r a boy, now?"

"No--I wouldn't want to see it first--I couldn't bear to choose. One
healthy--from healthy parents--and either girl or boy," Ellen said, and
stopped. "The nicest tree thing I've made is for a boy," she owned.
"It's a paper soldier.... I made these things for fun," she added to
Helders.

For the first time Helders observed the tree. Then he looked in the
woman's face. "I'll fetch out a boy for you if you say so," he said.

"Then do," she bade.

When the four were alone again, Mat sat looking at the floor. "Every
headlong thing I've ever done I've gone headlong over," he said
gloomily.

Ellen took a coin from the clock shelf. "When Ben goes past to-morrow,"
she merely said, "you'll likely see him. Have him get some little
candles for the tree."

"My head hurts me," the old man gave out; "this ain't the place for a
great noisy boy."

Ellen put her hand on his shoulder almost maternally.

"See, dear," she said, "then you'd be grandfather."

"Hey?" he said; "not if it was adopted, I wouldn't."

"Why, of course. That would make it ours--and yours. See," she cried,
"you've been stringing popcorn for it already, and you didn't know!"

"Be grandfather, would I?" said the old man. "Would I? Hey, king and
country! Grandfather again."

Ellen was moving about the kitchen lightly, with that manner, which
eager interest brings, of leaving only half footprints.

"Come on, mother," she said, "we must get the popcorn strung for sure,
now!"

The mother looked up at the tree. "Seems as if," she said, wrinkling her
forehead, "I used to make pink tarleton stockings for your trees and
fill 'em with the corn. I donno but I've got a little piece of pink
tarleton somewheres in my bottom drawer...."

... Next night they had the bracket lamp and the lamp on the shelf and
the table hand lamp all burning. The little tree was gay with the white
corn and the coloured trifles. The kitchen seemed to be centering in the
tree, as if the room had been concerned long enough with the doings of
these grown folk and now were looking ahead to see who should come next.
It was the high moment of immemorial expectancy, when those who are
alive turn the head to see who shall come after.

"What you been making all day, daddy?" Ellen asked, tense at every sound
from without.

Her father, neat in his best clothes, blew away a last plume of shaved
wood and held out something.

"I just whittled out a kind of a clothespin man," he