Angel's Christmas, and, Little Dot

FROM morning till night, poor Mrs. Blyth was hard at work with her great mangle.

It was a very dismal room; no one could call it anything else. The window was very small, several of the panes patched together with pieces of brown paper, and the dust and the spiders had been very busy trying how much sunshine they could keep from coming into the gloomy little room.

Yet one could hardly blame poor Mrs. Blyth very much, for she had a hard life and plenty to do. A drunken husband, a mangle, and five children! No wonder that she had not time to look after the spiders!

The mangle filled up at least half of the room, and from early morning till late at night it was going backwards and forwards, almost without stopping. When Mrs. Blyth was making dinner ready, Angel turned; and when Angel was eating her dinner with her little brothers and sisters, Mrs. Blyth turned again. And in this way the mangle was almost always going; and old Mrs. Sawyer, lying on her bed next door, would quite have missed the noise it made rolling backwards and forwards, which acted as a kind of lullaby to her the whole week long.

Little Angel was standing by the door with a large clothes-basket in her arms, waiting for it to be filled. She was the eldest of the five children, and she was not quite seven years old. She was very small, and her little figure was a good deal bent with turning the heavy mangle. She had to stand on a stool to turn it, and it made her back ache. But that did not matter,—the mangle must be turned, or they would have no dinner to-morrow.

And now the clothes must be carried home; and they were a very heavy load.

"Is all these for Mrs. Douglas, mother?" said little Angel, when the flannels, and dusters, and towels, and stockings were all piled carefully into the basket.

"Yes, child; there's just six and a half dozen. Now mind you don't spill any of them."

Little Angel tried to lift the great basket, but it was more than she could manage; the blood rushed into her little pale face with the effort.

"Tim will help you," said her mother. "Go and call him; I'll give him a slice of treacle and bread, if he'll come."

Tim, who was a neighbour's little boy, agreed to the bargain, and the two children started together.

On they toiled through the wet and muddy streets, almost without speaking, until little Angel paused before a large house in one of the grander streets of that small town.

"Who lives here?" said Tim, as he glanced up at the bow windows and at the great door with pillars on each side of it.

"This is where we're going," said Angel. "These are Mrs. Douglas's clothes. Help me to carry them in."

So the children went by a long passage to the back door.

They rang twice before any one came to open it; and then the cook came to the door with a very red face, and with very white hands, for she was in the midst of baking.

"You'll have to wait a minute or two," she said; "come inside and put your basket down; it's Miss Ellie's birthday, and I'm very busy. I'll take them out of the basket when these cakes are done."

The two children stood on the mat by the kitchen door, and looked around them. There was a large fire, and the cook was taking a number of little cakes from the oven shelf. They were curious little cakes, of all shapes and sizes. Some were round, some square, some diamond-shaped: some were like birds, some like fishes, some like leaves.

The children peered curiously at them as the cook arranged them on tiny plates, not larger than the inside of Angel's little hand. She was in the midst of doing this when the kitchen door opened, and a little girl ran in. She was much younger than Angel, and she was dressed in a white frock and blue sash. In her arms was a beautiful doll, more beautiful than any doll Angel had ever seen except in a toy-shop window.

The little girl ran quickly into the kitchen; but when she saw the children she looked shyly at them, and crept up to cook's side.

"Now, Miss Ellie," said cook, "are you come to look at your cakes?" and she lifted the little girl upon a stool, that she might stand by and watch what she was doing.

"Are all these for my birthday?" said the child.

"Yes, every one of them," said cook.

"Oh, what a great many! Aren't there a great many, cook?"

"Yes; but I suppose there's plenty of little folks to eat them," said cook, laughing.

"Oh yes," said the child; "there's me, and Alice, and Fanny, and Jemmy; and then there's Nellie Rogers and Joe Rogers, and little Eva; and there's Charlie and Willie Campbell. And then there are all my dollies: they must come to my birthday tea, mustn't they, cook?"

"Oh, of course," said cook; "it would never do to leave them out. Is that a new one, Miss Ellie?"

"Yes; Uncle Harry gave her to me for a birthday present. Isn't she nice? She has curls, cook!"

"Oh, she is a beauty!" said cook. "What's her name?"

"I don't know," said the child; "I can't think what would be the nicest name. What would you call her if she was your dolly, cook?"

"Oh, Emma, or Sarah, or Jane, or something of that sort," said cook, laughing.

"I don't think those are very pretty names," said the little girl; "I would like her to have quite a new name, that I never heard before."

"Well, we must think about it," said cook. "I must go and take the clothes out now, and let these children go."

"Who is that little girl, cook," whispered the child.

"She has brought the clothes from the mangle: her mother mangles them."

"What is her name, cook?" whispered Ellie again.

"I don't know, Miss Ellie; you'd better ask her," said cook.

"You ask her, please, cook," whispered the child again.

So cook turned to the children, and asked them what were their names.

"He's Tim, ma'am," said the little girl, pointing at the boy, standing shyly with his finger in his mouth; "and I'm Angel."