Ostrander, shrugged close to the stove, with his hands out to its heat, knew that they ought to have electric lights, colored ones, a hundred perhaps, and a tree that touched the stars!
But he said: "When I go out I'll bring you a red candle—a long one—and we'll put it on the shelf over the table."
Milly, who was resting her tired young body in a big rocker with the baby in her arms, asked: "Can we put it in a bottle or stand it in a cup? We haven't any candlestick."
"We can do better than that," he told her, "with a saucer turned upside down and covered with salt to look like snow."
Pussy, economically anxious, asked, "Can we eat the salt afterward?"
"Of course."
"Then, may we do it, Milly?"
"Darling, yes. How nice you always fix things, Mr. Tony!"
Long before he had known them he had fixed things—things which would have turned this poor room into an Aladdin's palace. There was that Christmas Eve at the Daltons'. It had been his idea to light the great hall with a thousand candles when they brought in the Yule log, and to throw perfumed fagots on the fire.
He came back to the round stove and the tiny tree. "I like to fix things," he said. "Once upon a time—"