"I'm very well, and so's my tree. Only think, Mr. Sharpe, it will be not three months to Chris'mas! I'm counting up every week. I fink my Chris'mas tree is a little happier now. You see, he didn't much like it when all the flowers were out smelling so beautiful and looking so pretty! I raver fink they weren't very nice to him, and he felt ugly, and no use to anybody. Chris and Diana would point their fingers at him and say that he looked higeous and was only taking up room, and doing nothing at all. 'He doesn't even smell,' they said; but I like his smell, 'specially after rain, and he's been growing green tips all over him. Now he knows he hasn't much more time to wait, and then he'll come into his glory."
"Come into his glory," repeated Mr. Sharpe, looking at Noel with a wistful smile; "do you know, little master, I've been lying here in much pain and trouble, and then I've taken to think over my plants, and I've learnt a lot of rare lessons from them. My days of work and usefulness are over—I'm in a bed now doing nothing, and shall do nothing for a long time to come. My hands and feet are that twisted that I doubt if they'll ever come straight again. My Bessie, she thinks I don't know, but I do—I know I'm going to be a bedridden cripple for the rest of my life—"
"Oh! Mr. Sharpe," cried Noel, "but God will make you well again. We'll ask Him to do it at once."
"Ay, ay, He could if He would. I've prayed quick and hasty-like, but now I tell the good Lord that He must have His will with me, and I'll be content. I've just got transplanted into a quiet bed by myself; and, like your little tree, I'm a useless hulk to some eyes, doing no good to no one. That will be my fate in the future. But my Gardener and Master has put me here, and I'm to wait till I'm called into my glory. My Christmas will come by and by, when I shall be taken up and carried into the king's palace. I shall see there what I was meant for."
Noel did not follow all this, but he caught the idea.
"You mean that people can be like Chris'mas trees, and have a very lonely, dull time, and then God takes them and lights them up in heaven and covers them with glory. That's what I shall do to my tree. I shall cover him with glory."
"Yes, we shall be 'covered with glory,'" said Mr. Sharpe, his eyes shining with a strange light. "What does it matter if we lie in bed or work in our garden? We have only to do what our Master tells us. And we shan't have to wait too long. We have such a happy life coming."
"And you're like my tree. You're just waiting," said Noel.
Then he began to tell the old man of all the presents that he had bought for his tree with his granny's money.
"And Ted is making me some frogs, and Mums is going to help, and I'm going to ask everybody I know to come to it. And Chris and Diana won't laugh at him any more then."