Then Starrie Chase inveigled his dimpling mother into a pantry and, while she made passes at him with a rolling-pin, proceeded to whisper in her ear--with a measure of embarrassment, for he was not accustomed to himself in the rôle of alms-bearer. But in a shadowy corner within him, once tenanted by Malign Habit, there still lurked a vision which sprang out on him at times, of an old woman raising her feeble arm to ward him off: it caused him to grit his teeth and mutter: "I wish I could do something more than to chop her wood occasionally!" And vaguely the mental answer would come: "_Estu preta!_ At a time when you least expect it, you may find yourself up against the Big Minute!"
And in the mean time Starrie cornered his mother in the pantry--floury shrine of Christmas culinary rites!--and presently listened, well-pleased, to her answer:--
"Yes! I'm glad that you put it into my head, son. I'll pack some things into a basket for her, and you can take it across the marshes now. It must be bitterly lonely for her, poor old woman! And oh! Leon, as you'll be in that direction, could you go on into the woods and get me some red berries for Christmas decorations?"
"Sure, mum!" And Leon stepped forth to speak to Colin Estey, who was awaiting him at the rear of the Chase homestead, exercising in a preliminary canter a new pedalomotor which Santa Claus, masquerading as the expressman, had dropped at his home a little too soon.
"Take care you don't run into a tree, smash it up, and drive a splinter through your nose, as Marcoo did when he got his, last year!" admonished Starrie. "Say! Col, I can't go skating for a little while: I'm bound for the woods first to get some alder-berries for decorations. Want to come?"
"You can leave that 'pedalmobile' here. Wait a minute! Mother's just putting some Christmas 'grub,' mince-pies an' things, into a basket for old Ma'am Baldwin; we'll deposit it at her door as we go along!"
"How'd it be to write on it, 'Merry Christmas from the Owls'?" suggested young Colin whimsically: "that would keep her guessing; she'd maybe think birds had come out o' the woods to feed her as they did Elijah or Elisha of old."
So a card was tacked to the basket, on which was traced with a stub-end of colored chalk the outline of a perching owl, highly rufous as to plumage, with the proposed salutation beneath it.