"Of course."
"Then, may we do it, Milly?"
"Darling, yes. How nice you always fix things, Mr. Tony!"
Long before he had known them he had fixed things--things which would
have turned this poor room into an Aladdin's palace. There was that
Christmas Eve at the Daltons'. It had been his idea to light the great
hall with a thousand candles when they brought in the Yule log, and to
throw perfumed fagots on the fire.
He came back to the round stove and the tiny tree. "I like to fix
things," he said. "Once upon a time--"
They leaned forward eagerly to this opening.
"Of course you know it isn't true," he prefaced.
"Of course it couldn't be true"--Pussy was reassuringly sceptical--"the
things that you tell us couldn't really happen--ever--"
"Well, once upon a time, there was a tree in a great house by a great
river, and it was set in a great room with squares of black-and-white
marble for a floor, and with a fountain with goldfish swimming in its
basin, and there were red-and-blue parrots on perches, and orange-trees
in porcelain pots, and the tree itself wasn't a pine-tree or a fir or a
cedar; it was a queer round, clipped thing of yew, and it had red and
blue and orange balls on it, and in the place of a wax angel on top
there was a golden Buddha, and there were no candles--but the light
shone out and out of it, like the light shines from the moon."
"Was it a Christmas tree?" Pussy asked, as he paused.
"Yes, but the people who trimmed it and the ones who came to see it
didn't believe in the Wise Men, or the Babe in the Manger, or the
shepherds who watched their flocks by night--they just worshiped beauty
and art--and other gods--but it was a corking tree--"
"You use such funny words," Pussy crowed ecstatically. "Who ever heard
of a corking tree?"
He smiled at her indulgently. He was warmer now, and as he leaned back
in his chair and unbuttoned his coat he seemed to melt suddenly into
something that was quite gentlemanly in pose and outline. "Well, it
really was a corking tree, Pussy."
"What's a Buddha?" Milly asked, making a young Madonna of herself as she
bent over the baby.
"A gentle god that half of the world worships," Ostrander said, "but the
people who put him on the tree didn't worship anything--they put him
there because he was of gold and ivory and was a lovely thing to look
at--"
"Oh," said Pussy, with her mouth round to say it, "oh, how funny you
talk, Mr. Tony!" She laughed, with her small hands beating her knees.
She was presently, however, very serious, as she set the table. There
was little formality of service. Just three plates and some bread.
Milly, having carried the baby into the other room, was hesitatingly
hospitable. "Won't you have supper with us, Mr. Tony?"
He wanted it. There was a savory smell as Milly lifted the pot from the
stove. But he knew there would be only three potatoes--one for Pussy and
one for Milly and one for the mother who was almost due, and there would
be plenty of gravy. How queer it seemed that his mind should dwell on
gravy!
"Onions are so high," Milly had said, as she stirred it. "I had to put
in just a very little piece."
He declined hastily and got away.
In the hall he met their mother coming in. She was a busy little mother,
and she did not approve of Ostrander. She did not approve of any human
being who would not work.
"A merry Christmas," he said to her, standing somewhat wistfully above
her on the stairs.
She smiled at that. "Oh, Mr. Tony, Mr. Tony, they want a man in the
shop. It would be a good way to begin the New Year."
"Dear lady, I have never worked in a shop--and they wouldn't want me
after the first minute--"