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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42919 ***
+
+Angel Unawares
+
+
+A Story of Christmas Eve
+
+
+
+BY
+
+
+C. N. and A. M. WILLIAMSON
+
+
+
+HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
+
+
+NEW YORK AND LONDON
+
+
+
+
+Angel Unawares
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1916, by Harper & Brothers
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+Published October, 1916
+
+
+
+ANGEL UNAWARES
+
+
+
+IF Angel Odell hadn't had a French nursery governess, and if that
+French governess hadn't suddenly recognized her lost lover in a
+wounded French sergeant on the sea-front, the Valois story would
+have been a Christmas tragedy instead of--what it turned out to be.
+This was strange, because neither the little American girl nor her
+governess nor her governess's lover had ever heard of the Valois
+family, nor had the Valois family heard of them. But most things
+that happen are strange, if seen from every point of view.
+
+At first, when Mademoiselle Rose gave a little scream and rushed
+away from her charge to a good-looking soldier with his arm in a
+sling, Angel stood still, extremely interested. Her mother did not
+know about the lost lover. One need not tell all one's heart
+secrets to one's employer on being engaged at a Paris agency! But
+Mademoiselle cried in the night sometimes and gazed at a
+photograph, so Angel (whose bed was in the same room) had asked
+questions safer to answer than leave unanswered. When she saw the
+meeting she quickly put two and two together in her intelligent,
+seven-year-old brain.
+
+"That's Claude," said the child to herself. "So he's alive, after
+all. My goodness _me!_ what a nice Christmas present for
+Mademoiselle! I'm glad it's after lunch instead of before, though,
+for I _was_ hungry, and I expect she'll want to talk to him a long
+time. I suppose she'll introduce him to me and we'll all three walk
+up and down."
+
+Instead of walking, however, Mademoiselle and her Christmas present
+sat down on one of the seats placed at regular intervals along the
+Mentone sea front. Apparently Mademoiselle forgot Angel's
+existence, and "Claude" had not observed it. The child stood
+neglected until she was tired and very bored. Then, too polite to
+interrupt (a succession of nursery governesses of several nations
+had instructed her never to interrupt), she decided to go home.
+
+"Home" was a hotel; and Mrs. Odell, Angel, and Mademoiselle had
+arrived only the day before from Paris, Mademoiselle had been in
+Mentone before (that was one reason for engaging her), but Angel
+and her mother never had. Angel's father was one of several
+brilliant young men in the American Embassy, where he was well
+content for himself, but found the idea of bombs on heads he loved
+bad for his nerves; accordingly, wife and child had been sent to
+safety in the south of France, somewhat against the former's will.
+At the moment, Elinor Odell was getting off letters, meaning to go
+out later and buy Christmas toys. So it happened that, just as
+Angel was wondering which turn to take, Angel's mother was writing:
+"Mademoiselle is young and pretty, but as trustworthy as if she
+were a _hundred_. She never loses sight of the Angel-Imp for an
+instant."
+
+The Angel-Imp in question wished that streets going inland from the
+Promenade du Midi didn't look so much alike. They all seemed to
+have rivers or gardens running up the middle, and pointed blue
+mountains at the back, except the ones farther along, where the
+shops were. Angel remembered a bridge. She thought the right turn
+was near. Yes, that must be the street! You walked along that for a
+while, and then you had to turn again. You passed villas with
+gardens.
+
+By and by Angel forgot to look for landmarks; there were so many
+things which amused her: children riding on donkeys led by brown
+old women in funny hats like toadstools; a flock of very white
+sheep with long, silky hair, being driven by a fur-coated boy into
+an olive wood; bands of soldiers black as jet, wearing queer red
+caps on their woolly heads. It was all so interesting and exciting
+that when Angel remembered herself she was not quite sure she knew
+where she was.
+
+This would have been rather frightening if the realization
+hadn't come just outside the half-open gates of a garden lovely
+as fairy-land. It had been winter in Paris. Here it was summer;
+yet to-morrow was going to be Christmas. Angel could not understand.
+The thing was like a dream, and held her fascinated. She was an
+imaginative child, and it thrilled her to say to herself, "Maybe
+this garden is fairyland!" Although, of course, the common-sense
+side of her answered, "Pooh! You know very well, you silly, there's
+no such place."
+
+Anyhow, the garden _looked_ like fairyland. It was exactly what
+fairyland ought to be; and even mother (who was a grown-up, though
+father often called her "child") said that no really nice person
+would swear there weren't any fairies in the world.
+
+Hundreds and maybe thousands of orange and lemon trees made a
+sparkling green roof for a carpet of purply-blue violets, white
+carnations, and roses of every shade from palest coral pink to
+deepest crimson. The flowers grew in the midst of young grass which
+the sun, shining through tree-branches, lit with the vivid green of
+emeralds. It shone also on the countless globes of the oranges and
+lemons, making them glow like lighted lamps of pale topaz and
+transparent red-gold among the dark-green leaves.
+
+"Fairy Christmas trees!" thought Angel Odell. And it seemed to her
+that the invisible hand of an equally invisible fairy clutched her
+dress and began to pull her through the open gateway. After all,
+why should the gates be open if people were not expected to walk
+into the garden?
+
+"I don't care. I _will_ go in, whether it's fairyland or not,"
+Angel decided.
+
+Nothing else seemed important except the garden and what might
+happen to her there when she had once got past the gates. Not
+Mademoiselle Rose, not her Claude, not going home to the hotel, and
+not even seeing mother.
+
+Angel let the unseen hand guide her through the gates, and on the
+other side the mysterious beauty of the garden was more thrilling
+than ever, because it was all around her and under her feet and
+over her head. The road looked as if no wagons ever went over it,
+though it was wide enough for them to pass. It was golden-brown in
+patches, but was overgrown with a film of green, almost like lace.
