Stella at Christmas Time

In a modest building amid flour and sugar and utensils an aproned woman gratefully spends the light of every day creating grand cakes for the affairs of the rich. Her nights, in quarters above, are in the company or Wixy, a bird and a dog named Pal.
During the Christmas season this busy person becomes more so, hiring from the needy two helpers to hang wreaths and holly and lights inside as well as out.
On Dec. 10, as in years before, the front door is unlocked and the public invited to partake of cookies plain and iced some with fruit, some vanilla, and some chocolate, all delicious, all free.
Chairs have been brought in for those who care to sit; coffee and milk for those wanting to sip. In one corner stands a table on which rests a pile of plain paper, a few pencils and a large box having a slit on top. On the near wall is a simple reading: Write down your wish. Sign your name. Put it in the box.
By noon the building has accumulated more sound, more bustle than all 11 months before.
By 3 p.m. Pal had been sent out twice on a request for a “Paws Delivery” from people as glad to see Pal as to receive pastry.
Wixy, too, contributes to the holiday doings having as she does a talent for tinseling. By mid-December on no fewer than 12 occasions Wixy has flown to destinations marked by an open window with a tinseled sill to relieve the distress of someone inside.
Upon arriving she proceeds to work fluttering from sill to branch carrying a single strand which she carefully drapes and adjusts with tugs.
When all the tinsel has been laid this feathered decorator utters a few notes of tweet before descending to scoot beneath the window and take flight back to home.
Close to every Dec. 15, several of Stella’s specialty cakes sustain bottom burns while being baked rendering them unfit for shipping. These she puts in the freezer then waits to encounter a family’s mother know to be familiar with scarcity and want.
When such a woman is met, Stella commences to say, after introductory chat, “By the way, my freezer’s got four cakes that were burnt by the over. I don’t want to throw them out, but I can’t keep them there. The space is needed. I don’t like to ask but do you know someone who might take one?”
The response is always as hoped, “I will.”
At noon on the 24^th, Stella locked the establishment’s front door, put the pastries away and paid her helpers wages and bonuses.
Moments later, trailed by pets, with “wish box” in arms, Stella ascended the stairs.
Opening its top she extracted and read each sheet of the box’s contents, keeping only those wherein the wish concerned another.
Stella wrote out a card to each writer accompanied by a sum of money capable of either fulfilling the wish or rewarding the wisher’s heart.
These cards she then personally delivered, returning home just before dark.
Minutes later, Stella went out again with Wixy warmly tucked in her coat and Pal at her side to call on those persons she knew lived alone and would be without family.
At each residence where the door was answered Stella asked, “Would it be alright if the three of us had our Christmas picture taken with you?”
Lewis writes from Corbin City.