tand 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