May had a picture, a delicate pencil-sketch of her mother, the only likeness they had. It was the sick girl’s treasure. Too careful of it to allow it to hang on the wall and get soiled, she kept it in an old book under her pillow, and to take it out and look at it every day was her delight. Now Lottie planned to make a frame for this treasure.
On pretense of looking at it, she took its dimensions, and then went to work. Cutting a piece of cardboard of the right size, she proceeded to cover it with little bunches of grasses she had dried in the summer, standing up in vases so that they drooped gracefully. At the top, where the stems of the grasses met, she placed a bunch of bitter-sweet berries, the brilliant red and orange just the needed bit of color to perfect the whole.
It was laid away in a chest with the chessmen, ready to receive the picture.
And now she began to plan for the adornment of the tree.
Candles were the greatest anxiety, but with the help of Nancy, she made a few large ones into twenty as neat and pretty little “dips” as you ever saw.
Walnuts she ornamented with gilt bands and loops to be hung by; apples, the reddest and whitest, were similarly prepared; tiny cornucopias, made of white letter paper trimmed with bits of gilt, filled with popped corn and meats of butternuts nicely picked out; dainty baskets made of old match-boxes, covered with gay paper, and with festooned handles; gorgeous pink and white roses of paper; tiny cakes of maple sugar, delicious sticks and twists of molasses candy; dainty drop cakes and kisses smuggled into the oven on baking-day,—all were secreted in the wonderful chest in the attic.
At last came the day before Christmas, and Lottie took the axe and went into the woods, for this woods-girl could not only bake cakes, dress dolls, and saw broomsticks, but she could even chop down a tree, if it was small.
She found a beautiful spruce tree, which had evidently been growing all these years on purpose for a Christmas tree, so straight it stood, and so wide and strong were its branches.
Cutting it down, and dragging it home over the snow, Lottie presented herself at the kitchen door, to the astonished eyes of Nancy.
“Now, Nancy, don’t you say a word to May. I’m going to surprise her.”