"It is going to be cold," suggested the practical Frank, "and he must go
to work and lay in wood before the snow gets deep."
"Fine! I am glad to see there are others who can interpret my poor Tom
Tit's letters. Now this is the one I received the next day."
It was evidently meant for a deep snow. The roof of a house and a few
bare branches were shown but from the chimney a column of smoke ascended
and in that smoke was plainly drawn a grin: a mouth with teeth.
"Snowed under!" cried Skeeter.
"But he got his wood cut and is now sitting by the fire quite happy,
even grinning," declared Lucy.
"Right again! Now comes a piece of holly and a pressed violet. That
means that he finds a little belated violet in our flower beds in spite
of the fact that the holly is king at this season. Sometimes he has so
much to tell me that he must make many pictures. Here he found a sunset
and it was so beautiful that he had to paint it with his colored
crayons. This is where he fed the birds during the deep snow. He has a
trough where he puts grain and seeds and crumbs for his winged friends.
This is a picture of the trough and see the flocks of birds he has tried
to draw to show how many are fed in his trough. This means a stranger
has come in on him!" It was a picture of a hat and staff and down one
side of the page were many drops of water, at least that was what the
interested audience thought they were. At the top was an eye.
"Oh, I know!" exclaimed Lil. "If a hat and staff mean a stranger, those
drops of water must mean rain."
"The eye looks like a Mormon sign," suggested Skeeter.
"I bet it means this," said Lil, studying the page intently. "It means
the stranger is old, or he would not have a staff, and it means he is
unhappy. Those drops are tear drops. See how sad the eye looks!"
"'Oh, a Daniel come to judgment!' Young lady, you are right. That was a
tired, sick traveler that our Tom Tit found and brought in and looked
after for two weeks last winter. He was trying to cross the mountains
and got lost and Tom Tit picked him up, almost starved and frozen. In
this one, he shows the sick guest is still with him and in bed. He
cannot draw faces well and hates to make anything too grotesque, so he
usually has a sign or symbol for persons. The staff and hat in bed mean
the guest is there. These little saddle-bags and hat mean he had to send
for the doctor. Look at the medicine the poor staff and hat must take
from the cruel saddle-bags! His own symbol is usually a jew's-harp,
although sometimes he makes himself a kind of butterfly----"
"Just like Whistler!" cried Lil.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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