We allow for accidents,” the mistress said in a voice as hard as a stick, “but in future, Trophenia, don't act so hastily, and do not have the same accidents, or we will consider them bad habits that need to be broken. Rules,” the mistress added, “are to be enforced. See this wooden ruler?” She held up a heavy, thick stick. “Does it bend? No, it does not. Does it have measurements on it? Most certainly. And that is why punishment for infractions vary.”
Clarissa sighed, but not loud enough for Old Keziah to hear her. The mistress liked to answer her own questions while the children stared at her, some of them with eyes so round and protruding Miss Elizabeth could almost knock them out of their heads with one swipe of her ruler.
Most of the children had learned that, although the mistresses were against bending the rules, they didn't mind bending a ruler on someone's behind.
T
he eve of Christmas slipped in through a dark morning and opened up into a crystal-white day. The scent of Christmases past seemed to waft against Clarissa's nose; the gaiety of the season came like a red candle, its flame a dancing ballerina. She felt her insides liven in the shining hope of Christmas.
Even miserable Miss Elizabeth is going to enjoy
Christmas; she won't be able to help herself,
Clarissa thought as she made her way to the dining room.
“Chew, chew, don't talk.” Today Miss Elizabeth's voice was gentle as she came into the dining room, where the children's whispers had burst into chatter. The children looked towards her as her thin lips opened into a smile â a Christmas surprise.
Later, when the children were dismissed, they scattered into the hall. The mistress's pleasant look disappeared into a frown at the sight of what she called highjinking conduct by boys wrestling on the floor. She tutted, “You boys are bent on hurling the Christmas spirit out the window.” Afraid that the dreaded words “no lunch and no supper” would fall on their ears, the boys got up and scampered up the stairs.
Still, Christmas is the best of times, even better than birthdays,
because a glad spirit is in so many people at the same
time
, Clarissa thought as she stood on the orphanage steps after lunch.
Everyone's thoughts are strung together in the
hope of getting a Christmas box that will make them forget all
the bad things that ever happened to them.
She would be able to forget the housemothers and mistresses' scoldings, the orphans' taunts, her uncertainty about ever leaving the orphanage, if there was a present from her real family. Her heart somersaulted in anticipation.
From where she was standing, Clarissa could see the Grenfell Hospital. Against its front walls, on packed snow, harbour dogs lay with their tails curled over their noses. The dogs looked up at the windows, now and then, as if searching for a familiar face and a treat. A guarded look crossed their faces and their ears stood up straight when they heard the squeals of children and the howls of huskies mingling in the afternoon air. They knew what would happen to them if a temperamental husky got loose from its traces.
Dr. Grenfell had given the orphanage boys a husky dog team. Now Jakot, Peter and other older boys were on their way up Fox Farm Hill to cut a tree and greens to decorate the orphanage. The huskies bristled and lifted their heads, howling like wolves as they pulled the sleds past barking harbour dogs. Jakot, the driver, swung his whip through the air, making it whistle like a strong wind. He bragged that one day he would be as good as his Uncle Joe. The old trapper could whisk the button off a coat, or knock a cigar from someone's mouth with his fifty-four-foot whip.
Clarissa moved out by the gates to listen to the shouts of children and the yapping of dogs. Today she felt peace among the noises.
When the supper bell rang, she followed the rest of the children indoors. She stopped to watch Caleb Rose, who was as meek and as mild a boy as any mistress could want, painting Santa Claus in water colours on the dining room wall. He was finishing the tip of one of Santa's black boots, about to touch down on a red brick chimney. Clarissa made her way to her seat, feeling a delightful shudder, even though she likened Santa Claus to fairies.
“Let us say our prayers,” Miss Elizabeth called, watching to see that her charges closed their eyes. The children mouthed Christmas prayers for the coming of the Christ Child, and then ate quickly. The younger children were eager to go to bed and settle down to sleep as fast as they could, so that Christmas morning would come more quickly.
