VII EXIT “OLD GROUCHY GRUFF”

Uncle Lemuel laid down his knife and fork with a sigh of repletion, and turned toward his little housekeeper.

“Well, sissy,” he remarked, softening his growl to a point that he considered positively effeminate, “that ham and eggs was pretty good for fillers, but I wouldn’t mind a little somethin’ in the line of trimmin’s, myself. I s’pose the Widder Em hain’t sent in no more pies?”

Mary met this triumph of diplomacy with a masterpiece in kind.

“Oh, Uncle Lemuel,” she answered, struggling to hold in leash a half dozen riotous dimples that were determined to pop out, “oh, Uncle Lemuel, it was doughnuts she sent in this time. Won’t they do?”

And then she sat with bated breath for fear he should say that they would.

But Uncle Lemuel did not fail her.

“Well, I s’pose I can eat doughnuts,” he growled more naturally; “but what I should reely relish is a good piece of pie.”

At these welcome words, Mary fairly ran into the pantry and out again.

“Would you really, Uncle Lemuel?” she cried, in a state of tense excitement. “Well, here it is! Somebody else brought them in this time. Apple!” Back once more from the pantry. “Mince!” Another trip. “And blueberry!” she ended triumphantly. “Which one shall I cut?”

Uncle Lemuel surveyed the sumptuous array before him.

“Well,” he finally decided, “the blueberry might soak the crust. I dunno but we’d better begin on that. Who’d you say fetched ’em?”

“Oh, a friend of yours,” answered Mary hastily. “She wanted you to guess after you tasted them. Here’s a nice big piece. I do hope it’s good!”

She handed him a generous piece; and then, unmindful of the luscious blue juice oozing temptingly upon her own plate, she sat and watched his every mouthful with an eager anxiety that would have been transparent to a babe in arms.

“Oh, Uncle Lemuel!” she cried, after the lapse of an eternity at least five minutes long. “Oh, why don’t you say something? Don’t you like it?”

“Why don’t you eat your own?” retorted Uncle Lemuel. “I’m just tryin’ to figger out whose bakin’ this is. It’s kind of new to me, I guess.”

“Isn’t it good?” cried Mary breathlessly.

“Uh-humph!” responded Mr. Perkins slowly, struggling to twist his tongue to the unaccustomed language of compliment.

Suddenly a queer little sound across the table made him look up, and, to his amazement, he saw that the usually shining brown eyes were dimmed with tears.

“It’ll break her little heart,” Mrs. Caldwell’s voice seemed to whisper, and with one mighty effort Uncle Lemuel threw discretion to the winds.

“It’s better than the Widder Em’s,” he stated rashly. “And I swan I didn’t believe there was a woman in town that could beat her on makin’ pies.”

Pretty good for a man who hadn’t turned a compliment in Heaven knows how many years? But Heaven knows, too, how miraculously fast these hard old hearts will soften sometimes under the warming sunshine of childish love and trust.

“Oh, Uncle, do you mean it?” cried a choked little voice, and, with one bound, Mary had flown around the table and flung her arms about his neck. “Oh, Uncle Lemuel,” she sobbed happily, “I couldn’t ever have borne it if you hadn’t liked it, for I made it myself! You’d never believe it, would you? But you can ask Mrs. Caldwell. She showed me how.”

“You don’t say,” responded Uncle Lemuel, patting her awkwardly on the arm. “Was that what you had your head in the oven for when I came in? I thought ’twas them little wind-bags you give me.”

Mary giggled happily.

“The popovers, you mean? Yes, it was. I always have to sit right down on the floor and watch when I make them, else I don’t get them out the right minute. I had meant those for a surprise, too, but you got here so soon you surprised me, instead.”

“Well, you run around now, sissy, and cut me another good piece of pie. None of your samples, now,” he added, with something that was almost a chuckle. “And you might take a bite or two yourself, now you know it’s safe. There won’t be no extry charge.”