+The orange-trees were planted so that they made long, straight
+aisles shut in at the far end with a misty curtain of blue. Down
+each aisle a narrow, gold-brown path ran between the flowers; and,
+fascinated, the child from another land began slowly to follow one
+of the ways. A vague fancy stole through her mind that the silence
+and heavy perfume of lemon blossoms were, somehow, parts of each
+other. It was as if she were about to find out a wonderful secret;
+and, looking up through the green net to a sky of blue, shot with
+rose, she wandered on with a sense of waiting.
+
+Not only did little paths run the length of those long, straight
+aisles, but crossed from one aisle into another, until Angel lost
+count, as from violets she visited roses, and from roses passed to
+carnations and stocks. Beyond the arbor of orange- and lemon-trees
+showered a golden rain of mimosas, and close by clustered a grove
+of palms, with tall-trunked, date-laden giants rearing their crests
+in the middle of the group, and in an outer ring, low-plumed dwarfs
+whose feathered branches drooped to earth.
+
+Angel Odell associated palms with large pots in halls and
+conservatories. She had not known until to-day that they could grow
+out of doors. Staring at the grove in wonder, she caught sight of
+something red which showed between the trailing fronds of a palm
+like a green-domed tent. And mixed in with the something red was
+something white that moved. Almost before she knew what she was
+doing, Angel had stooped down and crept beneath the drapery of
+rustling plumes.
+
+The "red thing" was an old knitted shawl, spread over a wooden
+seat of the right height for a child; and the "white thing" was a
+half-Persian kitten. It was sitting on the shawl, too earnestly
+ironing its silver ruff with a pink tongue to feel the slightest
+concern in the intrusion of a stranger.
+
+"Oh, you lovely catkin!" exclaimed Angel. Cautiously she subsided
+on to the end of the wooden seat, and, slipping off her gray
+mittens, began to smooth the fluffy back. On her thumb glittered a
+large diamond in a ring of her mother's she had picked up on the
+dressing-table and forgotten to take off. Seeing that the object of
+her attentions did not openly object to them, and, indeed, appeared
+hypnotized by the flashing stone, she transferred the white ball of
+fur from the red shawl to her gray-corduroy lap. It was velvet
+corduroy, and even more delightful to sit on than knitted wool. The
+kitten submitted in a dignified, aloof manner to the child's
+caresses, and Angel sat rigidly still, hardly daring to breathe
+lest the haughty creature should take offense.
+
+It was just then that a woman suddenly appeared from, it seemed,
+nowhere in particular. Angel's heart gave a jump. What if the
+woman--just a mere woman, not a fairy at all--owned the garden, and
+should scold the little stranger girl for coming in, sitting down,
+and playing with her kitten?
+
+"Maybe if I don't move or make any noise she'll go away and won't
+see me," the child thought.
+
+To her no grown-up person could be really young, but _for_ a
+grown-up this woman looked youngish, about as young as mother.
+Mother had been twenty-eight on her last birthday, and looked
+almost like a little girl before she was dressed in the morning,
+with clouds of dark hair falling around her small, white face and
+shading her big, blue eyes.
+
+This woman had dark hair, too, but Angel could not see what color
+her eyes were. She was looking down. Her eyelashes were long and
+black, like mother's, yet she was not like mother in any other way.
+Mother's face was rather round, and nearly always smiling and
+happy. This woman's face, though pretty--yes, Angel thought it
+pretty, and, like a picture of the Madonna Mademoiselle had--was
+very grave and sad. That was strange, in this beautiful garden full
+of flowers and sunshine; like a wrong note in music, if Angel
+mischievously struck a key while mother was playing something gay
+and sweet. Besides, the woman had on a dress that wasn't pretty at
+all, or like the dresses mother wore. It was brown, and plain,
+without any trimming, almost like a servant's dress. Angel wished
+she would go away, but she didn't; she stooped down and began to do
+two very queer things. Both were queer for a woman to do, and one
+was dreadful.
+
+The first thing--the thing that was only queer--was to cover up a
+bed of very delicate flowers, whose name Angel had never heard,
+with gray stuff such as kitchen towels are made of, only much
+thicker and rougher. The woman had been carrying a large bundle of
+this in her arms, and in covering the bed she supported the gray
+stuff on sticks higher than the flowers.
+
+The other queer thing she did, which was dreadful as well as queer,
+was to cry. It seemed awful to Angel that a grown-up woman should
+cry--cry in a beautiful garden, where she thought she was alone.
+And on Christmas Eve! Angel felt quite sick. Her throat filled as
+if she, too, were going to cry. It was all she could do not to give
+the kitten a nervous squeeze. She was seized with a wild wish to
+rush out and try to comfort the woman; but instinct even more than
+childish shyness held her back. Angel knew that, if she had stolen
+away to cry where she hoped not to be seen, she would hate to have
+a strange person jump out and surprise her. Probably she would hate
+it even more if she were a grown-up.
+
+The child hidden under the palm-tree and the woman outside were so
+near to each other that the child could hear the woman give choking
+sobs which it seemed as if she tried to swallow. Perhaps she didn't
+try hard enough at first, for the sobs, instead of stopping, came
+faster and harder, and Angel's large, horrified eyes saw tears run
+down the woman's face and splash on to the flowers. Suddenly,
+however, the gasping ceased. The woman let fall an end of the
+bagging not yet draped over the sticks, and sprang to her feet with
+the quick grace of a frightened fawn. Not that Angel definitely
+thought of any such simile, but away in the back of her mind dimly
+materialized the picture of a deer she had once seen rise up among
+the tall grasses in a public park.
