The presents _were_ ready for distribution when that blessed morning
dawned, snow-bound and cold and still. There were many stories
circulated as to how and when the work had been done.
One story was that among the agents whom S. Claus had found it
necessary to call upon for aid in the work were the grocer’s boy and
Mr. Blythe.
Some persons said that it could not have been done without the help of
the hook and ladder from the engine-house two miles away. Others were
convinced that unofficial ladders and orchard-pruning implements had
done it.
Whatever the truth of the matter is, the orphan asylum certainly knew
nothing about it, for that was wrapped in measles, and could not have
peeped. As for the bishop, not for worlds would he have done such a
thing.
However, Mr. S. Claus and his friends did achieve it, and when
Christmas day dawned, clear and crisp and cold, the bishop and the
asylum and Mrs. Dyer and Aunt Sally gazed out upon a transformed
spruce-tree.
Everything was on it that should be on a tree for hungry birds--and
more. For besides cranberries in strings, pop-corn in festoons, grain
in gold and scarlet cornucopias, ginger-bread men, red apples, tallow
candles, half loaves of bread, biscuits, there were many things that
were there not to be eaten, but to make a glitter.
His grace the cardinal, a scarlet splash against the winter blue
sky, was poised upon the very topmost black tip of the glorious old
evergreen. And not only the two jays, but a dozen other handsome and
noisy jays, as well as the speckled sapsuckers and many smaller birds,
hung in mid-air about the branches, rapt and almost motionless. As the
vested choir from the choir-room that adjoined the asylum crossed the
yard through the brick cloister for the seven-o’clock service at the
little church, they sang with hearty voices:
“O morning stars, together
Proclaim the holy birth!
And praises sing to God, the King,
And peace to men on earth.”
The bishop and Gwinie and the many little children of the asylum, all
warmly wrapped in big blankets, gazed out on the scene through their
frosty windows; and among those marching in the choir through the
cloister were Mr. Blythe and the grocer’s boy, robed and beaming, and
singing most heartily of all.
[17] This story was first printed in “Youth’s Companion,” December 12,
1912. Reprinted by permission of the author and “Youth’s Companion.”