Read Don't Call Me Christina Kringle for Free Online

tough one yelled up to the lady.
    â€œSorry, ma’am,” said the other. “But if you could kindly step to one side or the other—”
    The lady said very little. She stared down at her toes. Stared at the two little creatures. Then, she started to scream.
    â€œRats! Rats!”
    The two creatures resumed their running, the dog its barking.
    In fact, what the lady and dog had seen weren’t rats.
    They were brownies.
    But neither the lady nor the dog knew that because very few people (and even fewer dogs) knew what a brownie was or that they existed anywhere outside fairy tales and folk legends.
    They didn’t know brownies are similar to elves and dwarves and gnomes and what the Scandinavians call Nisse god-dreng . Brownies are small, maybe nine inches tall, the size of a doll or a circus dog standing on its two hind legs. And because they’re so lightweight, they can move very fast, so all you see is a blur streaking past your ankles.
    These two blurs raced up the city sidewalk, headed straight for all the blinking lights and the reindeer beacon glowing inside the window of Giuseppe’s Old World Shoe Repair Shop.

Thirteen
    â€œThey got an elf nailing shoes in the window!” said the tougher of the two brownies. “Looks like our kind of place.”
    â€œIt’s a dummy,” said the smart one.
    â€œI know. You have to be dumb to sit in a window where everybody can see you doin’ your elfly duty!”
    â€œI meant to say that the overgrown elf is a motorized mannequin. He isn’t real.”
    â€œOh, yeah? Well, people say that about us all the time. And are they right?”
    â€œWell, no …”
    â€œI rest my case. Come on, Professor. We’re goin’ in. We’ll use the mail slot there. …”
    â€œPerhaps we should knock first!”
    â€œFugghedaboutit! Jump!” He leapt up from the sidewalk and sailed through the narrow trap door. A stack of mail—mostly bills, catalogs, and junk mail—padded his landing on the other side.
    His scholarly friend, still outside on the sidewalk, paused. Adjusted his spectacles and top hat. Tapped his knuckles gently on the door.
    â€œGood evening. I say, is anyone home?”
    â€œYeah,” came a voice from the other side of the door. “Me. Would you jump already?”
    â€œI’m afraid I’m not all that athletic. …”
    â€œJump!”
    â€œIndubitably.”
    He jumped. About an inch. After three more attempts, he was able to hop up high enough to use his cane as a grappling hook and grab hold to the bottom edge of the mail slot. After much tugging and struggling, some huffing and puffing, he hauled his skinny legs up and kicked at the flapping mail slot flap with his boots.
    â€œWould you hurry up already?”
    â€œIndeed.” The skinny one tumbled sideways. Slid through. Fell down. Landed with a thud .
    His friend, who was something of a practical joker, chuckled because, during the long wait, he had slid the cushy stack of mail off to one side.
    â€œOh, yeah,” he said, watching his smart friend rubbing the seat of his pants, which also smarted. “That’s gotta hurt.”
    â€œIndubitably.”

Fourteen
    Delores D. Dingler, who was very blonde, and went through several bottles of hair dye every month to stay that way, was the proprietress of Ye Olde Christmas Shoppe, the store next door to Guiseppe’s shoe repair store.
    Proprietress meant that she owned the place but proprietress sounded fancier than owner and Delores D. Dingler was a very fancy lady, indeed. She always wore fancy, flowing, New Age dresses made out of colorful gauze or some other fancy fabric that sure looked like gauze. Either that or fancy burlap. The dresses hung on her like loose but classy sacks. Her earlobes hung low, too, because they had been elongated over the years by fancy dangly earrings that usually weighed as much as most door