And then there was the little back streets, and the houses down on the flats, where there wouldn’t be any trees nor much of any Christmas. Of course, as Mis’ Sykes had said, the poor and the neglected are always with us—yet; but I didn’t want to pounce down on any of ’em with a bag of fruit and a box of animal crackers and set and watch ’em.
That wasn’t what I meant by having a Christmas with somebody.
“There’d ought to be some place—” I was beginning to think, when right along where I was, by the Market Square, I come on five or six children, kicking around in the snow. It was ’most dark, but I could just make ’em out: Eddie Newhaven, Arthur Mills, Lily Dorron, and two-three more.
“Hello, folks,” I says, “what you doing? Having a carnival?” Because it’s on the Market Square that carnivals and some little circuses and things that belongs to everybody is usually celebrated.
Little Arthur Mills spoke up. “No,” he says, “we was just playing we’s selling a load of Christmas trees.”
“Christmas trees,” I says. “Why, that’s so. This is where they always bring ’em to sell—big load of ’em for everybody, ain’t it?”
“They’re going to bring an awful big load here this time,” says Eddie Newhaven—“big enough for everybody in town to have one. Most of the fellows is going to have ’em—us and Ned Backus and the Cartwrights and Joe Tyrril and Lifty—all of ’em.”
“My,” I says, “what a lot of Christmas trees! Why, if they was set along by the curbstone here on Daphne Street,” I says, just to please the children and make a little talk with ’em, “why, the line of ’em would reach all up and down the town,” I says. “Wouldn’t that be fun?”
Little Lily claps her hands.
“Oh, yes,” she cries, “wouldn’t that be fun? With pop-corn strings all going from one to the other?”