“Well, wouldn’t you think they’d fall all over themselves to come? Ought not to take any making, ought it? How’s that? Isn’t that a peach of a tree?” added Dirk, throwing open the music room door with a flourish. “I never, never saw such a tree--except growing,” cried Beth in a rapture, but tempering her statement to the exact truth. “Dirk, let’s play we are Druids, going to be converted on Christmas, but Druids now. And let’s pay it homage. Big evergreen trees always make me want to worship them!” “How would you do it, play Druid?” asked Dirk, interested, but at sea. “I don’t know; let’s sing ‘O Tannenbaum’!” suggested Beth. So taking hands they sang the beautiful German song to the pine tree, though Dirk could not carry a tune well, and Beth’s German went no farther than the first stanza, which she had once learned in school. CHAPTER XIII “HOLLY AND JOLLY RHYME” Christmas eve was a busy one. Other years the young Cortlandts’ tree had been trimmed for them, but this year the fact that the tree was intended to give poor children pleasure seemed to alter every one’s attitude toward it. Beth took it for granted that she and her cousins were to trim the tree themselves, and it so fell out. Beth was given authority over it, as it was to be her party, and, after she got over being afraid to decide any question put to her lest she should decide wrong and spoil the tree, she enjoyed her dignity just as much as she enjoyed the glittering ornaments of many sizes, colors and clever designs which had been ordered in dozens for her tree. She asked to have Tim from the stable “to do the ladder part,” as she put it. Tim was sent for and came willingly, glad to have a chance to do something for Beth that was not in his regular line of employment, and which therefore seemed particularly a personal service to her. Tim was as full of quips and quiddities as his race usually is and, while the trimming of the tree progressed, got his young employers into gales of laughter with his nonsense, his wit and pranks. At last, when he danced a breakdown on the top rung of the ladder--or pretended to--whistling an Irish air, with his face a network of laughing wrinkles, the children laughed till they begged Tim to stop, in mercy to their aching sides and weakened knees. “I never thought it could be so much fun, just getting a tree trimmed for a Christmas tree,” sighed Beth. “I don’t wonder holly and jolly rhyme!” “So does melancholy,” suggested Natalie. “Melancholy doesn’t rhyme with holly all the way through; it doesn’t rhyme in meaning, but jolly does. Melancholy rhymes only at the very end--when it stops being melancholy!” cried Beth, with an inspiration, much pleased with her own cleverness in making this discovery. “Bright Beth!” applauded Alys. Beth felt as though she hardly knew Alys to-day, she was so gay and merry, with all her stiff little ways gone, frolicking like the big-little girl she really was.