Title: Fairy Prince
Author: Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
In my father's house were many fancies. Always, for instance, on every Thanksgiving Day it was the custom in our family to _bud_ the Christmas tree.
Young Derry Willard came from Cuba. His father and our father had been chums together at college. None of us had ever seen him before. We were very much excited to have a strange young man invited for Thanksgiving dinner. My sister Rosalee was seventeen. My brother Carol was eleven. I myself was only nine, but with very tall legs.
Young Derry Willard was certainly excited when he saw the Christmas tree. Excited enough, I mean, to shift his eyes for at least three minutes from my sister Rosalee's face. Lovely as my sister Rosalee was, it had never yet occurred to any of us, I think, until just that moment that she was old enough to have perfectly strange young men stare at her so hard. It made my father rather nervous. He cut his hand on the carving-knife. Nothing ever made my mother nervous.
Except for father cutting his hand it seemed to be a very nourishing dinner. The tomato soup was pink with cream. The roast turkey didn't look a single sad bit like any one you'd seen before. There was plenty of hard-boiled egg with the spinach. The baked potatoes were frosted with red pepper. There was mince pie. There was apple pie. There was pumpkin pie. There were nuts and raisins. There were gay gold-paper bonbons. And everywhere all through the house the funny blunt smell of black coffee.
It was my brother Carol's duty always to bring in the Christmas tree. By some strange mix-up of what is and what isn't my brother Carol was dumb--stark dumb, I mean, and from birth. But tho he had never found his voice he had at least never lost his shining face. Even now at eleven in the twilightly end of a rainy Sunday, or most any day when he had an earache, he still let mother call him "Shining Face." But if any children called him "Shining Face" he kicked them. Even when he kicked people, tho, he couldn't stop his face shining. It was very cheerful. Everything about Carol was very cheerful. No matter, indeed, how much we might play and whisper about gifts and tinsels and jolly-colored candles, Christmas never, I think, seemed really _probable_ to any of us until that one jumpy moment, just at the end of the Thanksgiving dinner, when, heralded by a slam in the wood-shed, a hoppytyskip in the hall, the dining-room door flung widely open on Carol's eyes twinkling like a whole skyful of stars through the shaggy, dark branches of a young spruce-tree. It made young Derry Willard laugh right out loud.
"Why, of all funny things!" he said. "On Thanksgiving Day! Why, it looks like a Christmas tree!"
"It is a Christmas tree," explained my sister Rosalee very patiently. My sister Rosalee was almost always very patient. But I had never seen her patient with a young man before. It made her cheeks very pink. "It _is_ a Christmas tree," she explained. "That is, it's going to be a Christmas tree! Just the very first second we get it 'budded' it'll start right in to be a Christmas tree!"
"_Budded?_" puzzled young Derry Willard. Really for a person who looked so much like the picture of the Fairy Prince in my best story-book, he seemed just a little bit slow.
"Why, of course, it's got to be _budded_!" I cried. "That's what it's for! That's----"
Instead of just being pink patient my sister Rosalee started in suddenly to be dimply patient too.
"It's from mother's Christmas-tree garden, you know," she went right on explaining. "Mother's got a Winter garden--a Christmas-tree garden!"
"Father's got a garden, too!" I maintained stoutly. "Father's is a Spring garden! Reds, blues, yellows, greens, whites! From France! And Holland! And California! And Asia Minor! Tulips, you know. _Buster's!_ Oh, father's garden is a _glory_!" I boasted.
"And mother's garden," said my mother very softly, "is only a story."
"It's an awfully nice story," said Rosalee.
Young Derry Willard seemed to like stories.
"Tell it!" he begged.
It was Rosalee who told it. "Why, it was when Carol was born," she said. "It was on a Christmas eve, you know. That's why mother named him Carol!"
"We didn't know then, you see"--interrupted my mother very softly--"that Carol had been given the gift of silence rather than the gift of speech."
"And father was so happy to have a boy," dimpled Rosalee, "that he said to mother, 'Well, now, I guess you've got everything in the world that you want!' And mother said, 'Everything--except a spruce forest!' So father bought her a spruce forest," said Rosalee. "That's the story!"
"Oh, my dear!" laughed my mother. "That isn't a 'story' at all! All you've told is the facts! It's the _feeling_ of the facts that makes a story, you know! It was on my birthday," glowed mother, "that the presentation was to be made! My birthday was in March! I was very much excited and came down to breakfast with my hat and coat on! 'Where are you going?' said my husband."
"Oh--Mother!" protested Rosalee. "'Whither away?' was what you've always told us he said!"
"'Whither away?' of course _was_ what he said!" laughed my mother. "'Why, I'm going to find my spruce forest!' I told him. 'And I can't wait a moment longer! Is it the big one over beyond the mountain?' I implored him. 'Or the little grove that the deacon tried to sell you last year?'"
"And they never budged an inch from the house!" interrupted Rosalee. "It was the funniest----"
Over in the corner of the room my father laughed out suddenly. My father had left the table. He and Carol were trying very hard to make the spruce-tree stand upright in a huge pot of wet earth. The spruce-tree didn't want to stand upright. My father laughed all over again. But it wasn't at the spruce-tree. "Well, now, wouldn't it have been a pity," he said, "to have made a perfectly good lady fare forth on a cold March morning to find her own birthday present?"
My mother began to clap her hands. It was a very little noise. But jolly.
"It came by mail!" she cried. "My whole spruce forest! In a package no bigger than my head!"
"Than your rather fluffy head!" corrected my father.
"Three hundred spruce seedlings!" cried my mother. "Each one no bigger than a wisp of grass! Like little green ferns they were! So tender! So fluffing! So helpless!"
"Heigh-O!" said young Derry Willard. "Well, I guess you laughed--then!"
When grown-up people are trying to remember things outside themselves I've noticed they always open their eyes very wide. But when they are remembering things inside themselves they shut their eyes very tight. My mother shut her eyes very tight.
"No--I didn't exactly laugh," said my mother. "And I didn't exactly cry."
"You wouldn't eat!" cried Rosalee. "Not all day, I mean! Father had to feed you with a spoon! It was in the wing-chair! You held the box on your knees! You just shone--and shone--and _shone_!"
"It would have been pretty hard," said my mother, "not to have shone a--little! To brood a baby forest in one's arms--if only for a single day--? Think of the experience!" Even at the very thought of it she began to _shine_ all over again! "Funny little fluff o' green," she laughed, "no fatter than a fern!" Her voice went suddenly all wabbly like a preacher's. "But, oh, the glory of it!" she said. "The potential majesty! Great sweeping branches--! Nests for birds, shade for lovers, masts for ships to plow the great world's waters--timbers perhaps for cathedrals! O--h," shivered my mother. "It certainly gave one a very queer feeling! No woman surely in the whole wide world--except the Mother of the Little Christ--ever felt so astonished to think what she had in her lap!"
Young Derry Willard looked just a little bit nervous.
"Oh, but of course mother couldn't begin all at once to raise cathedrals!" I hastened to explain. "So she started in raising Christmas presents instead. We raise all our own Christmas presents! And just as soon as Rosalee and I are married we're going to begin right away to raise our children's Christmas presents too! Heaps for everybody, even if there is a hundred! Carol, of course, won't marry because he can't propose! Ladies don't like written proposals, father says! Ladies----"
Young Derry Willard asked if he might smoke. He smoked cigarets. He took them from a gold-looking case. They smelled very romantic. Everything about him smelled very romantic. His hair was black. His eyes were black. He looked as tho he could cut your throat without flinching if you were faithless to him. It was beautiful.
I left the table as soon as I could. I went and got my best story-book. I was perfectly right. He looked _exactly_ like the picture of the Fairy Prince on the front page of the book. There were heaps of other pictures, of course. But only one picture of a Fairy Prince. I looked in the glass. I looked just exactly the way I did before dinner. It made me feel queer. Rosalee didn't look at all the way she looked before dinner. It made me feel _very_ queer.
