'We could not open them if we would,' they said; but I don't think they minded, and they let Waldo and Silva draw them on still a little farther, till—
'Now,' they cried, and snap went the gossamer thread, and the two children stood with eyes well open, gazing on the wonderful scene around them.
They seemed to be standing in the centre of a round valley, from which the ground on every side sloped gradually upwards. And all about them, arranged in the most orderly manner, were rows and rows—tiers, perhaps, I should say—of Christmas trees—real, genuine Christmas trees of every kind and size. Some loaded with toys of the most magnificent kind, some simpler, some with but a few gifts, and those of little value. But one and all brilliantly lighted up with their many-coloured tapers—one and all with its Christmas angel at the top. And nothing in fairy-doll shape that Rollo and Maia had ever seen was so beautiful as these angels with their gleaming wings and sweet, joyous loving faces. I think, when they had a little recovered from their first astonishment, that the beauty of the tree-angels was what struck them most.
'Yes,' said a voice beside them, in answer to their unspoken thought; 'yes, each tree has always its angel. Not always to be seen in its true beauty—sometimes you might think it only a poor, coarsely-painted little doll. But the angel is there all the same. Though it is only in Santa Claus' own garden that they are to be seen to perfection.'
'Are we in Santa Claus' garden now, dear godmother?' asked Maia softly.
'Yes, dears. He is a very old friend of mine—one of my oldest friends, I may say. And he allowed me to show you this sight. No other children have ever been so favoured. By this time to-morrow night—long before then, indeed—these thousands of trees will be scattered far and wide, and round each will be a group of the happy little faces my old friend loves so well.'
'But, godmother,' said Maia practically, 'won't the tapers be burning down? Isn't it a pity to keep them lighted just for us? And, oh, dear me! however can Santa Claus get them packed and sent off in time? I hope he hasn't kept them too late to please us?'
Godmother smiled.
'Don't trouble your little head about that,' she said. 'But come, have you no curiosity to know which is your own Christmas-tree? Among all these innumerable ones, is there not one for you too?'
Maia and Rollo looked up in godmother's eyes—they were smiling, but something in their expression they could not quite understand. Suddenly a kind of darkness fell over everything—darkness almost complete in comparison with the intense light of the million tapers that had gleamed but an instant before—though gradually, as their eyes grew used to it, there gleamed out the same soft faint light as of veiled moonbeams, that they had remarked before.