ad was bound by a gaily striped kerchief, and her feet rested
snugly on a charcoal stove. Her merchandise, which consisted of half a
dozen pots of pink and white primulas, a few spotted or crimson
cyclamen, sundry lettuce and cauliflower plants, and some roots of
pansies and daisies, was grouped around her.

[Illustration: The Tree-Bearer]

The primulas and cyclamen, though their pots were shrouded in pinafores
of white paper skilfully calculated to conceal any undue lankiness of
stem, left us unmoved. But the sight of the starveling little fir tree
reminded us that in the school hospital lay two sick boys whose roseate
dreams of London and holidays had suddenly changed to the knowledge that
weeks of isolation and imprisonment behind the window-blind with the red
cross lay before them. If we could not give them the longed-for home
Christmas, we could at least give them a Christmas-tree.

The sight of foreign customers for Grand'mere Gomard speedily collected
a small group of interested spectators. A knot of children relinquished
their tantalising occupation of hanging round the pan of charcoal over
whose glow chestnuts were cracking appetisingly, and the stall of the
lady who with amazing celerity fried pancakes on a hot plate, and sold
them dotted with butter and sprinkled with sugar to the lucky possessors
of a _sou_. Even the sharp urchin who presided over the old red
umbrella, which, reversed, with the ferule fixed in a cross-bar of wood,
served as a receptacle for sheets of festive note-paper embellished with
lace edges and further adorned with coloured scraps, temporarily
entrusting a juvenile sister with his responsibilities, added his
presence to our court.

[Illustration: Rosine]

Christmas-trees seemed not to be greatly in demand in Versailles, and
many were the whispered communings as to what _les Anglais_ proposed
doing with the tree after they had bought it. When the transaction was
completed and Grand'mere Gomard had exchanged the tree, with a sheet of
_La Patrie_ wrapped round its pot, for a franc and our thanks, the
interest increased. We would require some one to carry our purchase, and
each of the bright-eyed, short-cropped Jeans and Pierres was eager to
offer himself. But our selection was already made. A slender boy in a
_beret_ and black pinafore, who had been our earliest spectator, was
singled out and entrusted with the conveyance of the _arbre de Noel_ to
our hotel.

The fact that it had m