“Do you know what?” she says. “If that tree wasn’t in the middle there, we could have a great big evening bon-fire, with everybody around it.”
“So we could. Wouldn’t that be nice?” says everybody—only me. Because the tree they meant was the Christmas tree, the big evergreen, the living Christmas tree that had stood there in the square, all lit, that last Christmas Eve, with all of us singing round it.
“I can’t ever think of that being in anybody’s way,” I says, and everybody says, “Perhaps not,” and we went on tearing off the lengths of blazing red calico. And me, I set there thinking about what they’d said.
I remember I was still thinking about it, and Mis’ Sykes and I were standing up together measuring off the breadths, when the front door opened. And there was standing Chris, Lisbeth’s little boy. Him and I’d got to be awful good friends almost from the first. He come over to my house quite a lot, and kneeled on a chair side of the table when I was doing my baking, and he brought me in pans of chips. And no little fellow whatever was ever sweeter.
“Hello, dear,” I says now. “Come in, won’t you?”
He stood quiet, eying us. And Mis’ Sykes down she drops the cloth and made a dive for him.
“You darling!” says she—her emphasis coming out in bunches, the way some women’s does when they talk to children. “You darling! Whose little boy are you?”
He looked at her, shy and sweet. “I’m my mamma’s little boy,” he says, ready. “But my papa, he didn’t come—not yet.”
I looked over to Mis’ Sykes, squatting with both arms around the baby. “He’s Lisbeth’s little boy,” I says. “Ain’t he d-e-a-r?”—I spells it.
Mis’ Sykes-drew back, like the little fellow had hit at her. “Mercy!” she says, only—and got up, and went on tearing cloth.