A Newfangled Christmas Read Online Free Page B

beg them to come back to the workshop,”
she said. “Get down on your hands and knees, if you have to. Do
what ever it takes.”
    I couldn’t argue with The Missus. I knew she
was right. I hustled out the door as fast as I could. Didn’t even
finish my coffee.
    I raced past the workshop and into the woods
where the Elves village was. No one was in the streets when I got
there. All the houses were quiet. Smoke curling from the chimneys
was the only sign of life.
    Stepping up to the first house, I knocked on
the door. This was where Edgar lived with his three-hundred
seventy-five year old wife Sue. The Missus and I had been friends
with Edgar and Sue for as long as I could remember.
    No one came to the door.
    I knocked again. Louder. Still no one
answered. I sighed and went to the next house. No one answered my
knock there, either. The more I trudged through the snow, knocking
on doors that didn’t open, the more discouraged I got.
    Why were the Elves being so stubborn? I must
have asked myself that question a hundred times. After a while I
was too discouraged to knock on any more doors. I headed back to
the workshop and all those Hug-A-Bears waiting to be made.
    I unlocked the door and went inside. The six
Hug-A-Bears I’d made yesterday were exactly where I’d left them. I
put on my apron and got right to work. First I laid the pattern on
the soft, wooly fabric and cut out the shape of a bear. Then I
stitched on the face and put most of the stuffing inside. The next
thing was the really important part. Attaching the electronics that
made the little bear hug.
    All of a sudden I had the feeling that
someone was watching me. Had The Missus come down from the house? I
looked around the workshop. There was no one there.
    I sewed the last seam. The bear was finished.
I put him up to my neck and felt his gentle hug. I chuckled to
think of how happy he would make some child and then I hugged him
back.
    I worked as fast as I could. I made four
Hug-A-Bears before lunchtime. Every so often I’d have that feeling
again. The one where it seemed that someone was watching me.
    When The Missus brought my lunch down from
the house, I asked her.
    “Have you been checking up on me this
morning?” I wondered silently if she thought I was falling down on
the job.
    She looked startled. “Me? Spying on you?” she
asked. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”
    I shrugged and took a bite of my peanut
butter and jelly sandwich. Then she proceeded to tell me about all
the e-mail messages she had read that morning and all the wishes
she had entered in my ledger.
    By the end of the day I had made eight
electronic bears. That was two more than yesterday. But now there
were only fifty-three days left until Christmas Eve. Eight times
fifty-three was--I counted on my fingers again--four-hundred
twenty-four bears.
    That was a hundred more bears than yesterday.
But there was no way that it would ever be enough!
     

Chapter 10
     
    THIEVES IN THE WORKSHOP
     
    I got up an hour early the next morning and
skedaddled down to the workshop to get an early start. The sun was
just climbing into the sky. I worked as hard as I could until
almost midnight. This time I made sixteen bears.
    The next day I made twenty. I was so tired by
the end of the day that I could barely crawl back up the hill to
the house. But I didn’t care. Christmas was getting closer and
closer.
    Day after day I worked almost around the
clock. I still had the feeling that someone was watching me, but I
didn’t have time to wonder who it was.
    One morning when I came down the hill from
the house things seemed different. The first thing I noticed were
footprints in the snow. Dozens of them. All around the front door
to the workshop. There were so many that it looked like there had
been a dance on that very spot.
    I looked in every direction. Nobody was near
the reindeer’s barn. Or out by their take-off and landing strip.
The woods were quiet, too. I glanced at The