Father couldn't even take me to hear "Hark The Herald Angels" at the big church down the road that day, for someone sent for him in a hurry, and when he didn't come in for dinner, I wished it wasn't Christmas at all. Nancy Blake, who kept house for us and was most stingy over raisins, banged the kitchen door when I said I would make her some toffee, and I couldn't find anything else to do. I looked at all my books and pretended I was a soldier in a lonely fort; then I thought I would make up medicine myself, so's to save Father trouble when he came home. But I burnt my fingers with some nasty stuff in a green bottle, and it hurt a good deal. So I determined to go to meet him, and tell him what I'd done. [Illustration: "Nancy Blake."] The trams were running as usual, and as I had a penny left out of my pocket money--I hadn't spent it before as it had got stuck in some bulls' eyes--I took the car to the corner; then I jumped out and walked. There wasn't a sign of Father all down the road, and I remembered at last that he had said he must look in at the Hospital, which was in quite a different direction. I should have gone home then, if it hadn't been so dull with no one but Nancy Blake. "He won't be back until tea time anyhow," I thought, and I made up my mind to be a boy scout, and go and explore. It was a splendid day, and the roofs of the shops and houses glittered from millions of tiny points, just as you see on Christmas cards. I walked on and on, feeling gladder every moment, for my fingers had left off hurting me and I knew that I couldn't be far from the woods, which were just outside the town. I had been there once with Father, and it was lovely; so I hurried on as quickly as I could. When I got there they made me think of Fairyland. The trees were sparkling with the same frost-diamonds I had noticed on the roofs, and through the criss-cross branches above my head the sky was as blue as blue. A jolly little robin was twittering in a bush, enjoying himself no end; his bright red breast reminded me of the holly I had stuck over Father's mantelpiece, and I began to feel sad again. For it did seem hard lines that though Christmas was my birthday, no one, not even Father, had thought of it. "I wish that I hadn't been born on Christmas Day!" I said aloud, when I had reached the very heart of the wood, and I sat down to rest on the stump of a tree close to a little circle of bright green. It was here I had come that day with Father, and he had told me that though it was called a "Fairy Ring," it was really made by the spread of a very small fungus, or mushroom. I liked the idea of the fairy ring much better, and as I touched it with my foot I wished again that I wasn't a Christmas child. And then I heard a sigh.