“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?” “It would be a grand sight,” says I, looking down across the Market Square. There, hanging all gold and quiet, like it didn’t think it amounted to much, right over the big cedar-of-Lebanon-looking tree in the Square, was the moon, crooked to a horn. “Once,” says Eddie Newhaven, “when they was selling the Christmas trees here, they kept right on selling ’em after dark. And they stood ’em around here and put a little light in each one. It was awful nice. Wouldn’t it be nice if they’d do that all over the Square some time!” “It would be a grand sight,” says I again, “but one that the folks in this town would never have time for....” While I spoke I was looking down across Market Square again toward the moon hanging over the cedar-of-Lebanon-looking tree. “There’s a pretty good-looking tree there already,” I says idle. “What a grand thing it would be lit up,” says I, for not much of any reason--only to keep the talk going with the children. Then something went through me from my head to my feet. “Why not light it some time?” I says. The children set up a little shout--part because they liked it, part because they thought such a thing could never be. I laughed with ’em, and I went on up the street--but all the time something in me kept on saying something, all hurried and as if it meant it. And little ends of ideas, and little jagged edges of other ideas, and plans part raveled out that you thought you could knit up again, and long, sharp motions, a little something like light, kept going through my head and going through it. Down to the next corner I met Ben Cory, that keeps the livery-stable and sings bass to nearly everybody’s funeral and to other public occasions. “Ben,” I says excited, though I hadn’t thought anything about this till that minute, “Ben--you getting up any Christmas Eve Christmas carols to sing this year?”