Below is an installment of Winter’s Eve–a six part holiday story.
If you have missed previous pieces:
The First Gift ~ The Second Gift
After the first two packages appeared, we were two weeks closer to the holidays, and Mr. Crumb was visibly stressed. Orders for sweet and spicy treats were piling up faster than usual. He jokingly called this busy season Merrythanksgivoween, but even Miss Paige, the new librarian who had moved to Winter this fall, said she had never seen a man so flustered.
“The darling man… tiresome! Out of both ideas and cinnamon,” Miss Paige told me as she paid for new pencils. My granddaughter wrapped them. She was helping me at the store, her school out early again because of another approaching blizzard.
Miss Paige thanked us and added, “I loaned him my best cookbook, but then he was off to see Doc Blue. I’ve not yet met the doctor… he’s busy… but I have the romantic notion he can help poor Mr. Crumb from crumbling altogether.”
I glanced to a bare shelf, knowing I had recently sold my last jar of cinnamon to Doc Blue. I hoped he would share it with Mr. Crumb, but when the baker came to visit me the next day, the cinnamon he was holding had not been prescribed.
“It was at my door… tied with crimson ribbon.” His hand shook with excitement as he showed me the note.
Happy Holidays.
Wish granted.
“The librarian?” Crumb pondered. “The good doctor?”
Could Doc Blue also mend a girl’s heart, I wondered, but even before the doctor found the fourth gift, I knew that wasn’t possible.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
The Fourth Gift will post next Friday. Happy Thanksgiving weekend, everyone.