* * * * *
At five o'clock that evening the sound of Gabriel's accordeon went
echoing up and down the garden, and thirty little children were
marching to its music along the paths, between the rows of blooming
laurel. Joyce understood, now, why the room where the Christmas tree
stood had been kept so carefully locked. For two days that room had been
empty and the tree had been standing in Monsieur Ciseaux's parlor.
Cousin Kate and madame and Berthe and Marie and Gabriel had all been
over there, busily at work, and neither she nor Jules had suspected what
was going on down-stairs.
Now she marched with the others, out of the garden and across the road,
keeping time to the music of the wheezy old accordion that Gabriel
played so proudly. Surely every soul, in all that long procession filing
through the gate of the giant scissors, belonged to the kingdom of
loving hearts and gentle hands; for they were all children who passed
through, or else mothers who carried in their arms the little ones who,
but for these faithful arms, must have missed this Noel fete.
Jules had been carried down-stairs and laid on a couch in the corner of
the room where he could see the tree to its best advantage. Beside him
sat his great-aunt, Desire, dressed in a satin gown of silvery gray that
had been her mother's, and looking as if she had just stepped out from
the frame of the portrait up-stairs.
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