When the children began to carry home Christmas talk, Kate opened
her mouth to say the things that had been said to her as a child;
then tightly closed it. She began getting up earlier, sitting up
later, knitting feverishly. Luckily the merchant could sell all
she could furnish. As the time drew nearer, she gathered from the
talk of the children what was the deepest desire of their hearts.
One day a heavy wind driving ice-coated trees in the back yard
broke quite a large limb from a cherry tree. Kate dragged it into
the woodhouse to make firewood. She leaned it against the wall to
wait until the ice melted, and as it stood there in its silvery
coat, she thought how like a small tree the branch was shaped, and
how pretty it looked. After the children had gone to school the
next day she shaped it with the hatchet and saw, and fastened it
in a small box. This she carried to her bedroom and locked the
door. She had not much idea what she was going to do, but she
kept thinking. Soon she found enough time to wrap every branch
carefully with the red tissue paper her red knitting wool came in,
and to cover the box smoothly. Then she thought of the country
Christmas trees she had seen decorated with popcorn and
cranberries. She popped the corn at night and the following day
made a trip up the ravine, where she gathered all the bittersweet
berries, swamp holly, and wild rose seed heads she could find.
She strung the corn on fine cotton cord putting a rose seed pod
between each grain, then used the bittersweet berries to terminate
the blunt ends of the branches, and climb up the trunk. By the
time she had finished this she was really interested. She
achieved a gold star for the top from a box lid and a piece of
gilt paper Polly had carried home from school. With yarn ends and
mosquito netting, she whipped up a few little mittens, stockings,
and bags. She cracked nuts from their fall store and melting a
little sugar stirred in the kernels until they were covered with a
sweet, white glaze. Then she made some hard candy, and some fancy
cookies with a few sticks of striped candy cut in circles and
dotted on the top. She polished red, yellow, and green apples and
set them under the tree.
When she made her final trip to Hartley before Christmas the
spirit of the day was in the air. She breathed so much of it that
she paid a dollar and a half for a stout sled and ten cents for a
dozen little red candles, five each for two oranges, and fifteen
each for two pretty little books, then after long hesitation added
a doll for Polly. She felt that she should not have done this,
and said so, to herself; but knew if she had it to do over, she
would do the same thing again. She shook her shoulders and took
the first step toward regaining her old self-confidence.