+
+The young woman fumbled in the pocket of her shabby brown dress and
+found a handkerchief. She hurriedly dabbed her eyes, and rubbed her
+cheeks hard, as if to make them so red that the redness of her
+eyelids might not be noticed.
+
+"She must have heard some noise," thought Angel; and as the thought
+formed she, too, heard what the woman had heard--the pat-pat of
+footsteps coming lightly and quickly across grass. Then from under
+the green-and-gold mimosas a man appeared--a tall, youngish man,
+very thin and pale, carrying a thing which seemed a mysterious
+object for a man to carry in his arms; but then, everything about
+this fairy garden was mysterious and puzzling.
+
+Heavily leaning against the man's shoulder and hanging down over
+his back was a pine-tree, small for a pine-tree, but large for a
+person to carry. He came on with his head bent, and at first did
+not see the woman, so--apparently--he was not in search of her. But
+he limped as he walked, and the woman cried out sharply:
+
+"Oh, Paul, you've hurt yourself! You've had a fall!"
+
+He looked up, surprised. "Why, dear one, I didn't know you were
+here," he said. "I did slip on a stone coming down the mountain.
+But it's nothing. I've wrenched my ankle a little, that's all."
+
+"And you had that long, hard walk afterward!" the woman exclaimed.
+"My poor Paul! You out of bed only three days ago. It's too cruel.
+Everything goes against us."
+
+"Everything?" He caught her up and a look of alarm or anxiety
+chased away the smile he had put on to reassure her. "Has bad news
+come, then? But yes--you needn't answer. I know it has. I wish I
+hadn't said you might open the avocat's letter! You've been crying,
+Suze."
+
+The woman spoke English as if it were her own language, but
+the man had an accent which showed that he was not born to it.
+Even Angel--listening half against her will--noticed that, almost
+unconsciously. But she had been forced to think a great deal about
+"accent" in the last few months since she had come to live in Paris
+and talk with a French governess. She had picked up French quickly,
+as children do, but was always having the word "accent, accent!"
+drummed into her head.
+
+"I couldn't help crying a little," said Suze. "I didn't mean to let
+you know. I thought you'd be longer away."
+
+"You mustn't try to hide your feelings from me, dear," the man
+said. "Troubles will be lighter if you let me bear them with you."
+
+"But you--you're always trying to cheer me up, no matter what's
+happened," the woman reminded him, almost reproachfully. Angel
+realized that they must be husband and wife. They were about the
+right age for each other, she thought; and even a child could see
+by the look in their eyes that they loved one another dearly. "You
+pretend now that you're not hurt, but you are; you're suffering--
+your face shows it. Ah! the dear face, so white, so patient! I
+hoped I should have good news for you when you came back. I hoped
+that in spite of everything we might have a little peace, a little
+happiness, just enough to last us over Christmas, if no more. But
+what's the use of our hoping? Always comes another blow!" Her sobs
+broke out again. Tears poured over her cheeks.
+
+The man stooped and laid the little pine-tree on the grass, letting
+it down carefully, not to break the branches. Then he took his wife
+in his arms and pressed her head against his shoulder. They looked
+two pathetic figures in their plain, rather shabby clothes,
+clinging together in the garden where everything save themselves
+was singing with joy of life and beauty.
+
+"You mustn't give way like this, Suze," said the man, gently.
+"Think of the children."
+
+"I know," she sobbed, "I hate myself for breaking down. I ought to
+think of _you_ as well as the children, though you'd never tell me
+to do that. You never think of yourself, except of what you can do
+for me and them. This Christmas tree you've brought! Even if you'd
+been well, it would have been a big adventure, toiling up into the
+mountains, tired after a day's work in the garden; looking for the
+right tree, sure to grow in the worst place to get at; cutting it
+down with an ax that's no more than a toy, and then bringing the
+thing home on your back! Why, it would be hard labor for a strong
+man---"
+
+"Love gives strength," he soothed her, stroking her ruffled dark
+hair; and Angel thought that she had never seen a man's hand so
+thin. "I've done myself no harm, truly, dear one. I may not be very
+strong yet, but I'm getting on. Last week you said you were
+thankful, whatever happened, to have me out of bed---"
+
+"You oughtn't to have been out!" Suze broke in, rebelliously. "If
+we weren't so poor---"
+
+"Never mind. It did me no real harm. I've had no relapse. And we've
+got each other and the children. There are rich people who'd change
+with us. Let's forget the bad news and the other troubles till
+after Christmas---"
+
+"How _can_ we forget being hungry?"
+
+"By eating an orange!" The man tried to laugh. "We've got plenty of
+those."
+
+"Just now we have. But if we're turned out?"
+
+"We must do as Adam and Eve did when they were turned out of Eden.
+They found work, I suppose. So shall we. Though God knows it almost
+kills me to think of what I've brought on you and the babies."
+
+"Don't say 'you'! You've never brought anything but happiness to us
+or anybody."
+
+"I'm afraid--I've thought, sometimes--I had no right to marry you."
+
+"Why, life wouldn't have been life for me without you, Paul!"
+
+"Or for me without you, Suze."
+
+"And all we've gone through has only drawn us closer together. But
+this last blow is different. It's too cruel! . . . That Judas of a
+man, Siegel, making us believe he was our good friend and he doing
+you a great kindness selling you this garden and the business so
+cheap! Think, Paul, how he described it, only last August, just
+after I found you in Antwerp when you were getting well after your
+wound. Would one _believe_ a man could make up his mind to ruin
+another who'd nearly given his life for his country? Plan and plan
+to rob him of his savings, pretending all the time to open the
+gates of Paradise---"
+
+"Well, in one way this _is_ Paradise," said Paul, lifting his eyes
+to the sky which showered sunset roses through silver branches of
+olives, gold branches of mimosas.