When I got back to the dining-room everybody was looking at the little spruce-tree--except young Derry Willard and Rosalee. Young Derry Willard was still looking at Rosalee. Rosalee was looking at the toes of her slippers. The fringe of her eyelashes seemed to be an inch long. Her cheeks were so pink I thought she had a fever. No one else came to _bud_ the Christmas tree except Carol's tame coon and the tame crow. Carol is very unselfish. He always _buds_ one wish for the coon. And one for the crow. The tame coon looked rather jolly and gold-powdered in the firelight. The crow never looked jolly. I have heard of white crows. But Carol's crow was a very dark black. Wherever you put him he looked like a sorrow. He sat on the arm of Rosalee's chair and nibbed at her pink sleeve. Young Derry Willard pushed him away. Young Derry Willard and Rosalee tried to whisper. I heard them.
"How old are you?" whispered Rosalee.
"I'm twenty-two," whispered young Derry Willard.
"O--h," said Rosalee.
"How young are you?" whispered Derry Willard.
"I'm seventeen," whispered Rosalee.
"O--h," said Derry Willard.
My mother started in very suddenly to explain about the Christmas tree. There were lots of little pencils on the table. And blocks of paper. And nice cold, shining sheets of tin-foil. There was violet-colored tin-foil, and red-colored tin-foil--and green and blue and silver and gold.
"Why, it's just a little family custom of ours, Mr. Willard," explained my mother. "After the Thanksgiving dinner is over and we're all, I trust, feeling reasonably plump and contented, and there's nothing special to do except just to dream and think--why, we just list out the various things that we'd _like_ for Christmas and----"
"Most people end Thanksgiving, of course," explained my father, "by trying to feel thankful for the things they've already had. But this seems to be more like a scheme for expressing thanks for the things that we'd _like_ to have!"
"The violet tin-foil is Rosalee's!" I explained. "The green is mine! The red is mother's! The blue is father's! The silver is Carol's! Mother takes each separate _wish_ just as soon as it's written, and twists it all up in a bud of tin-foil! And takes wire! And wires the bud on the tree! Gold buds! Silver buds! Red! Green! Everything! All bursty! And shining! Like Spring! It looks as tho rainbows had rained on it! It looks as tho sun and moon had warmed it at the same time! And then we all go and get our little iron banks--all the Christmas money, I mean, that we've been saving and saving for a whole year! And dump it all out round the base of the tree! Nickels! Dimes! Quarters! Pennies! _Everything!_ And----"
"Dump them all out--round the base of the tree?" puzzled young Derry Willard.
Carol did something suddenly that I never saw him do before with a stranger. He wrote a conversation on a sheet of paper and waved it at young Derry Willard. It was a short conversation. But it was written very tall.
"_Phertalizer!_" explained Carol.
My father made a little laugh. "In all my experience with horticulture," he said, "I know of no fertilizer for a Christmas tree that equals a judicious application of nickels, dimes, and quarters--well stirred in."
"Our uncle Charlie was here once for Thanksgiving," I cried. "He stirred in a twenty-dollar gold piece. Our Christmas tree bloomed _everything_ that year! It bloomed tinsel pompons on every branch! And gold-ribbon bow-knots! It bloomed a blackboard for Carol! And an ice-cream freezer for mother! And----"
"And then we take the tree," explained my mother, "and carry it into the parlor. And shut the door."
"And _lock_ the door," said my father.
"And no one ever sees," puzzled young Derry Willard, "what was written in the wishes?"
"_No one_," I said.
Rosalee laughed.
"Some one--must see," said Rosalee. "'Cause just about a week before Christmas father and mother always go up to town and----"
"Oh, of course mother _has_ to see!" I admitted. "Mother is such friends with Christmas!"
"And father," laughed Rosalee, "is such friends with mother!"
"Usually," I said.
"Eh?" said father.
"And then," explained mother, "on Christmas morning we all go to the parlor!"
"And there's a fire in the parlor!" I explained. "A great hollow Yule log all stuffed full of crackly pine-cones and sputtering sparkers and funny-colored blazes that father buys at a fireworks shop! And the candles are lighted! And--and----"
"And all the tin-foil buds have bloomed into presents!" laughed Derry Willard.
"Oh, no, of course--not _all_ of them," said mother.
"No tree ever fulfills every bud," said my father.
"There's Carol's camel, of course," laughed Rosalee. "Ever since Carol was big enough to wish, he's always wished for a camel!"
"But mostly, of course," I insisted, "he wishes for kites! He got nine kites last Christmas."
"Kites?" murmured young Derry Willard.
"_Kites!_" I said. "I _have_ to talk a good deal. Once always for myself. And all over again for Carol." It seemed a good time to talk for Carol. Perhaps a person who came all the way from Cuba could tell us the thing we wanted to know. "Oh, Carol's very much interested in kites!" I confided. "And in relationships! In Christmas relationships especially! When he grows up he's going to be some sort of a jenny something--I think it's an ologist! Or else keep a kite-shop!"
"Yes?" murmured young Derry Willard.
There are two ways I've noticed to make one listen to you. One is to shout. The other is to whisper. I decided to whisper.
"You don't seem to understand," I whispered. "It's Christmas relationships that are worrying Carol and me so! It worries us dreadfully! Oh, of course we understand all about the Little Baby Christ! And the camels! And the wise men! And the frankincense! That's easy! But _who_ is Santa Claus? Unless--unless--?" It was Carol himself who signaled me to go on. "Unless--he's the Baby Christ's _grandfather_?" I thought Derry Willard looked a little bit startled. Carol's ears turned bright red. "Oh, of course--we meant on his _mother's_ side!" I hastened to assure him.
"It is, I admit, a new idea to me," said young Derry Willard. "But I seem to have gotten several new ideas to-day."
He looked at mother. Mother's mouth looked very funny. He looked at father. Father seemed to be sneezing. He looked at Rosalee. They laughed together. His whole face suddenly was very laughing. "And what becomes," he asked, "of all the Christmas-tree buds that _don't_ bloom?" It was a funny question. It didn't have a thing in the world to do with Santa Claus being a grandfather.
"Oh, mother never throws away any of the buds," laughed Rosalee. "She just keeps them year after year and wires them on all over again."
"All unfulfilled wishes," said my mother. "Still waiting--still wishing! Maybe they'll bloom some time! Even Carol's--camel," she laughed out suddenly. "Who knows, sonny-boy--but what if you keep on _wishing_ you'll actually travel some day to the Land-Where-Camels-Live? Maybe--maybe you'll own a--a dozen camels?"
"With purple velvet blankets?" I cried. "All trimmed with scarlet silk tassels? And smelling of sandalwood?"
"I have never understood," said my father, "that camels smelt of sandalwood."
Young Derry Willard didn't seem exactly nervous any more. But he jumped up very suddenly. And went and stood by the fire.
"It's the finest Christmas idea I ever heard of!" he said. "And if nobody has any objections I'd like to take a little turn myself at _budding_ the Christmas tree!"
"Oh, but you won't be here for Christmas!" cried everybody all at once.
"No, I certainly sha'n't be," admitted Derry Willard, "unless I am invited!"
"Why, of course, you're invited!" cried everybody. Father seemed to have swallowed something. So mother invited him twice. Father kept right on choking. Everybody was frightened but mother.
Young Derry Willard had to run like everything to catch his train. It was lucky that he knew what he wanted. With only one wish to make and only half a minute to make it in, it was wonderful that he could decide so quickly! He snatched a pencil! He scribbled something on a piece of paper! He crumpled the "something" all up tight and tossed it to mother! Carol and mother wadded it into a tin-foil bud! They took the gold-colored tin-foil! Rosalee and I wired it to a branch! We chose the highest branch we could reach! Father held his overcoat for him! Father handed him his bag! Father opened the door for him! He ran as fast as he could! He waved his hand to everybody! His laugh was all sparkly with white teeth!
