children.

He kept wondering, while they took him in through some big doors, and
set him up in another tub, on the table, in a bare little room. Pretty
soon they went away, and came back again with a big basket, carried
between them. Then some pretty ladies, with white caps on their heads
and white aprons over their blue dresses, came bringing little parcels.
The children took things out of the basket and began to play with the
Little Fir Tree, just as he had often begged the wind and the snow and
the birds to do. He felt their soft little touches on his head and his
twigs and his branches. And when he looked down at himself, as far as
he could look, he saw that he was all hung with gold and silver chains!
There were strings of white fluffy stuff drooping around him; his twigs
held little gold nuts and pink, rosy balls and silver stars; he had
pretty little pink and white candles in his arms; but last, and most
wonderful of all, the children hung a beautiful white, floating
doll-angel over his head! The Little Fir Tree could not breathe, for
joy and wonder. What was it that he was, now? Why was this glory for
him?

After a time every one went away and left him. It grew dusk, and the
Little Fir Tree began to hear strange sounds through the closed doors.
Sometimes he heard a child crying. He was beginning to be lonely. It
grew more and more shadowy.

All at once, the doors opened and the two children came in. Two of the
pretty ladies were with them. They came up to the Little Fir Tree and
quickly lighted all the little pink and white candles. Then the two
pretty ladies took hold of the table with the Little Fir Tree on it and
pushed it, very smoothly and quickly, out of the doors, across a hall,
and in at another door.

The Little Fir Tree had a sudden sight of a long room with many little
white beds in it, of children propped up on pillows in the beds, and of
other children in great wheeled chairs, and others hobbling about or
sitting in little chairs. He wondered why all the little children
looked so white and tired; he did not know that he was in a hospital.
But before he could wonder any more his breath was quite taken away by
the shout those little white children gave.

"Oh! oh! m-m! m-m!" they cried.

"How pretty! How beautiful! Oh, isn't it lovely!"

He knew they must mean him, for all their shining eyes were looking
straight at him. He stood as straight as a mast, and quivered in every
need