+
+"Paradise with the serpent of deceit in it!" cried Suze. "The Nice
+lawyer says in his letter--_I'm_ not sorry you let me open it--that
+Siegel drew up the deeds so cleverly it's almost impossible to
+convict him of swindling. Monsieur Vignal thinks no business man
+would lend money on the chance of what you might get back from your
+deposit with Siegel if you sued him for false pretenses. And yet,
+in the next sentence, Vignal advises you to stand up against Siegel
+trying to turn you out because you can't and won't and oughtn't to
+pay the rest. He says, 'hold on to the place if you possibly can,
+and make Siegel attack you in the courts, so you can have a chance
+of bringing out the real facts and perhaps proving that you're an
+injured man.' He thinks if you could stop here instead of
+submitting to be turned out, the courts would very likely decide
+that you'd paid Siegel already as much as the business is worth,
+and the place would be accounted ours. Isn't that a mockery, when
+Monsieur Vignal knows as well as we do we haven't a penny to live
+on--that the Riviera's empty these war days, that nobody buys our
+plants, and you can't fill orders from over the Swiss or Italian
+frontiers, even if you could get _half_ as many as Siegel's lying
+books showed?"
+
+"Vignal means well," said the man. "It's good of him to advise me
+without asking for pay."
+
+"No more than a Frenchman ought to do for a Belgian!" the woman
+retorted. "The refugees who ask for charity get all the sympathy.
+We, who ask only for work--"
+
+"We have received kindness, too. Don't let's doubt God's goodness
+on the eve of Christmas--the day when He gave His only Son for us
+all, my Suze! . . . 'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.'
+Well, there's _no_ evil in this day--or to-morrow. There sha'n't
+be. Let's trust; let's not stop hoping, for not to hope is death.
+You go to the children, dearest, now, and I'll slip around the back
+way with this tree, so they sha'n't see it till it's lighted and
+decorated to-night---"
+
+"Lighted and decorated!" Suze echoed, with a laugh that came
+trembling out of tears.
+
+"Yes," insisted Paul, "trust me. Your husband isn't an artist for
+nothing! Come along. No more time for repining if the tree's to be
+ready before the children's bedtime. I tell you, it will be a great
+work!"
+
+"You're the most wonderful man in the world!" breathed Suze senior.
+"And we _adore you_--our soldier who fights for us always. Oh, but
+listen! There's Paulette calling me. I told the two I'd be back
+before they finished their Christmas present for father. Guess what
+it is--but no, it wouldn't be fair to the poor little things.
+They're coming to look for me. If you go by the mimosa path you can
+get away before they see you."
+
+Without a word, the man picked up the miniature pine-tree and,
+shouldering it, limped off almost at a run. At the same instant the
+woman went down on her knees and began once more to drape the gray
+bagging over the flower-bed, as if nothing had happened to
+interrupt her task.
+
+"Here I am, by the palm-grove. Come and help me cover the flowers!"
+she cried, almost cheerily, in answer to a child shouting "Maman!
+Maman!"
+
+At the silver sound of the little voice, the kitten in Angel Odel's
+lap stiffened itself for a spring. Mechanically her hands tightened
+on the ball of fluff, but it wriggled free, and, with a jump,
+landed clear of the palm, on the grass beyond. Small as it was, the
+little animal left the fronds rustling in its wake, and the woman
+on her knees, looking up with a start, caught a glimpse of
+something gray under the tree. Two pinafored children, emerging
+from a side-path, caught the same glimpse, and as the younger
+snatched up the kitten the elder took a step forward and parted the
+long green plumes of the agitated palm.
+
+"Why, mother!" she exclaimed in French, "there's a strange child
+under our tree, sitting on _our_ seat! Oh, but a beautiful child in
+splendid clothes. Can she be real, or--oh, mother! Is she the
+Christmas fairy father says God sends to bless those who love one
+another?"
+
+Without answering, the woman got up from her knees. Flushed with
+embarrassment, she peeped over her daughter's golden head. The
+younger girl peeped, also, hanging shyly to her mother's dress. It
+was a horrid moment for Angel Odell.
+
+The children were smaller than she--not more than six and four
+years old at most--and they were, Angel saw at a glance, pretty as
+life-size dolls, with their yellow curls, rose-red cheeks, and
+pink pinafores. Their great blue eyes stared at her, not with anger,
+but bewildered admiration. Even their mother did not look as if
+she meant to scold or sweep the intruder angrily out of her
+hiding-place. But, child as she was, Angel realized that she had
+been doing a forbidden thing, a shameful thing. She had been
+eavesdropping. She had seen the woman crying; she had heard her
+talking over family secrets with her husband; she had come to know
+what she had no right to know, and what those two had meant for
+each other's hearts alone. Ever since she was old enough to learn
+anything, she had been taught that "eavesdropping" was one of those
+disgusting sins no honorable girl or boy could possibly commit. Her
+father himself had said those very words; unforgettable words,
+because father was Angel's hero. What would he think if he could
+see her now? Somehow, she _must_ atone!
+
+"I--I didn't _mean_ to hide," she stammered. "I looked in--the gate
+was open. I thought--maybe it was a fairy garden--"
+
+"Oh, mother, you see she _is_ a fairy," gasped Suze junior, the
+elder of the children.
+
+"Perhaps," agreed Suze senior, doubtfully. And her eyes challenged
+the stranger. "Who are you, really? Where do you come from?"
+
+"I--I _often_ play I'm a fairy." The culprit seized the straw
+held out to her. "I--expect I _am_ one. I know the _me_ in the
+looking-glass is, and sometimes I can't tell which is which
+Mademoiselle plays _she_ can't, either. She says when I come in,
+'Which is this, today, the angel or the fairy?' My name's Angela."
