Karl Krinken, His Christmas Stocking

“Yours are bright for Christmas, but hers were bright for every day. Everything about her was bright. Her spoons, and the apples, and the brass candlesticks, and the milk-pans, and the glass in the windows, and her own kind heart. The mother and daughter had a very cozy tea; and I was laid upon the table and my story told, or rather the story of my being found; and it was decided that I should remain in the keeping of the finder, whom her mother, by some freak of habit, rarely called anything but ‘Silky.’”

“What for?” said Carl.

“Maybe you’ll find out if you don’t ask so many questions,” said the purse snappishly. ‘It’s yours, Silky,’ Mrs. Meadow said, after looking at me and rubbing the silver mountings. ‘It’s odd such a handsome purse should have no money in it.’

“‘I’m not going to put it away out of sight, mother,’ said Silky; ‘I’m going to have the good of it. I’ll keep it to hold my milk-money.’

“‘Well, dear, here goes the first,’ said Mrs. Meadow;—‘here’s a silver penny I took for milk while you were after the cows.’

“‘Who came for it, mother?’

“‘Don’t know—a lady riding by—and she gave me this.’

“So a little silver coin was slipped into my emptiness, and my little mistress laid me on a shelf of the other cupboard, alongside of an old Bible. But she left the door a crack open; I could see them at work, washing up the tea-things, and then knitting and sewing upon the hearth, both of them by a little round table. By and by Mrs. Meadow took the Bible out and read, and then she and Silky kneeled down, close together, to pray. They covered up the fire after that, and shut the cupboard door, and went off to bed; and I was left to think what a new place I had come to, and how I liked it.

“It was a pretty great change. In my old master’s pocket I had kept company with wealth and elegance—the tick of his superb watch was always in my ear; now, on Mrs. Meadow’s cupboard shelf, I had round me a few old books, beside the Bible; an hour-glass; Mrs. Meadow’s tin knitting-needle case; a very illiterate inkstand, and stumpy clownish old pen; and some other things that I forget. There I lay, day and night; from there I watched my two mistresses at their work and their meals; from thence I saw them, every night and morning, kneel together and pray; and there I learned a great respect for my neighbour the Bible. I always can tell now what sort of people I have got among, by the respect they have for it.”

“My mother has one,” said Carl.

“Her great chest knows that,” said the purse. “I’ve been a tolerably near neighbour of that Bible for ten years; and it rarely gets leave to come out but on Sundays.”

“She reads it on Sunday,” said Carl.

“Yes, and puts it back before Monday. Mrs. Krinken means to be good woman, but these other people were good; there’s all the difference.

“My business was to lie there on the shelf and keep the milk-pennies, and see all that was going on. Silky sold the milk. The people that came for it were mostly poor people from the neighbouring village, or their children going home from the factory; people that lived in poor little dwellings in the town, without gardens or fields, or a cow to themselves, and just bought a penny’s worth, or a halfpenny’s, at a time—as little as they could do with. There were a good many of these families, and among them they took a pretty good share of the milk; the rest Mrs. Meadow made up into sweet butter—honest sweet butter, she called it, with her bright face and dancing eye; and everything was honest that came out of her dairy.

“The children always stopped for milk at night, when they were going home; the grown people, for the most part, came in the morning. After I had been on the cupboard shelf awhile however, and got to know the faces, I saw there was one little boy who came morning and evening too. In the morning he fetched a halfpennyworth and in the evening a pennyworth of milk, in a stout little brown jug; always the same brown jug; and always in the morning he wanted a halfpennyworth and in the evening a pennyworth. He was a small fellow, with a shock of red hair, and his face all marked with the small-pox. He was one of the poorest-looking that came. There was never a hat on his head; his trowsers were fringed with tags; his feet bare of shoes or stockings. His jacket was always fastened close up; either to keep him warm or to hide how very little there was under it. Poor little Norman Finch! That was his name.

“He had come a good many mornings. One day early, just as Mrs. Meadow and Silky were getting breakfast, his little red head poked itself in again at the door with his little brown jug, and ‘Please, ma’am,—a ha’penn’orth.’

“‘Why don’t you get all you want at once, Norman?’ said Silky, when she brought the milk.

“‘I don’t want only a ha’penn’orth,’ said Norman.

“‘But you’ll want a pennyworth to-night again, won’t you?’

“‘I’ll stop for it,’ said Norman, casting his eyes down into the brown jug, and looking more dull than usual.

“‘Why don’t you take it all at once, then?’

“‘I don’t want it.’

“‘Have you got to go back home with this before you go work?’

“‘No–I must go,’ said Norman, taking hold of the door.

“‘Are you going to the factory?’

“‘Yes, I be.’

“‘How will your mother get her milk?’

“‘She’ll get it when I go home.’

“‘But not this, Norman. What do you want this for?’

“‘I want it—She don’t want it,’ said the boy, looking troubled,—‘I must go.’

“‘Do you take it to drink at the factory?’

“‘No—It’s to drink at the factory—She don’t want it,’ said Norman.

“He went off. But as Silky set the breakfast on the table she said,—

“‘Mother, I don’t understand; I am afraid there is something wrong about this morning milk.’

“‘There’s nothing wrong about it, honey,’ said Mrs. Meadow, who had been out of the room; ‘it’s as sweet as a clover-head. What’s the matter?’

“‘O, not the milk, mother; but Norman Finch’s coming after it in the morning. He won’t tell me what it’s for; and they never used to take but a pennyworth a day, and his jug’s always empty now at night; and he said it wasn’t and it was to drink at the factory; and that his mother didn’t want it; and I don’t know what to think.’

“‘Don’t think anything, dear,’ said Mrs. Meadow, ‘till we know something more. We’ll get the child to let it out. Poor little creature! I wish I could keep him out of that place.’

“‘Which place, mother?’

“‘I meant the factory.’

“‘I don’t believe he can have a good home, mother, in his father’s house. I am sure he can’t. That Finch is a bad man.’

“‘It’s the more pity if it isn’t a good home,’ said Mrs. Meadow, ‘for it is very little he sees of it. It’s too much for such a morsel of a creature to work all day long.’

“‘But they are kind at the pin-factory, mother. People say they are.’

“‘Mr. Carroll is a nice man,’ said her mother. ‘But nine hours is nine hours. Poor little creature!’

“‘He looks thinner and paler now than he did six months ago.’

“‘Yes; and then it was winter, and now it is summer,’ said Mrs. Meadow.

“‘I wish I knew what he wants to do with that milk!’ said Silky.

“The next morning Norman was there again. He put himself and his jug only half in at the door, and said, somewhat doubtfully,—

“‘Please, ma’am, a ha’penn’orth?’

“‘Come in, Norman,’ said Silky.

“He hesitated.