"Why?"
"'Cause ... why, there ain't any why ... just Christmas-tree."
"Just ... just Christmas-tree?"
"Um."
"Why ... I thought ... I ..."
And you and Lizbeth never felt Mother smooth out the covers at all, though she lifted you up to straighten them; and so you slept, spoon-fashion, warm as toast, with the little black gnomes watching in the pillows, and the Gummy-gum, hungry but afraid, in the dark of the back stairs.
The pear-tree on the edge of the enchanted garden, green with summer and tremulous with breeze, sheltered a little girl and her dolls. On the cool turf she sat alone, preoccupied, her dress starched and white like the frill of a valentine, her fat little legs straight out before her, her bright little curls straight down behind, her lips parted, her eyes gentle with a dream of motherhood—Mamma Lizbeth crooning lullabies to her four children cradled in the soft grass.
"I'll tell you just one more story," she was saying, "just one, and that's all, and then you children must go to sleep. Sally, lie still! Ain't you 'shamed, kicking all the covers off and catching cold? Naughty girl. Now you must listen. Well ... Once upon a time there was a fairy what lived in a rose, and she had beautiful wings—oh, all colors—and she could go wherever she wanted to without anybody ever seeing her, 'cause she was iwisible, which is when you can't see anybody at all. Well, one day the fairy saw a little girl carrying her father's dinner, and she turned herself into an old witch and said to the little girl, 'Come to me, pretty one, and I will give thee a stick of peppermint candy.' Now the little girl, she just loved candy, and peppermint was her favorite, but she was a good little girl and minded her mother most dut'fly, and never told any lies or anything; so she courtesied to the old witch and said, 'Thank you kindly, but I must hurry with my father's dinner, or he will be hungry waiting.' And what do you think? Just then the old witch turned into the beautiful fairy again, and she kissed the little girl, and gave her a whole bag of peppermint candy, and a doll what talked, and a velocipede for her little brother. And what does this story teach us, children? ... Yes. That's right. It teaches us to be good little boys and girls and mind our parents. And that's all."
The dolls fell asleep. Lizbeth whispered lest they should awake, and tiptoed through the grass. A blue-jay called harshly from a neighboring tree. Lizbeth frowned and glanced anxiously at the grassy trundle-bed. "'Sh!" she said, warningly, her finger on her lip, whenever you came near.
Suddenly there was a rustle in the leaves above, and out of their greenness a little pear dropped to the grass at Lizbeth's feet.