"There'd be no use in your calling again;
that's all I can save in a year, and there's no more--"

She stopped short, and the blood rushed into her thin face.

"No!" she said after a pause. "I can't take the burial money, even for
the children. Oh! you kind, good man, take down the bags, and take your
candy back!"

"I've got to see to my hoss!" cried Calvin irritably. "Hear him
hollerin'? Jest wait a half a minute--" he sneaked out of the door,
closed it carefully behind him, and bolted for his sleigh. He snatched
the nose-bag from Hossy's nose, the robe from his back; clambering
hastily in, he cast a guilty glance around him, and saw--Mittie May,
standing a few paces off, staring at him round-eyed.

"Here!" he cried. "You tell her I ain't feelin' real well, and I've got
to get home. Tell her--tell her my name's Santy Claus, and my address is
the North Pole. And--look here! tell her Merry Christmas and Happy New
Year, and the same to you! Gitty up, hossy! gitty up!" and laying his
whip over the astonished flanks of the brown horse, Calvin Parks fled
down the road as if Bluecher and the Prussians were after him.

CHAPTER XIII

MERRY CHRISTMAS

"But that ain't the end of the story, Miss Hands!" said Calvin Parks,
after telling as much as he thought proper of the foregoing events.
"That ain't the end. This mornin' I stopped down along a piece to wish
Merry Christmas to Aaron Tarbox's folks, and I left hossy standin' while
I ran into the house. I stayed longer than I intended--you know how 'tis
when there's children hangin' round--and when I come out, you may call
me mate to a mud-scow if there warn't a feller with his head and
shoulders clear inside the back of my cart. I can't tell you how, but
some way of it, it come over me in a flash who the feller was. I don't
know as ever I moved quicker in my life. I had him by the scruff of his
neck and the slack of his pants, and out of that and standin' on his
head in a snow-drift before he could have winked more than once, certin.

"'Have you got three ones and a two,' I says, 'belongin' to a lady as
sits in a cart, 'bout four mile from here? 'cause if you have, and was
keepin' them for the owner, I'll save you the trouble,' I says. He
couldn't answer real well, his head bein' in the drift, so I went
through his pockets, and sure enough there they was, three ones and a
two, just as she said."

"My goodness!" cried Mary Sands. "What did you do?"

"Well, I giv