XV
Mary Elizabeth’s Soldierly Christmas
Mary Elizabeth looked up from the soldier scarf she was learning to knit. Her mother, in the rocker beside Mary Elizabeth’s hassock, caught a bit of anxious thought that rested between Mary Elizabeth’s brown eyes. “What is it?” she asked, putting her hand down upon Mary Elizabeth’s to stop the knitting needles.
“I was thinking,” Mary Elizabeth sighed, “just thinking, Mother. It’s going to be a very soldierly Christmas this year, isn’t it? But the children—they don’t realize it and they’re thinking and talking about Santa Claus. Are we going to have the tree this year?”
Mary Elizabeth’s mother patted Mary Elizabeth’s hand softly. “We’ve always had one, haven’t we, daughter?” she said. “Can you remember the time when we did not have one?”
“No,” laughed Mary Elizabeth. “I suppose it was when I was too small a baby ever to have a tree or so little that I didn’t know what the lights were and thought I would like to play with their sparkles—but I do remember the tree we had when I was a little bit older. It was before any of the children came. I was about three years old, I think. You told me that the tree was made in honor of the little Christ Child’s birthday and I always thought you meant a little child like myself and expected to see him—”
Mary Elizabeth paused. “Then I grew bigger, and by and by there were all the children and the baby, and I was the oldest and we all thought that a funny friend who was a jolly old man called Santa Claus brought us the toys we found in our stockings. We thought all the play was real—about his coming down the chimney and about his sleigh with the eight reindeer. It used to seem strange that so big a man as Santa Claus could squeeze down our chimney and by and by I suspected it was all a play and you told me that it was just a funny, jolly way to make the very little children enjoy the fun of Christmas surprises. You told me then that I might help toward Christmas myself by trimming the tree. That was to be my part: each year I was to do it all myself and every year I tried to make it some new and lovely kind of a surprise. I always have loved to fix the tree. I always have felt that it must be the kind of a tree that the little Christ Child would love if he came in the way that I used to think you meant when I was still little.”
“Your tree has always been a beautiful tree, Mary Elizabeth,” Mother smiled. “It has always been a tree that shone with happiness. Each year we have loved it so that the children could not bear to part with it at New Years, you know.”
Mary Elizabeth smiled. But her question still remained unanswered. “Will there be a tree this year?” she asked. “I’m afraid the children would be sad without it, Mother.”
“I, too, have been thinking, Mary Elizabeth,” said Mother. “It is indeed a soldierly Christmas. What do you think we had better do?”