"It would have been pretty hard," said my mother, "not to have shone a--little! To brood a baby forest in one's arms--if only for a single day--? Think of the experience!" Even at the very thought of it she began to _shine_ all over again! "Funny little fluff o' green," she laughed, "no fatter than a fern!" Her voice went suddenly all wabbly like a preacher's. "But, oh, the glory of it!" she said. "The potential majesty! Great sweeping branches--! Nests for birds, shade for lovers, masts for ships to plow the great world's waters--timbers perhaps for cathedrals! O--h," shivered my mother. "It certainly gave one a very queer feeling! No woman surely in the whole wide world--except the Mother of the Little Christ--ever felt so astonished to think what she had in her lap!" Young Derry Willard looked just a little bit nervous. "Oh, but of course mother couldn't begin all at once to raise cathedrals!" I hastened to explain. "So she started in raising Christmas presents instead. We raise all our own Christmas presents! And just as soon as Rosalee and I are married we're going to begin right away to raise our children's Christmas presents too! Heaps for everybody, even if there is a hundred! Carol, of course, won't marry because he can't propose! Ladies don't like written proposals, father says! Ladies----" Young Derry Willard asked if he might smoke. He smoked cigarets. He took them from a gold-looking case. They smelled very romantic. Everything about him smelled very romantic. His hair was black. His eyes were black. He looked as tho he could cut your throat without flinching if you were faithless to him. It was beautiful. I left the table as soon as I could. I went and got my best story-book. I was perfectly right. He looked _exactly_ like the picture of the Fairy Prince on the front page of the book. There were heaps of other pictures, of course. But only one picture of a Fairy Prince. I looked in the glass. I looked just exactly the way I did before dinner. It made me feel queer. Rosalee didn't look at all the way she looked before dinner. It made me feel _very_ queer.