The room seemed a little bit dark after he had gone. The firelight flickered on the tame coon's collar. Sometimes it flickered on the single gold bud. We cracked more nuts and munched more raisins. It made a pleasant noise. The tame crow climbed up on the window-sill and tapped and tapped against the glass. It was not a pleasant noise. The tame coon prowled about under the table looking for crumbs. He walked very flat and swaying and slow, as tho he were stuffed with wet sand. It gave him a very captive look. His eyes were very bright.
Father got his violin and played some quivery tunes to us. Mother sang a little. It was nice. Carol put fifteen "wishes" on the tree. Seven of them, of course, were old ones about the camel. But all the rest were new. He wished a salt mackerel for his coon. And a gold anklet for his crow. He wouldn't tell what his other wishes were. They looked very pretty! Fifteen silver buds as big as cones scattered all through the green branches! Rosalee made seven violet-colored wishes! I made seven! Mine were green! Father made three! His were blue! Mother's were red! 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 class gave it to him," she said. It seemed to be a joke. Once father's Sunday-school class 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 God 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 coon 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 petition 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-buttons. '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 coon'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.
"U--m--m," said my father.
"It's because of the hundred-dollar bill," said my mother. "He doesn't want to give us any chance to return it."
"Humph!" said my father. "Do we _look_ poor?"
My mother glanced at the worn spot in the dining-room rug. She glanced at my father's coat.
"We certainly do!" she laughed. "But young Derry Willard didn't leave us a hundred-dollar bill to try and make us look any richer. All young Derry Willard was trying to do was to make us look more Christmassy!"
"Well, we can't accept it!" said my father.
"Of course we can't accept it!" said my mother. "It was a mistake. But at least it was a very kind mistake."
"_Kind?_" said my father.
"_Very_ kind," said my mother. "No matter how dark a young man may be or how much cane-sirup and bananas he has consumed, he can't be absolutely depraved as long as he goes about the world trying to make things look more Christmassy!"
My father looked up rather sharply.
My mother gave a funny little gasp.
"Oh, it's all right," she said. "We'll manage some way! But who ever heard of a chicken-bone hung on a Christmas tree? Or a slice of roast beef?"
"Some children don't get--anything," said my father. He looked solemn. "Money is very scarce," he said.
"It always is," said my mother. "But that's no reason why presents ought to be scarce."
My father jumped up.
My father laughed.
"Great Heavens, woman!" he said. "Can't anything dull your courage?"
"Not my--Christmas courage!" said my mother.
My father reached out suddenly and patted her hand.
"Oh, all right," he said. "I suppose we'll manage somehow."
"Of course we'll manage somehow," said my mother.
I ran back as fast as I could to Carol and Rosalee.
We thought a good deal about young Derry Willard coming. We talked about it among ourselves. We never talked about it to my father or my mother. I don't know why. I went and got my best story-book and showed the Fairy Prince to Carol. Carol stared and stared. There were palms and bananas in the picture. There was a lace-paper castle. There was a moat. There was a fiery charger. There were dragons. The Fairy Prince was all in white armor, with a white plume in his hat. It grasped your heart, it was so beautiful. I showed the picture to Rosalee. She was surprised. She turned as white as the plume in the Fairy Prince's hat. She put the book in her top bureau-drawer with her ribbons. We wondered and wondered whether young Derry Willard would come. Carol thought he wouldn't. I thought he would. Rosalee wouldn't say. Carol thought it would be too cold. Carol insisted that he was a tropic. And that tropics couldn't stand the cold. That if a single breath of cold air struck a tropic he blew up and froze. Rosalee didn't want young Derry Willard to blow up and freeze. Anybody could see that she didn't. I comforted her. I said he would come in a huge fur coat. Carol insisted that tropics didn't have huge fur coats. "All right, then," I said. "He will come in a huge _feather_ coat! Blue-bird feathers it will be made of! With a soft brown breast! When he fluffs himself he will look like the god of all the birds and of next Spring! Hawks and all evil things will scuttle away!"
There certainly _was_ something the matter with the Christmas tree that year.
It grew. But it didn't grow very fast.
My father said that perhaps the fertilizer hadn't been rich enough.
My mother said that maybe all Christmas trees were blooming rather late this year. Seasons changed so.
My father and mother didn't go away to town at all. Not for a single day.
Late at night after we'd gone to bed we heard them hammering things and running the sewing-machine.
Carol thought it smelt like kites.
Rosalee said it sounded to her like a blue silk waist.
It looked like a worry to me.
It got colder and colder. It snowed and snowed.
Christmas eve it snowed some more. It was beautiful. We were very much excited. We clapped our hands. We stood at the window to see how white the world was. I thought about the wise men's camels. I wondered if they could carry snow in their stomachs as well as rain. Mother said camels were tropics and didn't know anything about snow. It seemed queer.
A sleigh drove up to the door. There were three men in it. Two of them got out. The first one was young Derry Willard. It was a fur coat that he had on. He was full of bundles. My father gave one gasp.
"The--the impudent young--" gasped my father.
We ran to the door. The second man looked just exactly like young Derry Willard except that he had on a gray beard and a gray slouch hat. He looked like the picture of "a planter" in "Uncle Tom's Cabin." My father and he took just one look at each other. And then suddenly they began to pound each other on the back and to hug each other. "Hello, old top!" they shouted. "Hello--hello--_hello_!" Derry Willard's father cried a little. Everybody cried a little or shouted or pounded somebody on the back except young Derry Willard and Rosalee. Young Derry Willard and Rosalee just stood and looked at each other.
"Well--well--well!" said Derry Willard's father over and over and over. "Twenty years! _Twenty_ years!" The front hall was full of bundles! We fell on them when we stepped. And we fell on new ones when we tried to get up. Whenever Derry Willard's father wasn't crying he was laughing! "So this is the wife?" he said. "And these are the children? Which is Rosalee? Ah! A very pretty girl! But not as pretty as your wife!" he laughed. "Twenty years! _Twenty_ years!" he began all over again. "A bit informal, eh? Descending on you like this? But I couldn't resist the temptation after I'd seen Derry. We Southerners, you know! Our impulses are romantic! Tuck us away anywhere! Or turn us out--if you must!"
My father was like a wild man for joy! He forgot all about everything except "twenty years ago."
We had to put the two Mr. Derry Willards to bed in the parlor. There was no other room. They insisted on sleeping with the Christmas tree. They had camped under every kind of branch and twig in the world, they said. But _never_ had they camped under a Christmas tree.
Father talked and talked and talked! Derry Willard's father talked and talked and talked! It was about college! It was about girls! It was about boys! It was about all sorts of pranks! Not any of it was about studies! Mother sat and laughed at them!
Rosalee and young Derry Willard sat and looked at each other. Carol and I played checkers. Everybody forgot us. I don't know who put me to bed.
When we came down-stairs the next morning and went into the parlor to see the Christmas tree we _screamed_!
Every single weeney-teeny branch of it had sprouted tinsel tassels! There were tinsel stars all over it! Red candles were blazing! Glass icicles glistened! There were candy canes! There were tin trumpets! Little white-paper presents stuck out everywhere through the branches! Big white presents piled like a snowdrift all around the base of the tree!
Young Derry Willard's father seemed to be still laughing. He rubbed his hands together.
"Excuse me, good people," he laughed, "for taking such liberties with your tree! But it's twenty years since I've had a chance to take a real whack at a Christmas tree! Palms, of course, are all right, and banana groves aren't half bad! But when it comes to real landscape effect--give me a Christmas tree in a New England parlor!"
"Palms?" we gasped. "Banana-trees?"
Young Derry Willard distributed the presents.
For my father there were boxes and boxes of cigars! And an order on some Dutch importing house for five hundred _green_ tulips! Father almost sw--ooned.
For mother there was a little gold chain with a single pearl in it! And a box of oranges as big as a chicken-coop!
I got four dolls! And a paint-box! One of the dolls was jet-black. She was funny. When you squeaked her stomach she grinned her mouth and said, "Oh, lor', child!"
Rosalee had a white crepe shawl all fringes and gay-colored birds of paradise! Rosalee had a fan made out of ivory and gold. Rosalee had a gold basket full of candied violets. Rosalee had a silver hand-mirror carved all round the edge with grasses and lilies like the edges of a little pool.