+
+"Oh mother!" breathed both children together, their eyes round with
+awe. "An angel and a fairy."
+
+"And I'm lost," the wonderful visitor hurried on, heading off an
+answer from mother. "I don't know where I live."
+
+"She doesn't know where she lives," murmured Suze and Paulette, in
+chorus. "Then she can stay always and live with us, can't she?"
+
+"Perhaps she wouldn't want to do that," said Suze senior. "Perhaps
+_she_ has a mother waiting for her somewhere."
+
+"But do fairies have mothers?" Paulette wanted to know.
+
+"Or angels?" added Suze. "I always thought they hadn't."
+
+"_I_ have," the visitor announced, hastily. "Some kinds of angels
+do--the kind like me. My name's Angel Odell."
+
+"Well, I _never_ supposed angels had last names," Paulette
+reflected, aloud. "I thought they were just called Gabriel or
+something like that, and that they were generally boys."
+
+"Oh _no!_" Angel Odell announced, with decision. "Boys are _never_
+angels, anyhow, not in America where I live when I'm home."
+
+"She lives in America," the two children repeated to their mother.
+"That's not fairyland or heaven, is it?"
+
+"Fairyland can be anywhere, your father says," Suze senior
+answered. "But see, it's going to be twilight soon! I think we must
+try to find out where Angel Odell lives, and take her home. She
+says she's lost--so her mother will be anxious."
+
+"She thinks I'm with my governess," said Angel.
+
+"Oh, fairy angels have _governesses_," the elder sister mourned,
+another illusion gone. "That's as bad as being a real child and
+going to school." The two spoke English or French indiscriminately,
+seeming hardly to know which language they used, but luckily Angel
+understood French very well, thanks to Paris and Mademoiselle Rose.
+
+"I like my governess," she explained. "She's very pretty and she's
+engaged to a soldier. That's why I'm lost. Because she met him by
+the sea, instead of his being dead as she thought, so she forgot to
+watch me. I was going home alone when I saw your garden gate open,
+and it looked just like fairyland. If you please, I wish you would
+find where I live. It's a--hotel, and it has a garden, too, but not
+like this."
+
+Suze senior set her wits to work. She knew that, in those days of
+war, not many hotels were open in Mentone. She questioned Angel,
+and, learning that the hotel garden was high above the sea, with
+glass screens to keep off the wind and a view where you saw the
+town all piled together on the side of a hill with dark, tall trees
+on top, she guessed the Bellevue.
+
+"We'll all three put on our hats and cloaks, and take you back to
+your mother," she said, with the thought in her mind, perhaps, that
+Paul would be glad of the children's absence while he did his part
+of the tree-dressing. "Suze and Paulette will leave you the kitten
+to play with, and you won't mind being alone here again for a few
+minutes, while we get ready?"
+
+Even if Angel had minded, now that a blue veil of twilight was
+dropping over the garden, she would have said "No," bravely,
+to wipe off ever so little, if she could, of the stain of
+eavesdropping. But suddenly, when the children's mother asked
+that question, and she realized that she would have the place to
+herself, the most wonderful idea came into her head, straight and
+direct as a bee flies into an open flower. She happened at the
+moment to be putting on her mittens preparatory to a start, when
+a glint of her mother's diamond flashed up from her plump little
+thumb to her eyes. The flash was an inspiration. When the
+children and their mother were out of the way she would pull off
+her hair-ribbon and tie the ring to the kitten's neck. Then, when
+they had taken her home and come back, Suze and Paulette would find
+the ring and think it the magic gift of a fairy, because (they would
+say to each other) no ordinary little girl could have a gorgeous
+diamond like that to give away.
+
+Oh, it was a splendid idea! Angel was sure her mother would approve
+when she had thoroughly explained, for mother was rich. Angel had
+often heard servants at home and in hotels, away over across the
+sea in America, telling one another that Mrs. Odell's father was
+Cyrus P. Holroyd, one of the big millionaires. Mother herself had
+heaps and heaps of money, too much to please father; and grandpa--
+that very Cyrus P. Holroyd--was always sending presents of jewelry
+and things. He sent beautiful presents to Angel, as well. Probably
+she would find some from him when she went home, for when you
+visited at grandpa's house in New York, it was the rule to begin
+Christmas on Christmas Eve, and have still _more_ things on
+Christmas morning, too, when you thought you had got all there
+were.
+
+No sooner had Suze senior and her two children turned their backs
+than Angel proceeded hurriedly to carry out her idea. The kitten,
+unused to being personally decorated at Christmas or any other
+time, resisted the ribbon with some determination. But Angel was
+even more determined, and, as in war, size counted. Before the trio
+returned, ready for their walk, the bow had been tied and the
+victim had dashed angrily away. This vanishing act suited Angel
+precisely, for the bright blue of the ribbon was conspicuous on the
+white fur, even in twilight, and to have the fairy's legacy
+discovered in the fairy's presence would have been premature. In
+fact, it would have spoiled everything, and Angel encouraged the
+animal's exit with a suppressed "Scat!"
+
+The first hotel they tried was the right one. Angel knew it by the
+gate. But it was rather a long walk to get there, and Suze senior--
+who told Angel that she was "Madame Valois"--shyly refused the
+little girl's insistent plea to "come in and meet mother."
+
+"I must take the children back to their supper," she explained.
+"Already it's getting dark, and--it's Christmas Eve, you know. I
+hope your mother won't have had time to worry. Tell her we brought
+you home as soon as--as you were found."
