How different it all was from the great wide, still sky house!
But the star had never been so happy in all its life; for the little boy was there.
He stood apart from the other children, looking up at the star, with his hands clasped behind him, and he did not seem to care for the toys and the games.
At last it was all over. The lights were put out, the children went home, and the house grew still.
Then the ornaments on the tree began to talk among themselves.
"So that is all over," said a silver ball. "It was very gay this evening—the gayest Christmas I remember."
"Yes," said a glass bunch of grapes; "the best of it is over. Of course people will come to look at us for several days yet, but it won't be like this evening."
"And then I suppose we'll be laid away for another year," said a paper fairy. "Really it seems hardly worth while. Such a few days out of the year and then to be shut up in the dark box again. I almost wish I were a paper doll."
The bunch of grapes was wrong in saying that people would come to look at the Christmas-tree the next few days, for it stood neglected in the library and nobody came near it. Everybody in the house went about very quietly, with anxious faces; for the little boy was ill.
At last, one evening, a woman came into the room with a servant. The woman wore the cap and apron of a nurse.