For the first time Helders observed the tree. Then he looked in the woman's face. "I'll fetch out a boy for you if you say so," he said. "Then do," she bade. When the four were alone again, Mat sat looking at the floor. "Every headlong thing I've ever done I've gone headlong over," he said gloomily. Ellen took a coin from the clock shelf. "When Ben goes past to-morrow," she merely said, "you'll likely see him. Have him get some little candles for the tree." "My head hurts me," the old man gave out; "this ain't the place for a great noisy boy." Ellen put her hand on his shoulder almost maternally. "See, dear," she said, "then you'd be grandfather." "Hey?" he said; "not if it was adopted, I wouldn't." "Why, of course. That would make it ours--and yours. See," she cried, "you've been stringing popcorn for it already, and you didn't know!" "Be grandfather, would I?" said the old man. "Would I? Hey, king and country! Grandfather again." Ellen was moving about the kitchen lightly, with that manner, which eager interest brings, of leaving only half footprints. "Come on, mother," she said, "we must get the popcorn strung for sure, now!" The mother looked up at the tree. "Seems as if," she said, wrinkling her forehead, "I used to make pink tarleton stockings for your trees and fill 'em with the corn. I donno but I've got a little piece of pink tarleton somewheres in my bottom drawer...." ... Next night they had the bracket lamp and the lamp on the shelf and the table hand lamp all burning. The little tree was gay with the white corn and the coloured trifles. The kitchen seemed to be centering in the tree, as if the room had been concerned long enough with the doings of these grown folk and now were looking ahead to see who should come next. It was the high moment of immemorial expectancy, when those who are alive turn the head to see who shall come after. "What you been making all day, daddy?" Ellen asked, tense at every sound from without. Her father, neat in his best clothes, blew away a last plume of shaved wood and held out something. "I just whittled out a kind of a clothespin man," he explained. "I made one for you, once, and you liked it like everything. Mebbe a boy won't?" he added doubtfully. "Oh, but a boy will!" Ellen cried, and tied the doll above the blue paper soldier. "Hadn't they ought to be here pretty soon?" Matthew asked nervously. "Where's mother?" "She's watching from the front room window," Ellen answered. Once more Helders came stamping on the kitchen porch, but this time there was a patter of other steps, and Ellen caught open the door before he summoned. Helders stepped into the room, and with him was a little boy. "This one?" Ellen asked, her eyes alive with her eagerness. But Helders shook his head. "Mis' Bourne," he said, "I'm real dead sorry. They wa'n't but the one. Just the one we'd spoke for." "_One!_" Ellen said; "you said Orphan Asylum."