It was a veritable incarnation of Merry Christmas who ran to obey these commands.

“You don’t know what a weight that is off my mind!” she sighed blissfully, settling down at last to “bulwark” her own constitution. “They tasted good to me, and to the teacher, and to Nora O’Neil, but of course you were the one that really counted. But, oh, Uncle Lemuel, that reminds me! Do you know who it is that they call ‘old Grouchy Gruff’?”

“Huh?” demanded Mr. Perkins, with a growl that would have answered the question to any ears less unsuspecting than those of his little niece.

“Old Grouchy Gruff?” inquired Mary, raising her voice. “Mrs. Caldwell said she couldn’t tell me. Do you know him?”

Uncle Lemuel shook his head.

“Don’t you, either?” Mary leaned forward confidentially. “Well, Uncle Lemuel, there is somebody around here that they call that. It seems unbelievable, but there’s a man in town so horrid that he has stopped the Christmas Eve party at the schoolhouse. The biggest taxpayer, they say he was, Uncle Lemuel. Who would that be?”

But Uncle Lemuel was deeply absorbed in blueberry pie and showed no interest in the identity of old Grouchy Gruff.

“Do you know,” continued Mary thoughtfully, “I almost believe there’s some mistake about it somewhere. It doesn’t seem possible that there would be anybody who’d stop the children from being happy on the night when the dear little Baby Jesus was born in the manger, and the angels sang: ‘Peace on earth, good will to men.’ Oh, I just love that part, don’t you? The shepherds, and the soft, dark-blue night, and then the lovely star and the angels singing.” She paused, and a reverent look softened the brown eyes that shone themselves like two little Christmas stars. “Oh, Uncle, it’s so beautiful that it makes little thrills go all over me, and I want to cry and I want to laugh. Mother used to read it to us every Christmas Eve, and then we used to sing, ‘When shepherds watched their flocks by night.’ Oh, I wish they would sing that at the Christmas party!”

“Thought there wa’n’t goin’ to be none,” growled Mr. Perkins.

Mary smiled cheerfully.

“Oh, I think there will be,” she answered confidently. “Mother says things always turn out right when you pray about them, and of course I have; and, besides, it’s really His own birthday party, and it must be right for us to celebrate that.”

“Was you asked to the party?” inquired Uncle Lemuel.

“Of course I’m not asked yet, because there isn’t any; but if we can only get that party for them somehow, they’d invite us both, I’m sure. Oh, wouldn’t that be fun! Oh, Uncle, we’ve just got to! First, you ask everybody all around who old Grouchy Gruff is, and then, when you find out, we’ll go and talk to him and explain. Oh, I’m sure he’d take it back if you explained things to him. Why, anybody would be nice about a thing like that if he only understood.”

Uncle Lemuel coughed uneasily.

“Mebbe he has his reasons, sissy,” he began; “mebbe he has his reasons. They was talkin’ it over to the Emporium the other day, and ’tain’t the party part nor the Christmas part that folks objects to so much. It’s the schoolhouse. ’Tain’t right to the deestrict to tear the schoolhouse to flinders for a thing like that. Why, they’d have to haul up the desks offen the floor, and rack the benches all to pieces, like as not, and move the teacher’s desk and all. They couldn’t have a party with the floor all cluttered up with desks and such.”

Mary pondered.

“And it would be bad for the desks and seats to move them?”

“Tear ’em to flinders,” stated Uncle Lemuel uncompromisingly, following up his advantage. “And, besides, they wanted to make candy and popcorn, and a schoolroom is no place for that. They need a kitchen stove.”

Mary was still pondering, but her eyes were suddenly brighter.

“Besides,” added Uncle Lemuel, delighted that his eloquence was proving even more effective here than it had in that memorable session at the Emporium, “the schoolhouse don’t light up very first-class, nor heat neither—for a winter night. We don’t want the young ones a-ketchin’ their deaths,” he finished, with an effective, but unexpected, burst of altruism.

Mary clapped her hands.