The mistress clapped her hands and dismissed the children. “Off to bed with you now, you younger boys and girls. Do not make a squeak,” she warned. “You are in bed to sleep and to grow up while you are doing it.”
“I'll shove off to bed, I will, too, Miss,” Peter piped up, a mischievous look in his eyes, “if you'll answer a riddle.”
“A riddle! Very well, seeing it is Christmas,” Miss Elizabeth answered tolerantly. “A scrap of lenience for levity, if you will be brief.”
Peter grinned and recited: “Four legs up cold as stone / Two legs down, flesh and bone / The head of the living in the mouth of the dead / Tell me the riddle and I'll go to bed.”
Everyone laughed, and one of the orphans shouted, “I know â I know the answer!”
Peter said, “Whist!” with his finger to the side of his mouth, a habit of Housemother Simmons's. But Ben, a young boy who had a tight little face, a harelip and dark, sad eyes under blond hair, called out, “A man walking with a bark pot on his head, Miss.”
Peter looked sullen. “'Tis the mistress I wanted to answer.”
The mistress's eyebrows lifted. “Come on with it, then. What is the real answer? A bark pot? What is that?”
Peter crinkled his nose and replied, “Young Ben gave the answer. A bark pot has four legs and is used to soak fishermen's sails and nets in tree bark and buds to keep them. And you thinks we're the ignorant ones. We knows what we knows, and you knows what you knows. I think meself, Miss, that makes us equal.”
The mistress looked at him as if she wanted to set his eyes afloat in soapy water. Instead, she said in a tight voice, “Off with you now.”
The young orphans were shooed up to bed. House helpers trailed behind, making sure the children went straight to their own dormitories. They ran off shouting riddles to each other.
“What grows with its roots up?” called Ben.
The other orphans chanted, “Conkerbell! Conkerbell! Jack Frost hangs it from the roof. When it hits the ground, it rings.”
Clarissa stopped to look at Caleb's painting of Santa. She had never seen a smiling Santa before; this one had a gold tooth, like the one Missus Frances had but rarely showed. Clarissa smiled back at Santa. Then she trailed the other girls, who were just starting up the stairs. Missus Frances called out, “Come into the parlour, Girls.” They all turned towards her, eager to get inside the staff's living quarters.
Clarissa had been only as far as the lounge. Now the girls followed Missus Frances through the lounge to a cosy little room. Clarissa once heard the older girls talking about the time Dr. Grenfell had asked them into the room. He sat in a big, green armchair, having a cup of tea from a small teapot that Missus Frances had placed on a little gate-leg table covered in a white lace cloth. He had leaned forward with his cup, and told the girls about his grave ordeal on the ocean. He said he would never forget what happened after he set out with his dog team across a frozen bay to visit a patient. The wind changed, setting him adrift on a small pan of ice with his dogs; he had to sacrifice three of them to save himself and the other dogs. Clarissa's stomach turned over at the thought that if Dr. Grenfell had died, she would not have had a doctor to help her walk â even with the help of crutches.
“Your mind, Clarissa, where has it taken off to now?” the mistress asked.
“It's right here inside my head,” she answered and sat down quickly.
When the girls were seated, the mistress began to read the younger orphans' letters to Santa. Clarissa listened to their dreams: a new pair of boots, a doll, a wind-up truck, a cat . . . their own mothers and fathers.
“We can try to make your dreams come true, except for wishes to have parents and live animals,” the mistress told them. She added, with a twist to her lips, “A cat would not last too long around here with all the dogs.” She took pencils from a metal cup on the mantel and pulled sheets of paper from the tablet she held in her hands, passing one to each girl. “Here, write your wishes.”
Clarissa looked at her and said softly, “My wish is to go home â and I'll go someday.” Her words tightened over the promise to herself, her body trembling with anticipation. The mistress lifted her eyebrows. “You seem contented here.”
“That's because my mind doesn't put everything I think on my tongue,” Clarissa answered.
