"You ask anybody who knows," continued Earl; "ask Judge Barker, ask--the
minister--"

"Oh!" cried the little girls; but the boy shook his head impatiently at
them.

"Yes," said he; "you just go and ask Mr. Fisher to-morrow, and you'll
see what he'll tell you. Why, look here"--Earl straightened himself and
stretched out an arm like an orator--"it's nothing more than
_reasonable_ that Christmas-trees grow wild with the presents all on
'em! What sense would there be in 'em if they didn't, I'd like to know?
They grow in different places, of course; but these around here grow
mostly on the mountain over there. They come up every spring, and they
all blossom out about Christmas-time, and folks go hunting for them to
give to the children. Father and Ben are over on the mountain to-day--"

"Oh, oh!" cried the little girls.

"I mean, I guess they are," amended Earl, trying to put his feet on the
boundary--line of truth. "I hope they'll find a full one."

Jenny Brown had a little, round, simple face; her thin brown hair was
combed back and braided tightly in one tiny braid tied with a bit of
shoe-string. She wore a nondescript gown, which nearly trailed behind,
and showed in front her little, coarsely-shod feet, which toed-in
helplessly. The gown was of a faded green color; it was scalloped and
bound around the bottom, and had some green ribbon-bows down the front.
It was, in fact, the discarded polonaise of a benevolent woman, who
aided the poor substantially but not tastefully.

Jenny Brown was eight, and small for her age--a strange, gentle,
ignorant little creature, never doubting the truth of what she was told,
which sorely tempted the other children to impose upon her. Standing
there in the school-room that stormy recess, in the midst of that group
of wiser, richer, mostly older girls, and that one handsome, mischievous
boy, she believed every word she heard.

This was her first term at school, and she had never before seen much of
other children. She had lived her eight years all alone at home with her
mother, and she had never been told about Christmas. Her mother had
other things to think about. She was a dull, spiritless, reticent
woman, who had lived through much trouble. She worked, doing washings
and cleanings, like a poor feeble machine that still moves but has no
interest in its motion. Sometimes the Browns had almost enough to eat,
at other times they half starved. It was half-starving time just then;