Carol had a big, big box that looked like a magic lantern. And on every branch where he had hung his seven wishes for a camel there was a white card instead with the one word "Palestine" written on it.
Everybody looked very much perplexed.
Young Derry Willard's father laughed.
"If the youngster wants camels," he said, "he must have camels! I'm going to Palestine one of these days before so very long. I'll take him with me. There must be heaps of camels still in Palestine."
"Going to Palestine before--long," gasped my mother. "How wonderful!"
Everybody turned and looked at Carol.
"Want to go, son, eh?" laughed Derry Willard's father.
Carol's mouth quivered. He looked at my mother.
My mother's mouth quivered. A little red came into her checks.
"He wants me to thank you very much, Mr. Willard," she said. "But he thinks perhaps you wouldn't want to take him to Palestine--if you knew that he can't--talk."
"Can't talk?" cried Mr. Derry Willard. "_Can't talk?_" He looked at mother! He looked at Carol! He swallowed very hard! Then suddenly he began to laugh again!
"Good enough!" he cried. "He's the very boy I'm looking for! We'll rear him for a diplomat!"
Carol got a hammer and opened his big box. It _was_ a magic lantern! He was wild with joy! He beat his fists on the top of the box! He stamped his feet! He came and burrowed his head in mother's shoulder. When Carol burrows his head in my mother's shoulder it means, "Call me anything you want to!"
Mother called him anything she wanted to. Right out loud before everybody. "Shining Face!" said my mother.
There were lots of other presents besides.
My father had made a giant kite for Carol. It looked nine feet tall. My father had made the dearest little wooden work-box for my mother. There _was_ a blue silk waist for Rosalee. My mother had knitted me a doll! Its body was knitted! Its cheeks were knitted! Its nose was knitted! It was wonderful!
We ate the peppermint-candy canes. All the pink stripes. All the white stripes. We sang carols. We sang,
O, the foxes have holes! And the birds build their nests
In the crotch of the sycamore-tree!
But the Little Son of God had no place for His head
When He cameth to earth for me!
Rosalee's voice was like a lark in the sky. Carol's face looked like two larks in the sky.
The tame crow stayed in the kitchen. He was afraid of so many strangers. The tame coon wasn't afraid of anything. He crawled in and out of all the wrapping-papers, sniffing and sniffing. It made a lovely crackling sound.
Everything smelt like fir balsam. It was more beautiful every minute. Even after every last present was picked from the tree, the tree was still so fat and fluffy with tinsel and glass balls that it didn't look robbed at all.
We just sat back and stared at it.
Young Derry Willard stared only at the topmost branch.
Father looked suddenly at mother. Mother looked suddenly at Rosalee. Rosalee looked suddenly at Carol. Carol looked suddenly at me. I looked suddenly at the tame coon. The tame coon kept right on crackling through the wrapping-papers.
Young Derry Willard made a funny little face. There seemed to be dust in his throat. His voice was very dry. He laughed.
"My wish," said young Derry Willard, "seems to have been the only one that--didn't bloom."
I almost died with shame. Carol almost died with shame. In all that splendiferousness, in all that generosity, poor Derry Willard's gold-budded wish was the only one that hadn't at least bloomed into _something_!
Rosalee jumped up very suddenly and ran into the dining-room. She looked as tho she was going to cry.
Young Derry Willard followed her. He didn't run. He walked very slowly. He looked a little troubled.
Carol and I began at once to fold the wrapping-papers very usefully.
Young Derry Willard's father looked at my father. All of a sudden he wasn't laughing at all. Or rubbing his hands.
"I'm sorry, Dick," he said. "I've always rather calculated somehow on having my boy's wishes come true."
My father spoke a little sharply.
"You must have a lot of confidence," he said, "in your boy's wishes!"
"I have!" said young Derry Willard's father, quite simply. "He's a good boy! Not only clever, I mean, but good! Never yet have I known him to wish for anything that wasn't the _best_!"
"They're too young," said my father.
"Youth," said Derry Willard's father, "is the one defect I know of that is incontestably remedial."
"How can they possibly know their own minds?" demanded my father.
"No person," said Derry Willard's father, "knows his own mind until he's ready to die. But the sooner he knows his own heart the sooner he's ready to begin to live."
My father stirred in his chair. He lit a cigar. It went out. He lit it again. It went out again. He jerked his shoulders. He looked nervous. He talked about things that nobody was talking about at all.
"The young rascal dropped a hundred-dollar bill--when he was here before!" he said. He said it as tho it was something very wicked.
Young Derry Willard's father seemed perfectly cheerful.
"Did he really?" he said.
"It's a wonder the crow didn't eat it!" snapped my father.
"But even the crow wouldn't eat it, eh?" said Derry Willard's father. Quite suddenly he began to laugh again. He looked at my mother. He stopped laughing. His voice was very gentle. "Don't be--proud," he said. "Don't ever be proud." He threw out his hand as tho he was asking something. "What difference does anything make--in the whole world," he said, "except just young love--and old friendship?"
"Oh, pshaw," said father. "Oh, pshaw!"
Rosalee came and stood in the door. She looked only at mother. She had on a red coat. And a red hat. And red mittens.
"Derry Willard wants to see the Christmas-tree garden," she said. "May I go?"
Derry Willard stood just behind her. He had on his fur coat. He looked very hard at father. When he spoke he spoke only to father.
"Is it all right?" he said. "May _I_ go?"
My father looked up. And then he looked down. He looked at Derry Willard's father. He threw out his hands as tho there was no place left to look. A little smile crept into one corner of his mouth. He tried to bite it. He couldn't.
"Oh--_pshaw_!" he said.
Carol and I went out to play. We thought we'd like to see the Christmas-tree garden too. The snow was almost as deep as our heads. All the evergreen trees were weighed down with snow. Their branches dragged on the ground. It was like walking through white plumes.
We found mother's Christmas-tree garden. We found Rosalee and young Derry Willard standing right in the middle of it. It was all caves and castles! It was like a whole magic little city all made out of white plumes! The sun came out and shone on it! Blue sky opened overhead! Everything crackled! It was more beautiful even than the Christmas tree in the parlor.
They didn't hear us.
Rosalee gave a funny little cry. It was like a sob. Only happy.
"I love _Christmas_!" she said.
"I love _you_!" said Derry Willard.
He snatched her in his arms and kissed her.
A great pine-tree shivered all its snow down on them like a veil.
We heard them laugh.
We ran back to the house. We ran just as fast as we could. It almost burst our lungs. We ran into the parlor. I didn't tell. Carol couldn't tell.
My father and young Derry Willard's father were talking and talking behind great clouds of smoke. The Yule log was blazing and sputtering all sorts of fireworks and colors. Only mother was watching it. She was paring apples as she watched. A little smile was in her eyes.
"What a wonderful--wonderful day to have it happen!" she said.
I couldn't stand it any longer. I ran upstairs and got my best story-book. I brought it down and opened it at the picture of the Fairy Prince. I laid it open like that in Mr. Willard's lap. I pointed at the picture.
"_There!_" I said.
Derry Willard's father put on his glasses and looked at the picture.
"Well, upon my soul," he said, "where did you get that?"
"It's my book," I said. "It's always been my book."
My father looked at the picture.
"Why, of all things," he said.
"Why, it looks exactly like Derry!" said my mother.
"It _is_ Derry!" said Derry's father. "But don't ever let Derry know that you know that it is! It seems to tease him a little. It seems to tease him a very great deal in fact. Being all rigged out like that. The illustrator is a friend of mine. He spent the Winter in Cuba three or four years ago. And he painted the picture there."
I looked at Carol. Carol looked at me. It was an absolutely perfect Christmas! If _this_ were true, then everything beautiful that there was in the world was true, too! Carol nudged me to speak.
"Then Derry really _is_ a Fairy Prince?" I said.
Father started to speak.
Mother stopped him.
Author: Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
In my father's house were many fancies. Always, for instance, on every Thanksgiving Day it was the custom in our family to _bud_ the Christmas tree.
