w. Set it now.--We got it through Fred Alton."

"Where is it?"

The little girls were dragging a rough, dark object out of a corner of
the passage into the light of the kitchen door.

"It's a beauty!" exclaimed Millicent.

"Yes, it is," said Marjory.

"I should think so," he replied, striding over the dark bough. He went
to the back kitchen to take off his coat.

"Set it now, Father. Set it now," clamoured the girls.

"You might as well. You've left your dinner so long, you might as well
do it now before you have it," came a woman's plangent voice, out of the
brilliant light of the middle room.

Aaron Sisson had taken off his coat and waistcoat and his cap. He stood
bare-headed in his shirt and braces, contemplating the tree.

"What am I to put it in?" he queried. He picked up the tree, and held
it erect by the topmost twig. He felt the cold as he stood in the yard
coatless, and he twitched his shoulders.

"Isn't it a beauty!" repeated Millicent.

"Ay!--lop-sided though."

"Put something on, you two!" came the woman's high imperative voice,
from the kitchen.

"We aren't cold," protested the girls from the yard.

"Come and put something on," insisted the voice. The man started off
down the path, the little girls ran grumbling indoors. The sky was
clear, there was still a crystalline, non-luminous light in the under
air.

Aaron rummaged in his shed at the bottom of the garden, and found a
spade and a box that was suitable. Then he came out to his neat, bare,
wintry garden. The girls flew towards him, putting the elastic of their
hats under their chins as they ran. The tree and the box lay on the
frozen earth. The air breathed dark, frosty, electric.

"Hold it up straight," he said to Millicent, as he arranged the tree in
the box. She stood silent and held the top bough, he filled in round the
roots.

When it was done, and pressed in, he went for the wheelbarrow. The girls
were hovering excited round the tree. He dropped the barrow and stooped
to the box. The girls watched him hold back his face--the boughs pricked
him.

"Is it very heavy?" asked Millicent.

"Ay!" he replied, with a little grunt. Then the procession set off--the
trundling wheel-barrow, the swinging hissing tree, the two excited
little girls. They arrived at the door. Down went the legs of the
wheel-barrow on the yard. The man looked at the box.

"Where are you going to have it?" he called.

"Put it in the back kitchen," cried hi