+
+A faint fear that some gentle hint of reproach lurked in the kind
+words (as she had hidden under the palm) stirred in Angel's mind,
+making her wish all the more to benefit the Valois family, and so
+justify her eavesdropping. She pictured, with joy, the sensational
+discovery of the diamond ring, perhaps while the children were
+receiving their presents from the Christmas tree. She did hope it
+might happen then! So anxious was she to tell her mother the story
+of the fairy garden that, after the good-bys, she bounded into the
+hotel like a bomb. Her mother's suite was on the first floor, and
+in her haste to get to it Angel would have dashed past a group in
+the hall, had not the _concierge_ headed her off.
+
+"Here she is, Mademoiselle! Now everything is all right!" he
+exclaimed, as joyously as though great news had come from the
+front. And out from the group tottered Mademoiselle Rose, to
+precipitate herself upon the child and drench her velvet hood with
+a waterspout of tears.
+
+Angel had not been left in ignorance by her relatives that she was
+a young person of some charm and importance, but never in her life
+had she been so overwhelmed with adjectives, in any language.
+Mademoiselle Rose, shedding tears which looked to Angel's
+astonished gaze the size of pebbles, called her a lamb, a saint, an
+adored cherub, and many other things which Angel determined to
+bring up in future if ever she were scolded. It appeared that the
+distracted governess, on waking from her dream of love with Claude,
+had nearly fainted on finding Angel gone. She had left her soldier
+on his crutches, to rush here and there, searching wildly for her
+charge. She had described the child to every one she met, and asked
+in vain for news of her. She had dashed into shops and houses, she
+had been led to the _gendarmerie_ and had sobbed out her story of
+loss, reluctantly pausing to see details industriously written
+down; and at last she had run all the way to the hotel, hoping
+against hope that the lost one had returned.
+
+Her state of mind, as described by herself, was tragic when she had
+ransacked the rooms and asked questions of servants and visitors,
+only to be assured that her charge had not come home. She blamed
+herself entirely, not Angel in the least; therefore Angel felt
+kindly toward Mademoiselle, and attempted to comfort her by saying
+how glad she ought to be, anyhow, that Claude was alive. The young
+Frenchwoman hysterically admitted this, and was in the act of
+expressing also her thankfulness that Madame had not yet returned,
+to suffer, when Madame herself walked in, followed by a
+_commissionaire_ bearing many bundles. She looked rosy and
+girlish, but at sight of Mademoiselle on her knees in the hall,
+bathing Angel with tears, her bright color ebbed.
+
+"What _has_ happened?" she stammered, her big, dark eyes appealing
+to _concierge_, governess, and all Angel's other satellites.
+
+It was the child who answered, before any one else could speak.
+"Oh, mother!" she gasped, drawing in a long breath, "I haven't been
+runned over by a moting-car, or bited by a mad dog, or drownded in
+the sea, or anything bad, but only just lost for a _very_ little
+while; and it was lovely, in a fairy garden. And I want to tell you
+about it _quick_, because I gave them your ring what has one big
+di'mond and little ones all the way 'round, tied to their white
+kitten's neck."
+
+"Good gracious!" ejaculated Elinor Odell, as Angel paused at the
+end of that long-drawn breath. "What _does_ she mean, Mademoiselle?"
+
+"I do not know yet, Madame," the governess apologized, getting to
+her feet and wiping her eyes with the drier of two damp
+handkerchiefs. "The blessed one has but just come in, when I was
+about to go out once more and search. There has been no time to
+hear, but, praise, le bon Dieu, she is at least safe and unhurt."
+
+"I will telephone the good news to the _gendarmerie_," murmured the
+_concierge_.
+
+Elinor Odell adored her child, not knowing for certain which she
+loved better than the other, if either--Dick, her husband, or his
+daughter and hers. She was warm-hearted, and deep-hearted, too; but
+circumstances had very early in her life of twenty-eight years
+developed the practical side of her nature. She had learned how to
+control herself and to control others. Also she was quick--perhaps
+too quick--in forming conclusions. Had she not grown up as the only
+child of a widowed millionaire, she might have been just the
+beautiful, intelligent, emotional girl she looked, and nothing
+more; but to her father she owed much besides money and position;
+she owed many qualities. One of them was a slight surface hardness,
+like a cooling crust over boiling lava. She realized instantly
+that, no matter what the "Angel-Imp's" adventure had been, there
+was no longer any need to worry about the child. She took in that
+fact, and even as she mentally gave thanks for it she took in
+something else also. Persons in a garden whither Angel had strayed
+or been invited had apparently persuaded the innocent and impulsive
+little girl to give away a valuable diamond ring. Prejudice
+instantly built up within Elinor a barrier against some one
+unknown. She didn't mean to reproach Angel, but she did mean to
+catechize her, and she intended to get back her father's last
+year's Christmas present.
+
+"All's well that ends well," she quoted, with the radiant smile
+which had helped to give Elinor Holroyd the reputation of a beauty.
+"Come, Angel, come Mademoiselle, let's go up to our own rooms and
+tell one another everything." Then, when the governess and child
+had been started off in advance, she paused for whispered
+instructions concerning the bundles. They contained the Christmas
+presents which she had gone out to buy for Angel, but, luckily, the
+little girl was too excited to notice and wonder inconveniently.
+She wasn't even thinking of the gifts from her grandfather in
+America, which she confidently expected.
+
+"Now, my Angel-Imp, tell me all about it," began Elinor, when the
+lights were switched on in the sitting-room. "Or will you wait
+until we've taken off your hat and coat?"
+
+But the child was not in the mood to wait for an earthquake. She
+began pouring forth her story, aided and supplemented, at first, by
+Mademoiselle, who found it necessary to explain Claude. After
+alternately blaming and defending her absent-mindedness, however,
+the word passed from Rose to Angel, who was quick to seize the
+advantage. She alone knew the whole story, so she alone could tell
+how she had wanted to go home; how she hadn't liked to bother
+Mademoiselle; how she had got lost, and how, just then, she had
+found herself at the gate of the "fairy garden."
