"It'll make a lot of litter," said her mother, but she brought the needle, for something to do.
"Hey, king and country," said her father; "I'd ought to have somebody here to shell it for me."
"Who you trimming up a tree for?" her mother demanded; "I thought they wasn't to be any in town this year."
"It ain't Christmas yet," Ellen said only. "I guess it won't do any hurt two days before."
While the two worked, Ellen went to the cupboard drawer, and from behind her pile of kitchen towels she drew out certain things: walnuts, wrapped in shining yeast tinsel and dangling from red yarn; wishbones tied with strips of bright cloth; a tiny box, made like a house, with rudely cut doors and windows; eggshells penciled as faces; a handful of peanut owls; a glass-stoppered bottle; a long necklace of buttonhole twist spools. A certain blue paper soldier doll that she had made was upstairs, but the other things she brought and fastened to the tree.
Her husband smoked and uneasily watched her. He saw somewhat within her plan, but he was not at home there. "If the boy had lived and had been up-chamber asleep now," he thought once, "it'd be something like, to go trimming up a tree. But this way—"
"What you leaving the whole front of the tree bare for?" her mother asked.
"The blue paper soldier goes there. I want it should see the blue paper soldier first thing...." Ellen said, and stopped abruptly.
"You talk like you was trimming the tree for somebody," her mother observed, aggrieved.
"Maybe something might look in the window—going by," Ellen said.