ht tin trumpets, drums, jumping-jacks, and
picture-books. Joyce chose the presents for the girls.

The tree was bought and set up in a large unused room back of the
library, and as soon as each article was in readiness it was carried in
and laid on a table beside it. Jules used to steal in sometimes and look
at the tapers, the beautiful colored glass balls, the gilt stars and
glittering tinsel, and wonder how the stately cedar would look in all
that array of loveliness. Everything belonging to it seemed sacred, even
the unused scraps of bright tarletan and the bits of broken candles. He
would not let Marie sweep them up to be burned, but gathered them
carefully into a box and carried them home. There were several things
that he had rescued from her broom,--one of those beautiful red balls,
cracked on one side it is true, but gleaming like a mammoth red cherry
on the other. There were scraps of tinsel and odds and ends of ornaments
that had been broken or damaged by careless handling. These he hid away
in a chest in his room, as carefully as a miser would have hoarded a
bag of gold.

Clotilde Robard, the housekeeper, wondered why she found his candle
burned so low several mornings. She would have wondered still more if
she had gone into his room a while before daybreak. He had awakened
early, and, sitting up in bed with the quilts wrapped around him, spread
the scraps of tarletan on his knees. He was piecing together with his
awkward little fingers enough to make several tiny bags.

Henri missed his spade one morning, and hunted for it until he was out
of patience. It was nowhere to be seen. Half an hour later, coming back
to the house, he found it hanging in its usual place, where he had
looked for it a dozen times at least. Jules had taken it down to the
woods to dig up a little cedar-tree, so little that it was not over a
foot high when it was planted in a box.

Clotilde had to be taken into the secret, for he could not hide it from
her. "It is for my Uncle Martin," he said, timidly. "Do you think he
will like it?"

The motherly housekeeper looked at the poor little tree, decked out in
its scraps of cast-off finery, and felt a sob rising in her throat, but
she held up her hands with many admiring exclamations that made Jules
glow with pride.

[Illustration: "SITTING UP IN BED WITH THE QUILTS WRAPPED AROUND HIM."]

"I have no beautiful white strings of pop-corn to hang over it like
wreaths of snow," he said, "s