She made three, too! The tree looked more and more as tho rainbows had rained on it! It was beautiful! We thanked mother very much for having a Christmas-tree garden! We felt very thankful toward everybody! We got sleepier and sleepier! We went to bed!

I woke in the night. It was very lonely. I crept down-stairs to get my best story-book. There was a light in the parlor. There were voices. I peeped in. It was my father and my mother. They were looking at the Christmas tree. I got an awful shock. They were having what books call "words" with each other. Only it was "sentences!"

"Impudent young cub!" said my father. "How _dared_ he stuff a hundred-dollar bill into our Christmas tree?"

"Oh, I'm sure he didn't mean to be impudent," said my mother. Her voice was very soft. "He heard the children telling about Uncle Charlie's gold piece. He--he wanted to do something--I suppose. It was too much, of course. He oughtn't to have done it. But----"

"A hundred-dollar bill!" said my father. Every time he said it he seemed madder.

"And yet," said my mother, "if what you say about his father's sugar plantations is correct, a hundred-dollar bill probably didn't look any larger to him than a--than a two-dollar bill looks to us--this year.

We'll simply return it to him very politely--as soon as we know his address. He was going West somewhere, wasn't he? We shall hear, I suppose."

"Hear _nothing_!" said my father. "I won't have it! Did you see how he stared at Rosalee? It was outrageous! Absolutely outrageous! And Rosalee? I was ashamed of Rosalee! Positively ashamed!"

"But you see--it was really the first young man that Rosalee has ever had a chance to observe," said my mother. "If you had ever been willing to let boys come to the house--maybe she wouldn't have considered this one such a--such a thrilling curiosity."

"Stuff and nonsense!" said my father. "She's only a child! There'll be no boys come to this house for years and years!"

"She's seventeen," said my mother. "You and I were married when I was seventeen."

"That's different!" said my father. He tried to smile. He couldn't.

Mother smiled quite a good deal. He jumped up and began to pace the room. He demanded things. "Do you mean to say," he demanded, "that you want your daughter to marry this strange young man?"

"Not at all," said mother.

Father turned at the edge of the rug and looked back. His face was all frowned. "And I don't like him anyway," he said. "He's too dark!"

"His father roomed with you at college, you say?" asked my mother very softly. "Do you remember him--specially?"

"Do I remember him?" cried my father. He looked astonished. "Do I remember him? Why, he was the best friend I ever had in the world! Do I remember him?"

"And he was--very fair?" asked my mother.

"Fair?" cried my father. "He was as dark as a Spaniard!"

"And yet--reasonably--respectable?" asked my mother.

"Respectable?" cried my father. "Why, he was the highest-minded man I ever knew in my life!"

"And so--dark?" said my mother. She began to laugh. It was what we call her cut-finger laugh, her bandage laugh. It rolled all around father's angriness and made it feel better almost at once.

"Well, I can't help it," said father. He shook his head just the way Carol does sometimes when he's planning to be pleasant as soon as it's convenient. "Well, I can't help it! Exceptions, of course, are exceptions! But Cuba? A climate all mushy with warmth and sunshine! What possible stamina can a young man have who's grown up on sugar-cane sirup and--and bananas?"

"He seemed to have teeth," said my mother. "He ate two helpings of turkey!"

"He had a gold cigaret-case!" said my father. "_Gold!_"

My mother began to laugh all over again.

"Maybe his Sunday-school cla.s.s gave it to him," she said. It seemed to be a joke. Once father's Sunday-school cla.s.s gave him a high silk hat.

Father laughed a little.

Mother looked very beautiful. She ruffled her hair a little on father's shoulder. She pinked her cheeks from the inside some way. She glanced up at the topmost branch of the Christmas tree. The gold bud showed quite plainly.

"I--I _wonder_--what he wished," she said. "We'll have to look--some time."

I made a little creak in my bones. I didn't mean to. My father and mother both turned round. They started to explore!

I ran like everything!

I think it was very kind of G.o.d to make December have the very shortest days in the year!

Summer, of course, is nice! The long, sunny light! Lying awake till 'most nine o'clock every night to hear the blackness come rustling! Such a lot of early mornings everywhere and birds singing! Sizzling-hot noons with cool milk to drink! The pleasant nap before it's time to play again!

But if _December_ should feel long, what would children do? About Christmas, I mean! Even the best way you look at it, Christmas is always the furthest-off day that I ever heard about!

