"What will they do to us for having the tree? I wish we hadn't it," regretted Rupert; while Lucy clung to her mother's gown and shrieked with all her strength, "It's Indians!"
Pale and white and still, ready to meet her fate, stood Mrs. Olcott, until, out of the knocking and the tapping at her door, her heart caught a sound. It was a voice calling, "Rachel! Rachel! Rachel!"
"Unbar the door!" she cried back to her boys; "it's your father calling!" Down came the blankets; up went the curtain; open flew the door, and in walked Captain Olcott, followed by every man and woman in Plymouth who had heard at break of day the glorious news that the expected ship had arrived at Boston, and with it the long lost Captain Olcott. For an instant nothing was thought of except the joyous welcoming of the Captain in his new home.
"What's this? What is it? What does this mean?" was asked again and again, when the first excitement was passed, as the tall young pine stood aloft, its candles ablaze, its gifts still hanging.
"It's welcome home to father!" said Lucy, her only thought to screen her mother.
"No, child, no!" sternly spoke Mrs. Olcott. "Tell the truth!"
"It's—a—Christmas-tree!" faltered poor Lucy.
One and another and another, Pilgrims and Puritans all, drew near with faces stern and forbidding, and gazed and gazed, until one and another and yet another softened slowly into a smile as little Roger's piping voice sung out:
"She made it for me, mother did. But you may have it now, and all the pretty things that are on it, too, because you've brought my father back again; if mother will let you," he added.
Neither Pilgrim nor Puritan frowned at the gift. One man, the sternest there, broke off a little twig and said: