I THE SURPRISE PACKAGE

“Here’s a package for you, Hime,” yelled the burly conductor. “Brown, with a red label on top. I’ll just set it here till you haul down the mail bags.”

The station-master’s lantern stopped bobbing for a moment.

“All right. Set it down inside,” he shouted, over his shoulder. “Snow’s so deep to-night I might lose it on the platform.”

The little girl in the brown coat and the hat with the big red bow on top, giggled delightedly.

“He’ll think it’s lost sure enough,” she said. “’Twould be a fine April Fool if it wasn’t so near Christmas, wouldn’t it?”

“A-number-one,” agreed the big conductor, appreciatively. “Well, good-bye, sissy; the train’s moving. Hope you’ll have a fine time.”

“Oh, I shall,” responded the little girl confidently. “I always do. Good-bye. Oh, look! He’s coming!”

Down the platform bobbed the station-master’s lantern, the centre of a moving vortex of big, fluffy snowflakes. After the darkness outside, even the dimly lighted little waiting room seemed dazzling as he stepped inside, dragging the mail bags behind him.

“Where’s the bundle Sim Coles left?” he demanded of the little group assembled around the tall, whitewashed stove, slinging his burden at the feet of the village bus driver, who stood with one foot on the ledge around the bottom of the stove, while he slapped his wet mittens against its glowing sides.

“Sim Coles never came in here,” answered a tall man with a black beard. “He was talkin’ outside with a little gal.”

“Likely he’s hove it into a snowdrift,” grumbled the station-master, turning back toward the door. “Should think he might uv——”

A little brown figure sprang out of the shadows.

“No, he didn’t,” she contradicted gleefully. “I’m the brown package, you know, and the bow on my hat is the red label. He said it for a joke.”

For a moment the group around the stove stared—then they joined in the merry peal of laughter that was shaking the red label.

“Where’s the bundle Sim Coles left?” he demanded of the group around the stove

“So you’re the package, be ye?” inquired the station-master. “Waal, where are you bound for, sissy? Come on up and let’s read that fancy tag of yourn.”

The little girl bubbled appreciatively.

“I’ve come to visit my uncle,” she explained. “That is, he’s mother’s uncle, Mr. Lemuel Perkins.”

“Is Lem expectin’ of you?” inquired the ’bus driver, leisurely picking up a mail bag from the floor.

“Oh, no. Isn’t it fun? I’m a real Christmas surprise, you know, sent early, so as not to overload the mail.”

She laughed again.

“Well, I guess you’d better ride along up with me, then. Lem lives just a little piece beyond the post-office.”

“Oh, goody!” exclaimed the delighted passenger, with a breezy little rush across the room to the other door. “This will be my second sleigh ride, and I can drop right down on him out of a snowstorm, just the way a Christmas surprise ought to. May I sit on the front seat with you, Mr.—er——”

“Bennett,” supplied that gentleman genially. “Drove the Oatka Centre ’bus ever since there was a deepo to drive to. Say, who was your mother, sissy? Did she ever live here?”

“Not exactly. Her name was Ellen Rumball, till she married father and went to India to live. She used to visit Uncle Lemuel and Aunt Nancy, before Aunt Nancy died.”

“Why, pshaw now! She ain’t the Ellen Rumball that married a missionary named Christian, is she?”

“Christie,” corrected the small person. “We’re all missionaries, and live in India. Father and mother and me and the children. Only I’m in boarding school now—Crescent Hill, you know—the loveliest school! But scarlet fever broke out, so school closed two weeks early, and the girl I was going to visit has the fever, so I decided to come right down and spend Christmas with Uncle Lemuel. Won’t he be surprised?”

The driver peered out through the soft darkness.

“He will that,” he drawled. “Lem ain’t so gol darned used to children as some.”

The little girl’s laugh tinkled gleefully.

“Oh, I’m not a child,” she explained. “I guess you didn’t see me very well; the station was so dark. Why, I’m thirteen and a half years old, and I’ve been grown up for a long time. I had to be, you see, to take care of the children. Mother had her hands so full with the people and the schools and father’s meetings and all that. Being a missionary is the most absorbing work there is,” she ended impressively.

“Oh, I see,” chuckled Mr. Bennett. “Quite an old lady, and a missionary to boot. That’s lucky, now. Lem’s been lookin’ for a housekeeper for quite a spell, they say—ever since the Widder Em left him. A missionary, now, will come in real handy. I’ll drive ye right over first, and stop to the office on the way back. Can you see that light down there? That’s Lem’s kitchen. Want I should come in with ye, sissy?”

The little girl pondered for a minute. “No, I believe not,” she answered. “It would make you seem more like Santa Claus, I think, if you just dropped me and rode away.”

Mr. Bennett chuckled.

“Mebbe it would, sissy, mebbe it would. I hain’t seen Sandy Claus in so long that I’ve pretty nigh forgot how he does act. Whoa, there, you reindeers! Hold on while I drop a Christmas passel down through Lem Perkins’ chimley. Good-bye now, sissy. Good luck to ye. Giddap thar, you reindeers! Giddap!”