My mother was always very kind about making Christmas come just as soon as it could. There wasn't much daylight. Not in December. Not in the North. Not where we lived. Except for the snow, each day was like a little jet-black jewel-box with a single gold coin in the center. The gold coin in the center was _noon_. It was very bright. It was really the only bright light in the day. We spent it for Christmas. Every minute of it. We popped corn and strung it into lovely loops. We threaded cranberries. We stuffed three Yule logs with crackly cones and colored fires. We made little candies. All round the edges of the bright noon-time, of course, there was morning and night. And lamplight. It wasn't convenient to burn a great many lamps. At night father and mother sat in the lamplight and taught us our lessons. Or read stories to us.

We children sat in the shadows and stared into the light. The light made us blink. The tame crow and the tame c.o.o.n sat in the shadows with us. We played we were all jungle-animals together waiting outside a man's camp to be Christianized. It was pleasant. Mother read to us about a woman who didn't like Christmas specially. She was going to pet.i.tion Congress to have the Christ Child born in leap-year so that Christmas couldn't come oftener than once in four years. It worried us a little. Father laughed. Mother had only one worry in the world. She had it every year.

"Oh, my darling, darling Winter garden!" worried my mother. "Wouldn't it be _awful_ if I ever had to die just as my best Christmas tree was coming into bloom?"

It frightened us a little. But not too much. Father had the same worry every Spring about his Spring garden. Every Maytime when the tulip-buds were so fat and tight you could fairly hear them splitting, father worried.

"Oh, wouldn't it be perfectly _terrible_ if I should die before I find out whether those new 'Rembrandts' are everything that the catalogue promised? Or whether the 'Bizards' are really finer than the 'Byblooms'?

Now, if it was in phlox-time," worried my father. "Especially if the phlox turned out magenta, one could slip away with scarcely a pang. But in _tulip-time_----?"

We promised our mother she should never die at Christmas-time. We promised our father he should never die at tulip-time. We brought them rubbers. And kneeling-cushions. We carried their coats. We found their trowels. We kept them just as well as we could.

But, most of all, of course, we were busy wondering about our presents.

It hurries Christmas a lot to have a Christmas tree growing in your parlor for a whole month. Even if the parlor door is locked.

Lots of children have a Christmas tree for a whole month. But it's a _going_ tree. Its going is very sad. Just one little wee day of perfect splendor it has. And then it begins to die. Every day it dies more. It tarnishes. Its presents are all gathered. Its pop-corn gets stale. The cranberries smell. It looks scragglier and scragglier. It gets brittle.

Its needles begin to fall. Pretty soon it's nothing but a _clutter_. It must be dreadful to start as a Christmas tree and end by being nothing but a clutter.

But mother's Christmas tree is a _coming_ tree. Every day for a month it's growing beautifuler and beautifuler! The parlor is cool. It lives in a nice box of earth. It has water every day like a dog. It never dies. It just disappears. When we come down to breakfast the day after Christmas it simply _isn't there_. That's all. It's immortal. Always when you remember it, it's absolutely perfect.

We liked very much to see the Christmas tree _come_. Every Sunday afternoon my mother unlocked the parlor door. We were not allowed to go in. But we could peep all we wanted to. It made your heart crinkle up like a handful of tinsel to watch the tin-foil buds change into presents.

Two of Carol's silver buds had bloomed. One of them had bloomed into a white-paper package that looked like a book. The other one had strange humps. Only one of Rosalee's violet buds had bloomed. But it was a very large box tied with red ribbon. It looked like a best hat. One of father's blue buds had bloomed. One of mother's red buds. They bloomed very small. Small enough to be diamonds. Or collar-b.u.t.tons. 'Way back on the further side of the tree I could see that one of my green buds had bloomed. It was a long little box. It was a narrow little box. I can most always tell when there's a doll in a box. Young Derry Willard's golden bud hadn't bloomed at all. Maybe it was a late bloomer. Some things are. The tame c.o.o.n's salt fish, I've noticed, never blooms at all until just the very last moment before we go into the parlor Christmas morning. Mother says there's a reason. We didn't bother much about reasons. The parlor was very cold. It smelt very cold and mysterious. We didn't see how we could wait!

Carol helped us to wait. Not being able to talk, Carol has plenty of time to think. He can write, of course. But spelling is very hard. So he doesn't often waste his spelling on just facts. He waits till he gets enough facts to make a philosophy before he tries to spell it: He made a philosophy about Christmas coming so slow. He made it on the blackboard in the kitchen. He wrote it very tall.

"Christmas has _got_ to come," he wrote. "It's part of _time_.

Everything that's part of _time_ has _got_ to come. Nothing can stop it.

It runs like a river. It runs down-hill. It can't help itself. I should worry."

Young Derry Willard never wrote at all. He telegraphed his "manners"

instead. "Thank you for Thanksgiving Day," he telegraphed. "It was very wonderful." He didn't say anything else. He never even mentioned his address.