"Oh, Joe, don't stop; we want you for the Tree," begged Polly. "Phronsie has been waiting downstairs all this time for you to come. Let one of the maids do it;" Joe already had his head in a closet he knew of old, opening into the big hall.
"Give me the broom," said a voice close beside him.
"Eh—what?" cried Joel, pulling out what he wanted—a soft floor brush.
"Oh, is that you, Loughead?" turning around.
"I believe so," said Jack, laughing. "Here, give me the broom. I'm no help about a Tree; I'll have the stuff up there soon," and before Joel knew it, he was racing over the back stairs, wondering how it was he had let that disagreeable Jack Loughead get hold of that broom.
"It makes me think of our first Tree, in some way," said Polly softly, with glistening eyes, looking up at the beautiful branching spruce, its countless arms shaking out brilliant pendants, and gay with streamers and candles, wherever a decoration could be placed, the whole tipped with a shining star. "Oh, Bensie, can you ever forget that?"
Ben looked down from the top of the step-ladder where he was adjusting some last bit of ornament.
"Never, Polly," he said, his eyes meeting hers.
"That was so beautiful," cried Polly. "And we had it in our 'Provision Room,' and Mrs. Henderson brought my bird over, and the other things the last minute, and"—
"I had to," broke in Mrs. Henderson with a laugh, and shaking the snips of green from her white apron, "for you and Ben would have discovered the whole surprise. You were dreadful that day."
"I'm glad somebody else was dreadful in those times, besides me," observed Joel from among the branches, where he was tying on the several presents Alexia handed to him.