“PAMELA”

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 72, 18 December 1928, Page 18 (Supplement)

“PAMELA”

By

Lauretta Maud Willoughby

Exclusive to The Dominion.

Christmas Eve I crowds in the street, crowds in the shops. hanging from the verandas, lycopo dium twined around the posts, colour, ed lights strung across the pathways. Waving balloons like crimson bubbles. Pamela’s mother had said: "You may stand by the gate, and watch the people passing. You will be able to see the lights, and hear the trumpets.”So Pamela stood by the gate, and watched the people hurrying by, and saw the lights, and heard the trumpets. It was quite early; as it grew; darker the lights shone more brilliantly. They spread little waving beams, that seemed to call her towards the town. She fumbled in her pocket and brought out one little sixpence, looked at it wistfully and put it back again. The lights grew brighter still. She opened the gate. “I will walk just the teeniest little she thought. She walked to the end of the road. The lights danced now. Purple lights, and golden lights, and little white lights like stars. They danced, and laughed, and called to her, “Come little Pamela.” “I will go just the tiniest —tiniest little way further,” thought she, and her feet started to run, and they never stopped until they reached the town. She passed dazzling windows. There were lady dolls, dressed as queens, and gentleman dolls dressed as kings. There were fairy dolls, and dancing dolls, and dolls that talked if you pulled a string. She felt for her silver sixpence. Santa Claus came down the street followed by the little children. As be passed beneath, the purple lights, his crimson cloak changed to amethyst, and as he passed beneath the yellow lights, it turned a deeper red. The little children looked up into his face with their tvide eyes and touched his red cloak with their little hands. Pamela watched them. She would have liked to have felt his cloak, too, it looked so soft. “Dear Santa Claus,” she thought. “How kind he looks.” And she wondered if the bag of toys weighed heavily upon his back. A thought came to her. Perhaps the lights whispered it, perhaps the breeze that swayed the gay Perhaps her heart. “With my silver sixpence I will buy a present for Santa Claus.” She ran into a shop. There were teddy bears being trapped in rustling paper; there were golliwogs smiling, and woollie dogs. If you wound them up they wagged their tails, but everything was either two shillings or three shillings—or four, and she had but one little sixpence. “There are otlier shops,” she thought as she went into the street. The wind tossed her hair, and fluttered her pinafore, she slipped past the crowd like a fairy. She lingered by a flower stall, the blossoms had been sprinkled with water, and the drops lay like diamonds upon the petals of a rose, and like moonstones upon the dark leaves of a tulip. “Oh!” said little Pamela, and she held up her silver sixpence, and pointed to a bunch of pink tipped daisy flowers, half hidden by a dropping dahlia. Very quickly she ran home. Very quietly she crept in the gate, and through the door and up the stairs. Upon a crumpled card she wrote in a little crooked hand. “To Santa Claus, with love. I expect your’e very very tired. From Pamela.” She attached it to the flowers with a strip of ribbon. Her mother did iot. hear her. She was busy in the kitchen stirring the jellies, and decorating the cake, tilling meringues with cream, and piling little plates with frosted chocolates. When she tucked Pamela in her little white bed, and stood a night light in a broad blue bowl so that Santa Claus might see his way, she wondered at the faint perfume of field daisies. When she had gone down stairs, Pamela stole out of bed, took the flowers from behind the curtain, and laid them upon the satin quilt—snuggled down cosily and fell asleep. Santa Claus came down the chimney. Pale shadows danced to meet him, cast by the night light in the bowl. A little grey mouse scurried over the carpet. He put down his bag, the shadows danced over the toys. “A doll for this little maid,” thought he. “A book and a ball, and a string of beads, and a china tea set.” They would not all fit into her stocking so he laid the doll and the tea set upon the bed. It was then that he saw the .flowers; they looked like a little cluster of fallen stars. He took them in his hands, and read the message of love upon the crumpled card. He stood very still. The night light flickered and burnt out. Dawn tapped with little pink fingers at the sill. “Dear little child,” he murmured. “Dear little child.” He'stooped and kissed her sleeping face, and his eyes filled with tears. It was the first time that a little child has thought to give him-a present,: -.-; IThe EiuLl . ..