“Oh, I knew you and I could fix it all right!” she cried gleefully. “Yes, sir; we can have it right here in this kitchen. I’d rather have it than the other party we planned. And that old Grouchy ogre man won’t have a thing to say. Mrs. Caldwell said you couldn’t do anything about it, but I knew better. And, oh, Uncle Lemuel, this will be just too lovely for words! We’ll put the tree in that corner, and they can make their candy and popcorn on the stove, and still have plenty of room to play games. I knew what you meant the very minute you said kitchen stove, and I do think you are the nicest, dearest, preciousest uncle that ever walked, so I do!” She ran around the table again to bestow an ecstatic hug upon the speechless Mr. Perkins. “And everybody else thinks so, too, for I asked them yesterday, and not a person disagreed.”

“This kitchen is just like a talent, isn’t it, Uncle Lem? I guess you must be the man that had ten of them; you have so many ways to make people happy. I have only one so far—a loving heart; and everybody has that, of course; but mother says, if I keep hard at work with that, I’ll get others to use in time. When do you suppose afternoon recess is, uncle?”

“Huh?” inquired Mr. Perkins, in a voice that betrayed his condition of utter daze.

“Afternoon recess?” repeated Mary, more loudly. “I just can’t wait to go over and tell those poor children that it’s all right. They’ll be so happy. Oh, Uncle, you dear, dear thing! Don’t you want to go, too?”

“I’ve got to go over to Meadsbury this afternoon,” explained Uncle Lemuel hastily. “Thought you might like to go for the ride. There’s room enough in the cutter. You get ready, while I tackle up. We can leave the dishes.”

“Oh, goody! My fourth sleigh ride! I’ll just slip on my hat and coat, and run ahead. You can stop at the schoolhouse for me. Do you know, Uncle Lemuel, I don’t want to find out who old Grouchy Gruff is, after all? So don’t ask, will you? I want to love everybody in Oatka Centre, and I know I never could a man like that.”

Up till that moment, Uncle Lemuel had really meant in the back of his mind to “put a stop to sissy’s foolishness” as soon as he could get his breath, but right then and there a most remarkable thing happened. A poor, starved, rickety old organ down under his left ribs, which he had almost forgotten he owned, and would have been ashamed to mention, anyway, suddenly spoke up in the most surprising manner.

“You’ve starved and choked and neglected me for these many years, Lemuel Perkins,” it said, “and tried your best sometimes to kill me off entirely; but the tonic of that little girl’s love, with the tender memories that it wakens in me, has called me back again to life and strength. You may explain in any way you like to those old loafers at the Emporium, you may growl all you choose to old Topsy out in the barn, but you may not disappoint that little heart that believes in you and loves you, in spite of yourself, nor choke up that little fountain of innocent affection that is filling my very cockles full of youth and love.”

And Uncle Lemuel proved that he was a wise man, after all, by pulling his old cap down low over his ears, and stamping without a word out to the barn to “tackle up.”

Half an hour later he stopped old Topsy in front of the stone schoolhouse, to pick up a small and excited “brown package with a red label,” that certainly said “Merry Christmas” as far as you could see it.

“Oh, Uncle Lemuel,” cried the package, bobbing to his side as if it were full of springs, “why didn’t you come a little sooner? Oh, I wish you had been here! I whispered about it to Miss Porter, and she stopped the classes and let me tell them all myself what you said about the schoolhouse, and that you invited them to come to your house for the Christmas party. At first they thought my uncle was Deacon Caldwell, wasn’t that funny? But when they heard that it was you, they all just clapped and clapped. They like you awfully, don’t they, you dear, dear Uncle Lem? And then they gave three cheers for Merry Christmas—that’s me; and then three more for you. Oh, I wish you could have heard them say: ‘What’s the matter with Mr. Perkins? He’s all right!’ I was so proud, I almost cried when I heard them. Uncle Lemuel, this is going to be the very happiest Christmas that ever was, isn’t it?”