Uncle Noahs Christmas Inspiration | Page 7

the retreating carriage; then, with
his hand tightly clasped about the precious roll of greenbacks for which
he had so willingly bartered his freedom, he began a tour of the
Cotesville stores. When at length he staggered into the big grocery
store for his final purchases he was laden with a miscellaneous
collection of Christmas packages from which he was cheerfully
disentangled by the bulky proprietor himself. Uncle Noah made a
critical pilgrimage about the store, pausing at last before a counter
where the proprietor had laid out a number of turkeys for the careful
inspection of this beaming shopper about to select an understudy for
the incomparable Job. A very respectable fowl was presently mantled
in brown paper and laid beside the other bundles, along with sundry
bags of cranberries and apples, oranges and nuts, celery and raisins,
cigars for the Colonel, a box of candy for Mrs. Fairfax, huge bunches
of holly and mistletoe, Christmas wreaths for the windows, and a great

bag of cracked corn for the reprieved tyrant gloomily roosting in the
ruined hut.
As Uncle Noah carefully counted out the money required to purchase
this astonishing outlay the bulky proprietor tasked pleasantly: "Uncle
Noah, do you happen to know where I can get a good woman to scrub
up my store every morning?"
Uncle Noah fingered his scarfpin uncertainly. "How much do yoh pay
foh de work?" he queried.
"Fifty cents a day."
The negro leaned forward in tense expectancy. "Do yoh 'spect I could
do it?" he demanded excitedly.
The proprietor, secretly astonished by the old man's manner, nodded
assuringly. "Why, yes, you could easily; it's nothing much; but the
Colonel--"
"Colonel doan have foh to know," exclaimed Uncle Noah. "I comes
yere mornin's foh he's up--an I 'clare to goodness, sah, I needs de
money mos' powahful."
The proprietor was easy-going and too phlegmatic to harbor curiosity.
So the bargain was straightway sealed under a pledge of deepest
secrecy.
Somewhat confused by the unusual series of events, Uncle Noah, his
eyes shining with a strange excitement, started for the door, quite
forgetting the countless packages on the counter.
The proprietor recalled him with a hearty laugh. "Uncle Noah," he
called, "you've forgotten one or two little bundles here."
With a smothered gasp the old negro hurried back. But try as they
would, room for all the numerous bundles could not be found. The
proprietor energetically tucked bundles into all of Uncle Noah's pockets,
piled them tower fashion upon his arms, and even hung a collection
bound together with a string over his shoulder, while Uncle Noah
wheezed and groaned and struggled to find new and unsuspected
storage space in his clothes, but still there remained bundles and
bundles at which Uncle Noah gazed over his spectacles in growing
discomfiture.
"Whut am I a-goin' to do?" he demanded. "I nevah can come all de way
hack yere in de snow wif dese yere ol' legs o' mine."
"Get one of them station cabs," advised the grocer; and so, after

considerable discussion, the bundle problem was solved.
Ten minutes later Uncle Noah entered a hired carriage for the first time
in his life. At the town florist's he rapped a timid signal to the driver to
stop, and, glowing with anticipation, spryly shuffled into the warm,
scented air of the little shop. Here, to the smiling clerk's astonishment,
he ordered a bunch of violets to be delivered Christmas morning to "de
young lady wif de gray eyes whut's at Major Verney's."
"Surely," smiled the clerk, "you don't want that on the card?"
But Uncle Noah was stubborn; more, he insisted on writing the
inscription himself, his orthography quite as quaint as his penmanship,
and so the card went to be read by the wonderful gray eyes in the
morning.
Back through the snow in his rickety carriage rolled Uncle Noah,
rattling home along the snowy road down which he had trudged in the
early evening, chuckling now intermittently in a mental rehearsal of his
new plan.
"Fifty cents a day!" he thought, "an' to-morrow I'se a-goin' to slip over
to Fernlands in de mornin' an' ask her to lemme buy maself back on de
'stallment plan. Mos' likely she'll take a dollar a week, an' wid all de
rest o' dat grocer money ol' Mis' doan have to know whut de Colonel
an' me is a-goin' through."
In accordance with Uncle Noah's whispered directions the cab crept
gently up the driveway at Brierwood and paused at the kitchen door,
where the driver, who had taken a great fancy to Uncle Noah, became
transformed into a benevolent stevedore, tiptoeing in and out of the
kitchen with the bundles which the old darky drew from the cavernous
pit of the cab. Job's understudy came last, and Uncle Noah, tightly