How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas Read Online Free Page A

farm it was. Enough wheat could be grown there to support a family in comfort, if not luxury, and all but the very richest young men in our area were very aware of this possibility. And so, as I became thirteen and then fourteen, boys and even older widowed men began dropping by our home, supposedly to visit my uncle and aunt but really looking over our barn and fields and the niece who would someday own them. When they greeted me, often praising my beauty and charm, I knew they were lying. They thought the farm was beautiful and charming, not me. After each one left, Uncle Silas would ask what I thought of him. My response was never satisfactory.
    â€œBlast it, girl, there must be some man you would like to marry!” Uncle Silas shouted in the spring of 395, raising his voice because he was so frustrated. “I’m not like other men who order girls to marry someone specific. I’m letting you make your own choice. But you must make it soon, Layla! Your aunt and I are getting older, into our fifties, and we could die at any time. You are eighteen, already almost past the prime age for marriage. You must have a husband to take over the farm and care for you!”
    â€œWhy must I have a husband at all?” I asked for the hundredth, or perhaps the thousandth, time. “I could run the farm. I can certainly take care of myself, too.”
    Uncle Silas shook his head. “Young women must have husbands, Layla. That’s all there is to it. Talk to the girl, Lodi! See if you can get her to see the sense of what I’m saying.”
    Aunt Lodi was gentler than Uncle Silas, but she was concerned about me, too.
    â€œI want you to be happy, Layla,” she said as we carried a basket of clothes down to the river to wash them. “You are intelligent, and warm-hearted, and I understand all your dreams to travel and help the poor. But you must be practical, too. It is hard, even impossible, for a woman to make her way alone in the world. Perhaps you could find a husband who wanted to do the same things.”
    â€œThere’s no one like that in Niobrara,” I said gloomily. “When any man here looks at me, he sees the farm instead of Layla. And if I can’t travel away from here, how can I meet a man who would love me for who I am, rather than what I’m going to inherit?”
    â€œWe’ll pray about this, you and I,” Aunt Lodi replied. “You are too special for your dreams not to somehow come true.”
    A few days later, Aunt Lodi suggested to Uncle Silas that the three of us make the forty-mile trip to Myra.
    â€œWe all need new clothes, and I’ve heard so much about the wonderful tomb there that I’m eager to see it,” she said. Of course, my uncle and I both knew about the tomb to which she referred. For many years, Myra and its surrounding towns had been blessed by the presence of Bishop Nicholas, by all accounts a wonderful man who loved everyone and who encouraged generosity of spirit. It had been during his lifetime that the mysterious gift-giver began leaving his presents, and there had been some rumors that Nicholas was the one doing it. But in 343 he died quietly in the night. The community responded by building a splendid new church in his honor, and his body was placed in an elaborate tomb. Almost immediately, sick people began coming to the tomb to pray for cures, and some of them claimed they had miraculously been healed. And when the gift-giver continued coming quietly by night and leaving food or clothing to those in need, everyone knew it couldn’t have been Bishop Nicholas after all—which is when the stories really took on new, fantastic tones. Now people whispered that the mysterious person had magical powers—he could turn himself into the wind, perhaps, and whistle into houses through cracks under doors.
    So, a trip to Myra was exciting in several ways. The possibility of new clothes meant little to me. I never really cared