“But you said—” expostulated a small voice, the voice of little John Rumsey.
“I don’t care what I said—” a door closed violently.
A wail arose on the silence, the injured cry of Mary Wingate, the baby.
“Shut up, can’t you,” the fraternal tones of small John were heard requesting, “and come on.” Feet pattered along the hall as towards a rear stairway. “But she said afore we came to Grandpa’s, she did,” the voice of little John was reiterating as it grew fainter, “when she got time she’d tell me what Santy Claus looked like when she was little, afore his whiskers got white.”
Anne down-stairs laughed through merry yet fierce eyes. Babies belong to Christmas. Yet they could not come down here to her because of the decorations and the preparations which Florrie would not permit them to see beforehand.
Anne waxed hot in her soul, for babies belong to Christmas, or, rather, Christmas belongs to babies, and she loved babies. They are so honest, so unconquered, they look at the adult and its inconsistencies so uncompromisingly. So do boys, and she loved boys too. Babies and boys are the honestest things in life. Had Anne but known it, there was much of baby and of boy in her own nature; she attacked nobody’s convictions, only stood to her own. It gives one large liberty if one will be honest to self.
The footsteps of the babies, sent to some nether world, died away.
“Yet Christmas is meant for babies, or, rather, Christmas means A Baby.”
The girl rose. There were rooms opening around the hallway. It was at times such as this, with married sisters and brothers arriving with their families and laughter and jollity, that one loved it so, the space, and the beauty, and the means. At times such as Christmas one paused and thought about it all. The dear Daddy who had given it to them!
Anne crossed to one of the arched spaces and, pulling a curtain aside, went in. She left the hangings apart. The tree, glittering with scarlet and gold, and hung with delightful woolly lambs and Noah’s Arks and such like toys, would show joyously through the opening. And why not? Since it was her tree, for the tree had come to be her part and she had pottered around the whole happy, uninterrupted morning adorning it, since it was her tree it should stand unconcealed from first to last for its purpose—beauty, revel, festivity.