+
+"I truly _almost_ b'lieved it was," she announced, earnestly,
+"because you said, 'who knows if there aren't fairies?' So they
+must have gardens. Anyhow, the children are as pretty as fairies,
+but I don't think they can be as happy, because their mother cried,
+and their father's been wounded, and cheated, too, by a horrid man
+who's going to take everything away from them, even the garden, and
+the oranges--the last things they've got to eat. And they're
+_dreadfully_ poor--oh, as poor as poor! That's what their mother
+was crying about when she left the children in the house so they
+wouldn't know. And when their father came home and found her
+putting flowers to bed and crying on them, she cried more because
+he was carrying such a heavy Christmas tree and had hurt his foot
+getting it, and he was so pale and thin, she _couldn't_ stop when
+he asked her. Besides, she'd had _such_ bad news in a letter while
+he was gone! It was about the nasty man who took all their money
+and was going to take back the garden, too. That was why I was sure
+you'd want me to give them your di'mond ring that you hardly ever
+wear. It's always lying around somewhere, mother, so when I found
+it on my thumb--you see, I forgot to put it back on your table--I
+thought it would be _just_ the thing, and a lovely surprise for
+the children when they found it tied to the cat's neck with my
+hair-ribbon. I 'spect they must be finding it now, because they
+brought me here--they and their mother, while their father was putting
+the dec'rations on the Christmas tree--and by this time maybe they're
+home. Their name's Valois--Suzanne and Paulette Valois, and their
+mother's Suzanne, too, or Susan, because _she's_ English and
+they're Belgian. And don't you think if grandpa sent me any
+presents I can give some to them? There's a whole pile of letters
+on the table. Maybe there's one from grandpa to say--"
+
+"Stop--stop!" cried Elinor, catching the child before she could
+spring on the latest arrivals from the post. "It seems to me that
+you've been in rather too much of a hurry already, with your
+Christmas presents to the Valois family, though I know you meant
+for the best, darling. Now, the next thing to do is to explain how
+Father and Mother Valois happened to talk so much about their
+troubles before a stranger they'd never seen before---"
+
+"Oh, they didn't see me then. I thought I telled you that!" broke
+in the child. "I eavesdropped, under a tree with branches most to
+the ground. I went in to play with the _fluffiest_ white kitten,
+and it was while I was there they talked."
+
+"How do you know they didn't see you?" inquired Elinor, judicially.
+
+"Because if they had they wouldn't have talked, with me listening,"
+Angel carefully made clear to the slow comprehension of a grown-up.
+
+"I'm not so sure," murmured the grownup. She did not speak the
+words aloud, because she wished her Angel-Imp to go on believing,
+as long as she might, that human nature was all good. It occurred
+to her that a tree must have abnormally thick branches, if a child
+in a pearl-gray velvet hood and coat trimmed with glistening
+chinchilla were to remain invisible throughout a long and intimate
+conversation. It occurred to her, also, that the velvet and
+chinchilla simply shouted "Money!" People were extraordinarily
+subtle, sometimes, when they had an object to gain, as she had
+learned in her girlhood through sad experience. She, too, had had
+faith in everybody when she was Angel's age, and even years older,
+but her father had thought it best that for self-protection she
+should be enlightened early. She did not quite believe in Angel's
+fairies of the fairy garden. The story, even as the child told it,
+had discrepancies.
+
+"I fancy, darling," Elinor suggested, "that your new friends can't
+be so dreadfully poor as they made you think. You see, if they
+were, they'd have no money to spend on a Christmas tree--"
+
+"It was growing on a mountain," Angel defended her friends.
+
+"Perhaps, but it wasn't growing all ready decorated. You said that
+the father--what's his name--Valois?--stayed at home to decorate
+the tree while the rest of the family brought you home--and told
+you all about themselves, their name and everything, I suppose, so
+you might know where to find them again and take me to see them,
+perhaps. It was good of them to bring you, of course, and I'm
+grateful. _I_ should have cried, like Madame Valois, if I'd come
+back while you were lost. But, all the same, dear--"
+
+She stopped short, because she did not wish the child--so young, so
+sweet, so warmhearted--to be disillusioned. The thought in her
+mind, however, was that Monsieur Valois and his English wife might
+not have been so eager to tell their name had they learned in time
+about the diamond ring. They might not have made it so easy to find
+them in their fairy garden as it was now! But even though their
+name was known, it would be difficult to get back the ring, unless
+she--Elinor Odell--chose to take strenuous measures. It would be so
+simple for these people to say, when inquiries were made about the
+ring, and a sum of money offered in its place, that they had never
+seen it; that some one outside must have noticed the glittering
+thing tied to the cat's neck, and stolen it. That, she thought, was
+almost certain to be the excuse they would make; and her heart,
+which could be warm and generous as Angel's, hardened toward the
+people of the garden.
+
+"I suppose, unless I want a horrid fuss, I shall have to give up
+the ring for lost, or else offer nearly the full value as a bribe,"
+she said to herself.
+
+Nevertheless, she rang, and bade a waiter ask the manager of the
+hotel to step to her sitting-room for a moment. Meanwhile, until he
+should come, she glanced at the letters. There were many, and among
+them was one addressed to "Miss Angela Odell. To be opened by
+herself," in Cyrus Holroyd's handwriting. But before it could be
+passed to its owner a knock announced the manager of the hotel.
