“Yes,” Mother Margaret said sorrowfully, “he lives in the bed.”
“Say him a kiss,” the Dear Child said sleepily, and was carried back to her undressing.
So then it was arranged that when the maid was free, she should come bringing the Christmas tree round to the door of Mother Margaret’s flat.
“I could carry it,” Mother Margaret insisted.
But no, it must be, it seemed, exactly as they said. Mother Margaret must be there to have left the outer door ajar, and to amuse the little boy and keep his attention while the tree was put into the other room. She must pin a handkerchief on the open door so that there should be no mistake. And then on no account must she leave the little boy when she heard the tree set in the other room, or else he would hear, and wonder. Would she do all this, exactly as they told her to?
There was no thanking them. Perhaps Mother Margaret’s broken words, though, were better thanks than any perfect utterance.
She ran home, through a maze of lights and windows which danced and nodded and all but held out their hands. It is strange and sorrowful, at Christmas time, how much more, if you are going to have Christmas joy, the lights and windows seem to mean Christmas than if you are going to have none.
When she went in she saw that Tony had fallen asleep. His little pillow was still bunched, hard and round, on her own and on the folded quilt. And his face was still turned toward the Window Across.
She sat down to wait. She would not wake him. Until after the maid had been there with the tree, she would not even risk lighting the gas and working at the flowers. She sat almost an hour in the dusk. The outer door of the other room was standing faithfully ajar, with a handkerchief pinned to a panel, and the light there burning low. She could have been sure that she would hear the lightest step in the next room; and then, since Anthony was asleep, she meant to disregard their injunctions and slip to the door for a word of gratitude for the maid. But when she fancied that she heard a sound, and caught a shadow, and when she had hurried to the door, she stood mute and hardly breathing in her wonderment. No one was there—save indeed a presence. And the presence was the tree, standing neatly erect in its small, green box—and hung from top to base with popcorn and tinsel and ornaments which, even in that dim light, glittered like angels and like stars.
Mother Margaret went in and sat down on her little bed, and looked at the wonder of it. And before she knew that it might possibly happen to her she had hidden her face in her hands and was sobbing.