Down the Snow Stairs. Alice Abigail Corkran

       Alice Corkran

      Down the Snow Stairs

       From Good-Night to Good-Morning (Children’s Christmas Tale)

       Illustrator: Gordon Browne

      e-artnow, 2020

       Contact: [email protected]

      EAN: 4064066386689

      Table of Contents

       Chapter I. Christmas Eve.

       Chapter II. Kitty and Johnnie.

       Chapter III. Down the Snow Stairs.

       Chapter IV. Naughty Children Land.

       Chapter V. “To Daddy Coax’s House.”

       Chapter VI. Daddy Coax.

       Chapter VII. On the Other Side of the Stream.

       Chapter VIII. Pictures in the Fog.

       Chapter IX. Love Speaks.

       Chapter X. In The Wood.

       Chapter XI. Kitty Dances with Strange Partners.

       Chapter XII. “Eat or Be Eaten.”

       Chapter XIII. Play-ground, and After.

       Chapter XIV. “I and Myself.”

       Chapter XV. Was It Johnnie’s Face?

       Chapter XVI. At the Gate.

      CHAPTER I

       CHRISTMAS EVE.

       Table of Contents

      Toss! toss! from one side to the other; still Kitty could not sleep.

      The big round moon looked in at the window, for the curtain had not been drawn, and it made a picture of the window on the wall opposite, and showed the pattern on the paper; nosegays of roses, tied with blue ribbon; roses and knots of blue ribbon; like no roses Kitty had ever seen, and no blue ribbon she had ever bought.

      Toss! toss! toss! she shut her eyes not to see the picture of the window on the wall or the roses and the blue ribbon, yet she could not go to sleep. It was always toss! toss! from one side to the other.

      It was Christmas Eve, and outside the world was white with snow.

      “It had been a dreadful day,” Kitty said to herself. “The last nine days had been dreadful days, and this had been the dreadfulest of all.”

      Her brother Johnnie was very ill; he was six years old, just two years younger than herself; but he was much smaller, being a tiny cripple. Next to her mother Kitty loved him more than anybody in the whole world.

      All through those “dreadful” nine days she had not been allowed to see him. She had many times knelt outside his door, and listened to his feeble moan, but she had not been permitted to enter his room.

      That morning she had asked the doctor if she could see Johnnie, as it was Christmas Eve. The doctor had shaken his head and patted her hair. “He must not be excited; he is still very ill. If he gets better after to-night—then—perhaps!” he said.

      She had overheard what he whispered to Nurse. “To-night will decide; if he pulls through to-night.”

      All day Kitty had thought of those words.

      “To-night, if he pulls through to-night.” What did they mean? did they mean that Johnnie might die to-night?

      She had waited outside Johnnie’s room; but her mother had said, “No; you cannot go in;” and Nurse had said, “You will make Johnnie worse if you stand about, and he hears your step.”

      Kitty’s heart was full of misery. “It was unkind not to let me in to see Johnnie,” she said again and again to herself. She loved him so much! She loved him so much! Then there was a “dreadful” reason why his illness was worse for her to bear than for any one else. Kitty remembered that ten days ago there had been a snow-storm; when the snow had ceased she had gone out and made snowballs in the garden, and she had asked her mother if Johnnie might come out and make snow-balls also.

      “On no account,” her mother had answered; “Johnnie is weak; if he caught a cold it would be very bad for him.”

      Kitty remembered how the next morning she had gone into the meadow leading out of the garden. There the gardener had helped her to make a snow-man; and they had put a pipe into his mouth. She had danced around the snow-man, and she had longed for Johnnie to see it.

      Kitty remembered how she had run indoors and found Johnnie sitting by the fire in his low crimson chair, his tiny crutch beside him, his paint-box on the little table before him. He was painting a yellow sun, with rays all round it.

      It was Johnnie’s delight to paint. He would make stories about his pictures; he told those stories to Kitty only. They were secrets. He kept his pictures in an old tea-chest which their mother had given him, and it had a lock and key. Johnnie kept all his treasures there—all his little treasures, all his little secrets. They were so pretty and so pitiful! They were his tiny pleasures in life. Johnnie was painting “Good Children Land” and “Naughty Children Land.” Good Children Land he painted in beautiful yellow gamboge; Naughty Children Land in black India ink.

      Kitty in her bed to-night seemed to see the whole scene, and to hear her own and Johnnie’s voices talking. She had rushed in, and Johnnie had looked up, and he had begun to tell her the story of his picture.

      “Look, Kitty!” he had said; “this is the portrait of the naughtiest child, the very, very naughtiest that ever was; and he has come into Good Children Land—by mistake, you know. Look! he has furry legs like a goat, and horns and a tail, just because he is so naughty; but he is going to become good. I will paint him getting good in my next picture.”

      Kitty remembered how she had just glanced at the picture; “the naughtiest child that ever was” looked rather like a big blot with a tail, standing in front of the yellow sun. But she had been so full of the thought of the snow-man that she had begun to speak about him at once.

      “Oh,