When he told Aunt Hager about it, all she said was: “Boy, is you crazy?” But Annjee smiled from her bed and answered: “Wait and see.” Maybe they would get it for him—but Santa Claus was mean to poor kids sometimes, Sandy knew, when their parents had no money.

“Fifteen cents’ worth of hamburger,” he said absent-mindedly to the butcher when he reached the market.... And when Sandy came home, his grandmother whipped him for bringing ground meat instead of the soup bone for which she had sent him.

So the cold days passed, heavy and cloudy, with Annjee still in bed, and the kitchen full of garments hanging on lines to dry because, out of doors, the frozen rain kept falling. Always in Hager’s room a great pile of rough-dried clothes eternally waited to be ironed. Sandy helped his grandmother as much as he could, running errands, bringing in coal and wood, pumping water in the mornings before school, and sitting by his mother in the evenings, reading to her from his Nature Story Reader when it wasn’t too cold in her bedroom.

Annjee was able to sit up now and she said she felt better, but she looked ashen and tired. She wanted to get back to work, so she would have a little money for Christmas and be able to help Hager with the doctor’s bill, but she guessed she couldn’t. And she was still worrying about Jimboy. Three months had passed since he went away—a longer time than usual that he hadn’t written. Maybe something had happened to him. Maybe he was out of work and hungry, because this was a hard winter. Maybe he was dead!

“O, my God, no!” Annjee cried as the thought struck her.

But one Sunday morning, ten days before Christmas, the door-bell rang violently and a special-delivery boy stood on the front porch. Annjee’s heart jumped as she sat up in bed. She had seen the youngster approaching from the window. Word from Jimboy surely—or word about him!

“Ma! Sandy! Go quick and see what it is!”

“Letter for Mrs. Annjelica Rogers,” said the boy, stamping the snow from his feet. “Sign here.”

While Sandy held the door open, letting the cold wind blow through the house, Hager haltingly scrawled something on the boy’s pink pad. Then, with the child behind her, the old woman hurried to her daughter’s bed with the white envelope.

“It’s from him!” Annjee cried; “I know it’s from Jimboy,” as she tore open the letter with trembling fingers.

A scrap of dirty tablet-paper fell on the quilt, and Annjee quickly picked it up. It was written in pencil in a feminine hand.

Dear Sister,

I am stranded in Memphis, Tenn. and the show has gone on to New Orleans. I can’t buy anything to eat because I am broke and don’t know anybody in this town. Annjee, please send me my fare to come home and mail it to the Beale Street Colored Hotel. I’m sending my love to you and mama.