Young Derry Willard came from Cuba. His father and our father had been chums together at college. None of us had ever seen him before. We were very much excited to have a strange young man invited for Thanksgiving dinner. My sister Rosalee was seventeen. My brother Carol was eleven. I myself was only nine, but with very tall legs.
Young Derry Willard was certainly excited when he saw the Christmas tree. Excited enough, I mean, to shift his eyes for at least three minutes from my sister Rosalee's face. Lovely as my sister Rosalee was, it had never yet occurred to any of us, I think, until just that moment that she was old enough to have perfectly strange young men stare at her so hard. It made my father rather nervous. He cut his hand on the carving-knife. Nothing ever made my mother nervous.
Except for father cutting his hand it seemed to be a very nourishing dinner. The tomato soup was pink with cream. The roast turkey didn't look a single sad bit like any one you'd seen before. There was plenty of hard-boiled egg with the spinach. The baked potatoes were frosted with red pepper. There was mince pie. There was apple pie. There was pumpkin pie. There were nuts and raisins. There were gay gold-paper bonbons. And everywhere all through the house the funny blunt smell of black coffee.
It was my brother Carol's duty always to bring in the Christmas tree. By some strange mix-up of what is and what isn't my brother Carol was dumb--stark dumb, I mean, and from birth. But tho he had never found his voice he had at least never lost his shining face. Even now at eleven in the twilightly end of a rainy Sunday, or most any day when he had an earache, he still let mother call him "Shining Face." But if any children called him "Shining Face" he kicked them. Even when he kicked people, tho, he couldn't stop his face shining. It was very cheerful. Everything about Carol was very cheerful. No matter, indeed, how much we might play and whisper about gifts and tinsels and jolly-colored candles, Christmas never, I think, seemed really _probable_ to any of us until that one jumpy moment, just at the end of the Thanksgiving dinner, when, heralded by a slam in the wood-shed, a hoppytyskip in the hall, the dining-room door flung widely open on Carol's eyes twinkling like a whole skyful of stars through the shaggy, dark branches of a young spruce-tree. It made young Derry Willard laugh right out loud.
"Why, of all funny things!" he said. "On Thanksgiving Day! Why, it looks like a Christmas tree!"
"It is a Christmas tree," explained my sister Rosalee very patiently. My sister Rosalee was almost always very patient. But I had never seen her patient with a young man before. It made her cheeks very pink. "It _is_ a Christmas tree," she explained. "That is, it's going to be a Christmas tree! Just the very first second we get it 'budded' it'll start right in to be a Christmas tree!"
"_Budded?_" puzzled young Derry Willard. Really for a person who looked so much like the picture of the Fairy Prince in my best story-book, he seemed just a little bit slow.
"Why, of course, it's got to be _budded_!" I cried. "That's what it's for! That's----"
Instead of just being pink patient my sister Rosalee started in suddenly to be dimply patient too.
"It's from mother's Christmas-tree garden, you know," she went right on explaining. "Mother's got a Winter garden--a Christmas-tree garden!"
"Father's got a garden, too!" I maintained stoutly. "Father's is a Spring garden! Reds, blues, yellows, greens, whites! From France! And Holland! And California! And Asia Minor! Tulips, you know. _Buster's!_ Oh, father's garden is a _glory_!" I boasted.
"And mother's garden," said my mother very softly, "is only a story."
"It's an awfully nice story," said Rosalee.
Young Derry Willard seemed to like stories.
"Tell it!" he begged.
It was Rosalee who told it. "Why, it was when Carol was born," she said. "It was on a Christmas eve, you know. That's why mother named him Carol!"
"We didn't know then, you see"--interrupted my mother very softly--"that Carol had been given the gift of silence rather than the gift of speech."
"And father was so happy to have a boy," dimpled Rosalee, "that he said to mother, 'Well, now, I guess you've got everything in the world that you want!' And mother said, 'Everything--except a spruce forest!' So father bought her a spruce forest," said Rosalee. "That's the story!"
"Oh, my dear!" laughed my mother. "That isn't a 'story' at all! All you've told is the facts! It's the _feeling_ of the facts that makes a story, you know! It was on my birthday," glowed mother, "that the presentation was to be made! My birthday was in March! I was very much excited and came down to breakfast with my hat and coat on! 'Where are you going?' said my husband."
"Oh--Mother!" protested Rosalee. "'Whither away?' was what you've always told us he said!"
"'Whither away?' of course _was_ what he said!" laughed my mother. "'Why, I'm going to find my spruce forest!' I told him. 'And I can't wait a moment longer! Is it the big one over beyond the mountain?' I implored him. 'Or the little grove that the deacon tried to sell you last year?'"
"And they never budged an inch from the house!" interrupted Rosalee. "It was the funniest----"
Over in the corner of the room my father laughed out suddenly. My father had left the table. He and Carol were trying very hard to make the spruce-tree stand upright in a huge pot of wet earth. The spruce-tree didn't want to stand upright. My father laughed all over again. But it wasn't at the spruce-tree. "Well, now, wouldn't it have been a pity," he said, "to have made a perfectly good lady fare forth on a cold March morning to find her own birthday present?"
My mother began to clap her hands. It was a very little noise. But jolly.
"It came by mail!" she cried. "My whole spruce forest! In a package no bigger than my head!"
"Than your rather fluffy head!" corrected my father.
"Three hundred spruce seedlings!" cried my mother. "Each one no bigger than a wisp of grass! Like little green ferns they were! So tender! So fluffing! So helpless!"
"Heigh-O!" said young Derry Willard. "Well, I guess you laughed--then!"
When grown-up people are trying to remember things outside themselves I've noticed they always open their eyes very wide. But when they are remembering things inside themselves they shut their eyes very tight. My mother shut her eyes very tight.
"No--I didn't exactly laugh," said my mother. "And I didn't exactly cry."
"You wouldn't eat!" cried Rosalee. "Not all day, I mean! Father had to feed you with a spoon! It was in the wing-chair! You held the box on your knees! You just shone--and shone--and _shone_!"
"It would have been pretty hard," said my mother, "not to have shone a--little! To brood a baby forest in one's arms--if only for a single day--? Think of the experience!" Even at the very thought of it she began to _shine_ all over again! "Funny little fluff o' green," she laughed, "no fatter than a fern!" Her voice went suddenly all wabbly like a preacher's. "But, oh, the glory of it!" she said. "The potential majesty! Great sweeping branches--! Nests for birds, shade for lovers, masts for ships to plow the great world's waters--timbers perhaps for cathedrals! O--h," shivered my mother. "It certainly gave one a very queer feeling! No woman surely in the whole wide world--except the Mother of the Little Christ--ever felt so astonished to think what she had in her lap!"
Young Derry Willard looked just a little bit nervous.
"Oh, but of course mother couldn't begin all at once to raise cathedrals!" I hastened to explain. "So she started in raising Christmas presents instead. We raise all our own Christmas presents! And just as soon as Rosalee and I are married we're going to begin right away to raise our children's Christmas presents too! Heaps for everybody, even if there is a hundred! Carol, of course, won't marry because he can't propose! Ladies don't like written proposals, father says! Ladies----"
Young Derry Willard asked if he might smoke. He smoked cigarets. He took them from a gold-looking case. They smelled very romantic. Everything about him smelled very romantic. His hair was black. His eyes were black. He looked as tho he could cut your throat without flinching if you were faithless to him. It was beautiful.
I left the table as soon as I could. I went and got my best story-book. I was perfectly right. He looked _exactly_ like the picture of the Fairy Prince on the front page of the book. There were heaps of other pictures, of course. But only one picture of a Fairy Prince. I looked in the glass. I looked just exactly the way I did before dinner. It made me feel queer. Rosalee didn't look at all the way she looked before dinner. It made me feel _very_ queer.