“I dare say 'tis many a sigh you'll make before that day,” Celetta said with a satisfied look on her face.
“I will go home,” Clarissa answered in a stubborn voice, “and I will get well and have two good legs and strong arms and no more pain in my limbs.” She lowered her head, and bit her lip to keep the tears inside.
Imogene rolled her eyes. The other girls pretended not to have heard as they wrote their wishes in front of the hearth where fire leaped and danced above wood crackling in the large grate. A flanker popped out on the stone shelf and Cora exclaimed, “Strangers are coming!”
“A superstition, my dear,” chided the mistress, “but someone
is
coming, and he is no stranger to the minds of children. It is time to take your letters, and toss them into the fireplace.” Missus Frances's smile widened enough to show her gold tooth. She lifted her arms into the air. “Now!”
As quick as a wink, everyone tossed their letters into the fire. “Close your eyes,” the mistress added. “Now imagine the wings of the fire sending all the wishes up through the chimney out into the night. They shall fly on the wind through the sky and into Santa's castle at the North Pole.”
“Well, I don't know, I'm sure,” said Imogene. She had flung her letter with an uppity tilt to her nose, and kept her eyes open long enough to see the letters burn to ashes in the grate. “'Tis a little late to be choosing presents with Santa already in the skies. Sure, if he's on his way, he's on his way with whatever is already in his sleigh.”
“That's the magic of it, ” Missus Frances said quickly, rising from her chair. “Off with you now; the dining room needs decorating. No beds for you, yet!”
The older orphan boys were coming from a gymnastic round in the playroom as the girls were leaving the mistresses' quarters. “What is it you're about in there?” asked Jakot, his lip turned up to his nose. The girls pretended they hadn't heard him. They went inside the dining room to decorate the boughs Jakot and other boys had left there, already bent with wire into wreaths. The pleasure of helping make Christmas happen surged through Clarissa as she helped trim the wreaths with bows of red ribbons. The girls put red tissue handkerchiefs on each bough of the Christmas tree, tucking them around green candles.
Clarissa and Cora were shaping stars from lead foil saved from pounds of tea and kept in an old tea chest, when they caught each other's eye. Clarissa knew Cora was thinking the same thing she was: that the box on Tea House Hill would be buried in snow sweeping in through the loose boards of the Tea House. It would be buried too deep for anyone to find and open. Clarissa crossed her fingers and made a wish:
let the
box be there next summer for us to open.
After the girls finished decorating the dining room, Miss Elizabeth called them upstairs. “Now, Girls, it is time to make the candy bags for that special Christmas treat. Ilish is cutting out squares of gauze. She will help you.”
The girls followed the mistress to the sewing room on the second floor. Ilish's round face was flushed with excitement as she passed the girls blocks of gauze, needles and thread. They busied themselves sewing bags for the candy they and the younger children would receive. Imogene and Cora were getting on better than usual, tittering as if tickled by their own cute remarks. Clarissa was trying not to worry about Treffie in bed with a cold caught up on her chest. She was glad Treffie didn't have to go to the hospital. Her heart begged,
Please God, don't
let Treffie be too sick to see the wreaths tied with red bows on
the windows.
It was just as well that Cora and Suzy were enjoying this Christmas. They both had a rattle on their chests. Cora didn't spend much time with her little sister because the two were in different dormitories; Suzy had made friends among the younger children. Clarissa glanced at Cora's happy face. She hoped it was influenza that Cora and her sister had, not consumption. Sometimes their colds cleared and they seemed almost healthy. Once the sisters got consumption, it would likely get rid of them, instead of them getting rid of it. Clarissa tried not to think about it as the girls finished stitching the bags. They piled them together before they left the room.
“Look, there's a star in front of the moon, the sign of civil weather for Santa's reindeer,” Celetta called to the other girls as they entered the dormitory. The girls rushed to the window, getting there just as Housemother Simmons tapped on the door, calling to them to wash up and get to bed.