"The grocer's wife was trimming her Christmas tree when I got there at three o'clock, and I thought it so pretty I said to myself, he shall have his tree too, and shall know that there is at least one person to think of him. I asked her to show me how to gild apples, and gilded a supply while I was there, and bought the lights and got a sack to put the tree in, so that you shouldn't see it."
"And who gave you the tree?"
"I cut it down myself at the edge of the forest not far from here."
"In the middle of this storm?"
She laughed contemptuously. "A little wind wouldn't hinder me, Herr," And then with a sudden outburst of joyous ecstasy, she exclaimed, "Oh, just look, Herr, how beautifully it burns! How pious it looks. Hasn't it really a sort of pious face, as if an angel had brought it?"
He assented, laughing, and expressed his thanks in a few words of forced condescension, for he was afraid of being too gracious.
But she was more than satisfied. "Why should you thank me, Herr?" she asked reproachfully. "It's all bought with your money. I have none. I'm only a poor girl. Else, ah, else--" She threw up her hands and clasped them above her head.
The cheque came into his mind. "This is to show you," he said, handing it to her, "that I have thought of your Christmas too."
She looked at him in bewilderment. "Am I to read it?" she asked, respectfully taking the piece of paper between two of her fingers. After studying it carefully, she still looked perplexed.
"Don't you understand what it is?" he asked.