When I got back to the dining-room everybody was looking at the little spruce-tree--except young Derry Willard and Rosalee. Young Derry Willard was still looking at Rosalee. Rosalee was looking at the toes of her slippers. The fringe of her eyelashes seemed to be an inch long. Her cheeks were so pink I thought she had a fever. No one else came to _bud_ the Christmas tree except Carol's tame coon and the tame crow. Carol is very unselfish. He always _buds_ one wish for the coon. And one for the crow. The tame coon looked rather jolly and gold-powdered in the firelight. The crow never looked jolly. I have heard of white crows. But Carol's crow was a very dark black. Wherever you put him he looked like a sorrow. He sat on the arm of Rosalee's chair and nibbed at her pink sleeve. Young Derry Willard pushed him away. Young Derry Willard and Rosalee tried to whisper. I heard them.
"How old are you?" whispered Rosalee.
"I'm twenty-two," whispered young Derry Willard.
"O--h," said Rosalee.
"How young are you?" whispered Derry Willard.
"I'm seventeen," whispered Rosalee.
"O--h," said Derry Willard.
My mother started in very suddenly to explain about the Christmas tree. There were lots of little pencils on the table. And blocks of paper. And nice cold, shining sheets of tin-foil. There was violet-colored tin-foil, and red-colored tin-foil--and green and blue and silver and gold.
"Why, it's just a little family custom of ours, Mr. Willard," explained my mother. "After the Thanksgiving dinner is over and we're all, I trust, feeling reasonably plump and contented, and there's nothing special to do except just to dream and think--why, we just list out the various things that we'd _like_ for Christmas and----"
"Most people end Thanksgiving, of course," explained my father, "by trying to feel thankful for the things they've already had. But this seems to be more like a scheme for expressing thanks for the things that we'd _like_ to have!"
"The violet tin-foil is Rosalee's!" I explained. "The green is mine! The red is mother's! The blue is father's! The silver is Carol's! Mother takes each separate _wish_ just as soon as it's written, and twists it all up in a bud of tin-foil! And takes wire! And wires the bud on the tree! Gold buds! Silver buds! Red! Green! Everything! All bursty! And shining! Like Spring! It looks as tho rainbows had rained on it! It looks as tho sun and moon had warmed it at the same time! And then we all go and get our little iron banks--all the Christmas money, I mean, that we've been saving and saving for a whole year! And dump it all out round the base of the tree! Nickels! Dimes! Quarters! Pennies! _Everything!_ And----"
"Dump them all out--round the base of the tree?" puzzled young Derry Willard.
Carol did something suddenly that I never saw him do before with a stranger. He wrote a conversation on a sheet of paper and waved it at young Derry Willard. It was a short conversation. But it was written very tall.
"_Phertalizer!_" explained Carol.
My father made a little laugh. "In all my experience with horticulture," he said, "I know of no fertilizer for a Christmas tree that equals a judicious application of nickels, dimes, and quarters--well stirred in."
"Our uncle Charlie was here once for Thanksgiving," I cried. "He stirred in a twenty-dollar gold piece. Our Christmas tree bloomed _everything_ that year! It bloomed tinsel pompons on every branch! And gold-ribbon bow-knots! It bloomed a blackboard for Carol! And an ice-cream freezer for mother! And----"
"And then we take the tree," explained my mother, "and carry it into the parlor. And shut the door."
"And _lock_ the door," said my father.
"And no one ever sees," puzzled young Derry Willard, "what was written in the wishes?"
"_No one_," I said.
Rosalee laughed.
"Some one--must see," said Rosalee. "'Cause just about a week before Christmas father and mother always go up to town and----"
"Oh, of course mother _has_ to see!" I admitted. "Mother is such friends with Christmas!"
"And father," laughed Rosalee, "is such friends with mother!"
"Usually," I said.
"Eh?" said father.
"And then," explained mother, "on Christmas morning we all go to the parlor!"
"And there's a fire in the parlor!" I explained. "A great hollow Yule log all stuffed full of crackly pine-cones and sputtering sparkers and funny-colored blazes that father buys at a fireworks shop! And the candles are lighted! And--and----"
"And all the tin-foil buds have bloomed into presents!" laughed Derry Willard.
"Oh, no, of course--not _all_ of them," said mother.
"No tree ever fulfills every bud," said my father.
"There's Carol's camel, of course," laughed Rosalee. "Ever since Carol was big enough to wish, he's always wished for a camel!"
"But mostly, of course," I insisted, "he wishes for kites! He got nine kites last Christmas."
"Kites?" murmured young Derry Willard.
"_Kites!_" I said. "I _have_ to talk a good deal. Once always for myself. And all over again for Carol." It seemed a good time to talk for Carol. Perhaps a person who came all the way from Cuba could tell us the thing we wanted to know. "Oh, Carol's very much interested in kites!" I confided. "And in relationships! In Christmas relationships especially! When he grows up he's going to be some sort of a jenny something--I think it's an ologist! Or else keep a kite-shop!"
"Yes?" murmured young Derry Willard.
There are two ways I've noticed to make one listen to you. One is to shout. The other is to whisper. I decided to whisper.
"You don't seem to understand," I whispered. "It's Christmas relationships that are worrying Carol and me so! It worries us dreadfully! Oh, of course we understand all about the Little Baby Christ! And the camels! And the wise men! And the frankincense! That's easy! But _who_ is Santa Claus? Unless--unless--?" It was Carol himself who signaled me to go on. "Unless--he's the Baby Christ's _grandfather_?" I thought Derry Willard looked a little bit startled. Carol's ears turned bright red. "Oh, of course--we meant on his _mother's_ side!" I hastened to assure him.
"It is, I admit, a new idea to me," said young Derry Willard. "But I seem to have gotten several new ideas to-day."
He looked at mother. Mother's mouth looked very funny. He looked at father. Father seemed to be sneezing. He looked at Rosalee. They laughed together. His whole face suddenly was very laughing. "And what becomes," he asked, "of all the Christmas-tree buds that _don't_ bloom?" It was a funny question. It didn't have a thing in the world to do with Santa Claus being a grandfather.
"Oh, mother never throws away any of the buds," laughed Rosalee. "She just keeps them year after year and wires them on all over again."
"All unfulfilled wishes," said my mother. "Still waiting--still wishing! Maybe they'll bloom some time! Even Carol's--camel," she laughed out suddenly. "Who knows, sonny-boy--but what if you keep on _wishing_ you'll actually travel some day to the Land-Where-Camels-Live? Maybe--maybe you'll own a--a dozen camels?"
"With purple velvet blankets?" I cried. "All trimmed with scarlet silk tassels? And smelling of sandalwood?"
"I have never understood," said my father, "that camels smelt of sandalwood."
Young Derry Willard didn't seem exactly nervous any more. But he jumped up very suddenly. And went and stood by the fire.
"It's the finest Christmas idea I ever heard of!" he said. "And if nobody has any objections I'd like to take a little turn myself at _budding_ the Christmas tree!"
"Oh, but you won't be here for Christmas!" cried everybody all at once.
"No, I certainly sha'n't be," admitted Derry Willard, "unless I am invited!"
"Why, of course, you're invited!" cried everybody. Father seemed to have swallowed something. So mother invited him twice. Father kept right on choking. Everybody was frightened but mother.
Young Derry Willard had to run like everything to catch his train. It was lucky that he knew what he wanted. With only one wish to make and only half a minute to make it in, it was wonderful that he could decide so quickly! He snatched a pencil! He scribbled something on a piece of paper! He crumpled the "something" all up tight and tossed it to mother! Carol and mother wadded it into a tin-foil bud! They took the gold-colored tin-foil! Rosalee and I wired it to a branch! We chose the highest branch we could reach! Father held his overcoat for him! Father handed him his bag! Father opened the door for him! He ran as fast as he could! He waved his hand to everybody! His laugh was all sparkly with white teeth!
The room seemed a little bit dark after he had gone. The firelight flickered on the tame coon's collar. Sometimes it flickered on the single gold bud. We cracked more nuts and munched more raisins. It made a pleasant noise. The tame crow climbed up on the window-sill and tapped and tapped against the glass. It was not a pleasant noise. The tame coon prowled about under the table looking for crumbs. He walked very flat and swaying and slow, as tho he were stuffed with wet sand. It gave him a very captive look. His eyes were very bright.
