“Oh, Mr. Dawes,” she says, “you mustn’t. The mothers won’t like it. He’s Lisbeth Note’s child. He’s——”
Abner Dawes looked down at her, round Chris’s white legs. All the brightness was gone out of Abner’s face now—but not the deepness nor the kindness. That stayed. “Do you mean,” he said grave, “that this child is evil?”
“No—no,” says Mis’ Sykes, stumbling some. “But I thought you’d ought to know—folks feeling as they do here——”
Abner turned and looked down the green, where the folks was gathered and the last sun was slanting. It was gold, and it was still, all except the folks chatting in groups. And up the street the half-past seven bell was ringing, like somebody saying something nice.
“Oh, God,” says Abner Dawes, kind of reverent and kind of like a sigh. “Here too. Here too.”
I’ll never forget his face when he turned to Mis’ Sykes. It wasn’t hard or cross or accusing—I guess he knew she was just at her crooked way of trying to be decent! But he made her know firm that if he led the children’s march, he’d lead it with Chris.—And it was so he done.
...Down the long green they come, side by side. And the other children fell in behind, and they circled out into a great orbit, with the Christmas tree in the middle of it. And folks begun to see who the man was at the head, and the word run round, and they all broke out and cheered and called out to him. Oh, it was a great minute. I like to think about it.
And then the murmur begun running round that it was Chris that was with him. And Mame Holcomb and Eppleby and Mis’ Toplady and me, watching from the booth, we knew how everybody was looking at everybody else to see what to think—like folks do. But they didn’t know—not yet.
Then something wonderful happened. Halfway round the Square, Abner noticed that Chris didn’t have any wand, same as the other children had. And so, when he was passing the big Cedar-of-Lebanon-looking Christmas tree, what did he do but break off a little branch and put that in Chris’s hand. And Chris come on a-waving it, a bough off that tree. I sort of sung all over when I saw that.
The children ended up round a platform, and up there went the folks that had been picked out to lead the singing. And as they went they sung: