t--if you must!"

My father was like a wild man for joy! He forgot all about everything
except "twenty years ago."

We had to put the two Mr. Derry Willards to bed in the parlor. There was
no other room. They insisted on sleeping with the Christmas tree. They
had camped under every kind of branch and twig in the world, they said.
But _never_ had they camped under a Christmas tree.

Father talked and talked and talked! Derry Willard's father talked and
talked and talked! It was about college! It was about girls! It was
about boys! It was about all sorts of pranks! Not any of it was about
studies! Mother sat and laughed at them!

Rosalee and young Derry Willard sat and looked at each other. Carol and
I played checkers. Everybody forgot us. I don't know who put me to bed.

When we came down-stairs the next morning and went into the parlor to
see the Christmas tree we _screamed_!

Every single weeney-teeny branch of it had sprouted tinsel tassels!
There were tinsel stars all over it! Red candles were blazing! Glass
icicles glistened! There were candy canes! There were tin trumpets!
Little white-paper presents stuck out everywhere through the branches!
Big white presents piled like a snowdrift all around the base of the
tree!

Young Derry Willard's father seemed to be still laughing. He rubbed his
hands together.

"Excuse me, good people," he laughed, "for taking such liberties with
your tree! But it's twenty years since I've had a chance to take a real
whack at a Christmas tree! Palms, of course, are all right, and banana
groves aren't half bad! But when it comes to real landscape effect--give
me a Christmas tree in a New England parlor!"

"Palms?" we gasped. "Banana-trees?"

Young Derry Willard distributed the presents.

For my father there were boxes and boxes of cigars! And an order on some
Dutch importing house for five hundred _green_ tulips! Father almost
sw--ooned.

For mother there was a little gold chain with a single pearl in it! And
a box of oranges as big as a chicken-coop!

I got four dolls! And a paint-box! One of the dolls was jet-black. She
was funny. When you squeaked her stomach she grinned her mouth and said,
"Oh, lor', child!"

Rosalee had a white crepe shawl all fringes and gay-colored birds of
paradise! Rosalee had a fan made out of ivory and gold. Rosalee had a
gold basket full of candied violets. Rosalee had a silver hand-mirror
carved all round the edge with grasses and lilies like