Father got his violin and played some quivery tunes to us. Mother sang a little. It was nice. Carol put fifteen "wishes" on the tree. Seven of them, of course, were old ones about the camel. But all the rest were new. He wished a salt mackerel for his coon. And a gold anklet for his crow. He wouldn't tell what his other wishes were. They looked very pretty! Fifteen silver buds as big as cones scattered all through the green branches! Rosalee made seven violet-colored wishes! I made seven! Mine were green! Father made three! His were blue! Mother's were red! 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 class gave it to him," she said. It seemed to be a joke. Once father's Sunday-school class 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 God 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 coon 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 petition 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-buttons. '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 coon'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.
"U--m--m," said my father.
"It's because of the hundred-dollar bill," said my mother. "He doesn't want to give us any chance to return it."
"Humph!" said my father. "Do we _look_ poor?"
My mother glanced at the worn spot in the dining-room rug. She glanced at my father's coat.
"We certainly do!" she laughed. "But young Derry Willard didn't leave us a hundred-dollar bill to try and make us look any richer. All young Derry Willard was trying to do was to make us look more Christmassy!"
"Well, we can't accept it!" said my father.
"Of course we can't accept it!" said my mother. "It was a mistake. But at least it was a very kind mistake."
"_Kind?_" said my father.
"_Very_ kind," said my mother. "No matter how dark a young man may be or how much cane-sirup and bananas he has consumed, he can't be absolutely depraved as long as he goes about the world trying to make things look more Christmassy!"
My father looked up rather sharply.
My mother gave a funny little gasp.
"Oh, it's all right," she said. "We'll manage some way! But who ever heard of a chicken-bone hung on a Christmas tree? Or a slice of roast beef?"
"Some children don't get--anything," said my father. He looked solemn. "Money is very scarce," he said.
"It always is," said my mother. "But that's no reason why presents ought to be scarce."
My father jumped up.
My father laughed.
"Great Heavens, woman!" he said. "Can't anything dull your courage?"
"Not my--Christmas courage!" said my mother.
My father reached out suddenly and patted her hand.
"Oh, all right," he said. "I suppose we'll manage somehow."
"Of course we'll manage somehow," said my mother.
I ran back as fast as I could to Carol and Rosalee.
We thought a good deal about young Derry Willard coming. We talked about it among ourselves. We never talked about it to my father or my mother. I don't know why. I went and got my best story-book and showed the Fairy Prince to Carol. Carol stared and stared. There were palms and bananas in the picture. There was a lace-paper castle. There was a moat. There was a fiery charger. There were dragons. The Fairy Prince was all in white armor, with a white plume in his hat. It grasped your heart, it was so beautiful. I showed the picture to Rosalee. She was surprised. She turned as white as the plume in the Fairy Prince's hat. She put the book in her top bureau-drawer with her ribbons. We wondered and wondered whether young Derry Willard would come. Carol thought he wouldn't. I thought he would. Rosalee wouldn't say. Carol thought it would be too cold. Carol insisted that he was a tropic. And that tropics couldn't stand the cold. That if a single breath of cold air struck a tropic he blew up and froze. Rosalee didn't want young Derry Willard to blow up and freeze. Anybody could see that she didn't. I comforted her. I said he would come in a huge fur coat. Carol insisted that tropics didn't have huge fur coats. "All right, then," I said. "He will come in a huge _feather_ coat! Blue-bird feathers it will be made of! With a soft brown breast! When he fluffs himself he will look like the god of all the birds and of next Spring! Hawks and all evil things will scuttle away!"
There certainly _was_ something the matter with the Christmas tree that year.
It grew. But it didn't grow very fast.
My father said that perhaps the fertilizer hadn't been rich enough.
My mother said that maybe all Christmas trees were blooming rather late this year. Seasons changed so.
My father and mother didn't go away to town at all. Not for a single day.
Late at night after we'd gone to bed we heard them hammering things and running the sewing-machine.
Carol thought it smelt like kites.
Rosalee said it sounded to her like a blue silk waist.
It looked like a worry to me.
It got colder and colder. It snowed and snowed.
Christmas eve it snowed some more. It was beautiful. We were very much excited. We clapped our hands. We stood at the window to see how white the world was. I thought about the wise men's camels. I wondered if they could carry snow in their stomachs as well as rain. Mother said camels were tropics and didn't know anything about snow. It seemed queer.
A sleigh drove up to the door. There were three men in it. Two of them got out. The first one was young Derry Willard. It was a fur coat that he had on. He was full of bundles. My father gave one gasp.
"The--the impudent young--" gasped my father.
We ran to the door. The second man looked just exactly like young Derry Willard except that he had on a gray beard and a gray slouch hat. He looked like the picture of "a planter" in "Uncle Tom's Cabin." My father and he took just one look at each other. And then suddenly they began to pound each other on the back and to hug each other. "Hello, old top!" they shouted. "Hello--hello--_hello_!" Derry Willard's father cried a little. Everybody cried a little or shouted or pounded somebody on the back except young Derry Willard and Rosalee. Young Derry Willard and Rosalee just stood and looked at each other.
"Well--well--well!" said Derry Willard's father over and over and over. "Twenty years! _Twenty_ years!" The front hall was full of bundles! We fell on them when we stepped. And we fell on new ones when we tried to get up. Whenever Derry Willard's father wasn't crying he was laughing! "So this is the wife?" he said. "And these are the children? Which is Rosalee? Ah! A very pretty girl! But not as pretty as your wife!" he laughed. "Twenty years! _Twenty_ years!" he began all over again. "A bit informal, eh? Descending on you like this? But I couldn't resist the temptation after I'd seen Derry. We Southerners, you know! Our impulses are romantic! Tuck us away anywhere! Or turn us out--if you must!"
My father was like a wild man for joy! He forgot all about everything except "twenty years ago."
We had to put the two Mr. Derry Willards to bed in the parlor. There was no other room. They insisted on sleeping with the Christmas tree. They had camped under every kind of branch and twig in the world, they said. But _never_ had they camped under a Christmas tree.
Father talked and talked and talked! Derry Willard's father talked and talked and talked! It was about college! It was about girls! It was about boys! It was about all sorts of pranks! Not any of it was about studies! Mother sat and laughed at them!
Rosalee and young Derry Willard sat and looked at each other. Carol and I played checkers. Everybody forgot us. I don't know who put me to bed.
When we came down-stairs the next morning and went into the parlor to see the Christmas tree we _screamed_!
Every single weeney-teeny branch of it had sprouted tinsel tassels! There were tinsel stars all over it! Red candles were blazing! Glass icicles glistened! There were candy canes! There were tin trumpets! Little white-paper presents stuck out everywhere through the branches! Big white presents piled like a snowdrift all around the base of the tree!
Young Derry Willard's father seemed to be still laughing. He rubbed his hands together.
"Excuse me, good people," he laughed, "for taking such liberties with your tree! But it's twenty years since I've had a chance to take a real whack at a Christmas tree! Palms, of course, are all right, and banana groves aren't half bad! But when it comes to real landscape effect--give me a Christmas tree in a New England parlor!"
"Palms?" we gasped. "Banana-trees?"
Young Derry Willard distributed the presents.
For my father there were boxes and boxes of cigars! And an order on some Dutch importing house for five hundred _green_ tulips! Father almost sw--ooned.
For mother there was a little gold chain with a single pearl in it! And a box of oranges as big as a chicken-coop!
I got four dolls! And a paint-box! One of the dolls was jet-black. She was funny. When you squeaked her stomach she grinned her mouth and said, "Oh, lor', child!"
Rosalee had a white crepe shawl all fringes and gay-colored birds of paradise! Rosalee had a fan made out of ivory and gold. Rosalee had a gold basket full of candied violets. Rosalee had a silver hand-mirror carved all round the edge with grasses and lilies like the edges of a little pool.
Carol had a big, big box that looked like a magic lantern. And on every branch where he had hung his seven wishes for a camel there was a white card instead with the one word "Palestine" written on it.
Everybody looked very much perplexed.
Young Derry Willard's father laughed.
"If the youngster wants camels," he said, "he must have camels! I'm going to Palestine one of these days before so very long. I'll take him with me. There must be heaps of camels still in Palestine."
"Going to Palestine before--long," gasped my mother. "How wonderful!"
Everybody turned and looked at Carol.
"Want to go, son, eh?" laughed Derry Willard's father.
Carol's mouth quivered. He looked at my mother.
My mother's mouth quivered. A little red came into her checks.
"He wants me to thank you very much, Mr. Willard," she said. "But he thinks perhaps you wouldn't want to take him to Palestine--if you knew that he can't--talk."
"Can't talk?" cried Mr. Derry Willard. "_Can't talk?_" He looked at mother! He looked at Carol! He swallowed very hard! Then suddenly he began to laugh again!
"Good enough!" he cried. "He's the very boy I'm looking for! We'll rear him for a diplomat!"
Carol got a hammer and opened his big box. It _was_ a magic lantern! He was wild with joy! He beat his fists on the top of the box! He stamped his feet! He came and burrowed his head in mother's shoulder. When Carol burrows his head in my mother's shoulder it means, "Call me anything you want to!"
Mother called him anything she wanted to. Right out loud before everybody. "Shining Face!" said my mother.
There were lots of other presents besides.
My father had made a giant kite for Carol. It looked nine feet tall. My father had made the dearest little wooden work-box for my mother. There _was_ a blue silk waist for Rosalee. My mother had knitted me a doll! Its body was knitted! Its cheeks were knitted! Its nose was knitted! It was wonderful!
We ate the peppermint-candy canes. All the pink stripes. All the white stripes. We sang carols. We sang,
O, the foxes have holes! And the birds build their nests
In the crotch of the sycamore-tree!
But the Little Son of God had no place for His head
When He cameth to earth for me!
Rosalee's voice was like a lark in the sky. Carol's face looked like two larks in the sky.
The tame crow stayed in the kitchen. He was afraid of so many strangers. The tame coon wasn't afraid of anything. He crawled in and out of all the wrapping-papers, sniffing and sniffing. It made a lovely crackling sound.
Everything smelt like fir balsam. It was more beautiful every minute. Even after every last present was picked from the tree, the tree was still so fat and fluffy with tinsel and glass balls that it didn't look robbed at all.
We just sat back and stared at it.
Young Derry Willard stared only at the topmost branch.
Father looked suddenly at mother. Mother looked suddenly at Rosalee. Rosalee looked suddenly at Carol. Carol looked suddenly at me. I looked suddenly at the tame coon. The tame coon kept right on crackling through the wrapping-papers.
Young Derry Willard made a funny little face. There seemed to be dust in his throat. His voice was very dry. He laughed.
"My wish," said young Derry Willard, "seems to have been the only one that--didn't bloom."
I almost died with shame. Carol almost died with shame. In all that splendiferousness, in all that generosity, poor Derry Willard's gold-budded wish was the only one that hadn't at least bloomed into _something_!
Rosalee jumped up very suddenly and ran into the dining-room. She looked as tho she was going to cry.
Young Derry Willard followed her. He didn't run. He walked very slowly. He looked a little troubled.
Carol and I began at once to fold the wrapping-papers very usefully.
Young Derry Willard's father looked at my father. All of a sudden he wasn't laughing at all. Or rubbing his hands.
"I'm sorry, Dick," he said. "I've always rather calculated somehow on having my boy's wishes come true."
My father spoke a little sharply.
"You must have a lot of confidence," he said, "in your boy's wishes!"
"I have!" said young Derry Willard's father, quite simply. "He's a good boy! Not only clever, I mean, but good! Never yet have I known him to wish for anything that wasn't the _best_!"
"They're too young," said my father.
"Youth," said Derry Willard's father, "is the one defect I know of that is incontestably remedial."
"How can they possibly know their own minds?" demanded my father.
"No person," said Derry Willard's father, "knows his own mind until he's ready to die. But the sooner he knows his own heart the sooner he's ready to begin to live."
My father stirred in his chair. He lit a cigar. It went out. He lit it again. It went out again. He jerked his shoulders. He looked nervous. He talked about things that nobody was talking about at all.
"The young rascal dropped a hundred-dollar bill--when he was here before!" he said. He said it as tho it was something very wicked.
Young Derry Willard's father seemed perfectly cheerful.
"Did he really?" he said.
"It's a wonder the crow didn't eat it!" snapped my father.
"But even the crow wouldn't eat it, eh?" said Derry Willard's father. Quite suddenly he began to laugh again. He looked at my mother. He stopped laughing. His voice was very gentle. "Don't be--proud," he said. "Don't ever be proud." He threw out his hand as tho he was asking something. "What difference does anything make--in the whole world," he said, "except just young love--and old friendship?"
"Oh, pshaw," said father. "Oh, pshaw!"
Rosalee came and stood in the door. She looked only at mother. She had on a red coat. And a red hat. And red mittens.
"Derry Willard wants to see the Christmas-tree garden," she said. "May I go?"
Derry Willard stood just behind her. He had on his fur coat. He looked very hard at father. When he spoke he spoke only to father.
"Is it all right?" he said. "May _I_ go?"
My father looked up. And then he looked down. He looked at Derry Willard's father. He threw out his hands as tho there was no place left to look. A little smile crept into one corner of his mouth. He tried to bite it. He couldn't.
"Oh--_pshaw_!" he said.
Carol and I went out to play. We thought we'd like to see the Christmas-tree garden too. The snow was almost as deep as our heads. All the evergreen trees were weighed down with snow. Their branches dragged on the ground. It was like walking through white plumes.
We found mother's Christmas-tree garden. We found Rosalee and young Derry Willard standing right in the middle of it. It was all caves and castles! It was like a whole magic little city all made out of white plumes! The sun came out and shone on it! Blue sky opened overhead! Everything crackled! It was more beautiful even than the Christmas tree in the parlor.
They didn't hear us.
Rosalee gave a funny little cry. It was like a sob. Only happy.
"I love _Christmas_!" she said.
"I love _you_!" said Derry Willard.
He snatched her in his arms and kissed her.
A great pine-tree shivered all its snow down on them like a veil.
We heard them laugh.
We ran back to the house. We ran just as fast as we could. It almost burst our lungs. We ran into the parlor. I didn't tell. Carol couldn't tell.
My father and young Derry Willard's father were talking and talking behind great clouds of smoke. The Yule log was blazing and sputtering all sorts of fireworks and colors. Only mother was watching it. She was paring apples as she watched. A little smile was in her eyes.
"What a wonderful--wonderful day to have it happen!" she said.
I couldn't stand it any longer. I ran upstairs and got my best story-book. I brought it down and opened it at the picture of the Fairy Prince. I laid it open like that in Mr. Willard's lap. I pointed at the picture.
"_There!_" I said.
Derry Willard's father put on his glasses and looked at the picture.
"Well, upon my soul," he said, "where did you get that?"
"It's my book," I said. "It's always been my book."
My father looked at the picture.
"Why, of all things," he said.
"Why, it looks exactly like Derry!" said my mother.
"It _is_ Derry!" said Derry's father. "But don't ever let Derry know that you know that it is! It seems to tease him a little. It seems to tease him a very great deal in fact. Being all rigged out like that. The illustrator is a friend of mine. He spent the Winter in Cuba three or four years ago. And he painted the picture there."
I looked at Carol. Carol looked at me. It was an absolutely perfect Christmas! If _this_ were true, then everything beautiful that there was in the world was true, too! Carol nudged me to speak.
"Then Derry really _is_ a Fairy Prince?" I said.
Father started to speak.
Mother stopped him.
"Yes! Rosalee's Fairy Prince!" she said.
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Eleanor Hallowell Abbott's short story: Fairy Prince
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Eleanor Hallowell Abbott's short story: Fairy Prince