‘Not one has come in yet,’ said I, over the Reverend’s shoulder. ‘They are just peering in at the door. I can see thirty faces, perhaps, with thirty mouths, and twice as many eyes, opened wide; but never a smile among the lot. How quiet they keep! But now trembling fingers are coming round the doorposts, and a boot or two has got beyond the threshold. The reluctant vanguard is being pressed forward by those behind. They are creeping in now at last. The crowd has divided, and they are edging up the room right and left, keeping their shoulders against the walls. And all the time every wide-open eye remains fixed upon the tree in awestruck delight. You hear that low whispering note? They are beginning to find their voices again, and the girls are at last venturing to let go one another’s hands. They are all in now, I think. At least the room could hardly hold another—’ And just as a failing mill-dam begins to ooze, then to trickle and spurt, and finally, in a moment gives way before the pressing tide, so the silence now broke down under the flood of child voices. Shouts and hurrahs, shrill peals of laughter, a hubbub of delighted commentary, made the rafters vibrate above us, and the window-glass tremble in its quarries. Before the din had so far moderated that I could get my tongue to work again in the old vicar’s service, Weaverly and his satellites were forging ahead with the first joyful business of the night. It all comes back to me now—as I sit alone and late by my workroom fire—clearer perhaps than when I was in the vortex of it all, with the happy voices ringing about me, and the toy-drums and trumpets, the mouth-organs and the whistle-pipes, each going to swell the already deafening chorus the moment it was cut from the tree and put into some eager, uplifted hand. I can see the great glittering pyramid of the tree slowly giving up its treasures, until it bears nothing but the queen-doll waving her star-tipped wand up among the flags and paper chains and holly garlands of the ceiling. I see Weaverly, poised on the top of the rickety ladder, gingerly dislodging her from her perch, while two overdressed and over-perfumed ladies hold the ladder firm below, and gaze up at him with fond and anxious eyes.