The Boy-Next-Door, when he lifted his head, had a funny feeling as if he wanted to cry, and yet it was a lovely feeling, all warm and comfortable.
For breakfast they each had a great baked apple, and great slices of sweet bread and butter, and great glasses of milk, and as soon as they had finished, away they went, out of the door and down into the wood back of the house, and when they were deep in the wood, the Small Girl’s father took out of his pocket a little flute and began to play, and he played thin piping tunes that went flitting around among the trees, and the Small Girl hummed the tunes, and her mother hummed the tunes until it sounded like singing bees, and their feet fairly danced, and the boy found himself humming and dancing with them.
Then suddenly the piping ceased, and a hush fell over the wood. It was so still that they could almost hear each other breathe—so still that when a light flamed suddenly in that open space it burned without a flicker.
The light came from a red candle that was set in the top of a small living tree. It was the only light on the tree, but it showed the snowy balls, and the small red fairies whose coats had silver buttons.
“It’s our tree, my darling,” he heard the Small Girl’s mother saying.
Suddenly it seemed to the boy that his heart would burst in his breast.
He wanted some one to speak to him like that. The Small Girl sat high on her father’s shoulder, and her father held her mother’s hand. It was like a chain of gold, their holding hands like that and loving each other——
The boy reached out and touched the woman’s hand. She looked down at him and drew him close. He felt warmed and comforted. The red candle burning there in the darkness was like some sacred fire of friendship. He wished that it would never go out, that he might stand there watching it, with his small cold hand in the clasp of the Small Girl’s mother.
It was late when the Boy-Next-Door got back to his own big house. But he had not been missed. Everybody was up, and everybody was angry. The Daughter-in-Law had declared the night before that she would not stay another day beneath that roof, and off she had gone with her young husband, and her little girl, who was to have had the pink doll on the tree.
“And good riddance,” said the Next-Door-Neighbor.