+
+He was delighted to hear that the missing little one was safe, and
+listened politely to Mrs. Odell's questions concerning the Valois
+family. At first the name suggested nothing, but when he learned
+that the man was "a gardener, or horticulturist, or something," he
+remembered. Ah yes, to be sure! There was such a person, a Belgian
+refugee, but with money, it would appear, for he had bought
+property from a Swiss who had lived for some years in Mentone. Not
+a property of great value, no. And it was said that the Swiss--
+Siegel his name was--had let his business decline. After selling it
+he had gone away at once. No one knew much about Valois except that
+he had an English Wife, a good-looking young woman, who had visited
+all the hotels earlier in the season, trying to get work as a
+teacher of her own language, or as a seamstress. That would look as
+if Valois had found the business profit disappointing. But then,
+there was nothing for any one in these days. The only thing to do
+was to hold on.
+
+Yes, the only thing to do was to hold on. But it took money to hold
+on. Mrs. Odell was ready to admit that the Valois family might be
+unfortunate, yet she was all the more sure she would never see her
+diamond ring again. Neither would she see the Valoises, husband or
+wife, unless she went, or sent---
+
+"A young man who wishes to speak for a moment with Madame,"
+announced a waiter at the door, and presented a bit of pasteboard.
+It was a business card, on which was printed--not engraved--in
+large, plain letters, "Paul Valois, Horticulturist."
+
+So, after all, he had come! But, no doubt, only to try and get
+money.
+
+"Mademoiselle, will you go with Angel to her room and take off her
+hat and coat?" Elinor hastily cleared the field for action.
+
+"Oh, here's a letter from her grandfather, in New York. You may
+read it to her. And presently I will call her in to tell me what he
+says."
+
+The tall French girl whisked away the small American child. The
+door was shut between the two rooms, and at the outer one, leading
+into the corridor, a tap sounded.
+
+"Come in!" cried Elinor, clothing herself with dignity. But it was
+not Paul Valois, horticulturist, who entered. It was Mrs. Odell's
+own Irish-American maid, with an immense parcel.
+
+"It comes from Paris, and it's for little Miss Angel," she said,
+leaving the door open. "Oh, Madame, it's sure to be that wonderful
+doll we talked of."
+
+Then, just in time to catch these words--appropriate words for
+Christmas Eve--a tall, thin young man appeared on the threshold.
+His hat was in his hand, and the scar of a wound still showed red
+on his forehead. Though the night was cold, and Elinor Odell had
+been glad of her sables, he wore no overcoat. His clothes looked
+more suitable for summer than for winter, even in the south of
+France, and she wondered if it were a trick to catch her sympathy.
+She could not help thinking that he had a good, brave face, not the
+face of a trickster; but she deliberately put herself in the
+judgment seat. It would take more than a pair of fine eyes and a
+broad forehead with a soldier's scar, to charm her out of it!
+
+"Good evening," she greeted him pleasantly, in French. "It was you,
+I think, who kindly sent your wife here with my little lost girl
+this evening. I'm glad to be able to thank you both for what you
+did." Designedly she let the man have a "lead," and waited
+curiously to see what use he would make of it.
+
+He did not keep her long in suspense. "Oh, Madame, we did nothing
+at all," he replied, giving his case away unexpectedly. "My
+children thought your little girl must be a fairy. You see, my wife
+tells them wonderful stories. She comes from a county in England
+where they still believe in the 'wee folk'--Devonshire. Perhaps
+you've been there? It was a great joy to them to have the visit,
+and the walk was a pleasure. We are all glad if you have been
+spared anxiety; but I fear you must have been anxious about another
+loss. It is for that reason I have hurried here, on a bicycle
+borrowed from our nearest neighbor. The little lady amused herself
+tying a ribbon and a beautiful ring to the neck of my children's
+pet, a white kitten given by that same neighbor who lent the
+bicycle. Then she must have forgotten to take it off. It was only a
+few minutes ago that my Paulette found the ring, when she came
+home. I have brought it to you."
+
+"How good of you to take so much trouble!" exclaimed Elinor. But
+something inside her whispered, "He thought it would be safer to
+claim the regard than to keep the diamond."
+
+The Belgian took from his pocket a clean handkerchief with a knot
+tied in the corner, and from the knot produced the ring.
+
+"La voilà, Madame," he said, simply, as he laid the shining thing
+on the letter-strewn table. "And now I will not disturb you longer.
+Permit me to wish for you and the little fairy who visited us a
+happy Christmas."
+
+So he was leaving the reward to her generosity! Wasn't that rather
+clever of him?
+
+"Thank you for the wishes as well as for bringing back my ring,"
+said Elinor. "And--you must, of course, allow me to recompense your
+kindness. A souvenir of it, and of my daughter, for your children's
+Christmas---"
+
+As she spoke, she took from her gold-chain bag a fat bundle of
+notes and quickly selected one for five hundred francs. The ring
+was worth this sum many times over, but it seemed to her that a
+hundred dollars was not an ungenerous present. If the man were
+really poor--and honest--he ought to be well satisfied. She watched
+his face as, with a smile, she held out the French note.
+
+He flushed so deeply that the scar on his forehead turned purple.
+
+"It isn't as much as he expected!" thought Elinor. She waited,
+however, for him to speak.
+
+"Oh, Madame, I thank you!" he stammered. "But I could not possibly
+accept a reward. I am only too glad to have found the ring."
+
+He seemed actually to be going, to be hurrying away in order to
+escape persuasion; yet Elinor, in her experience, realized that the
+move might be meant only to draw her on. She was almost sure that
+the man would pause at the door, but rather than see him thus
+humiliated (because she couldn't help liking his face) she
+persisted. "You surely must take the money, or I shall be hurt."
+
+The face, which she liked, grew a shade redder, and then became
+suddenly paler than before. "Please do not say that, Madame," he
+pleaded, "because it would be--it would be a thing I _could_ not
+do, to take money for returning to a lady her lost property. It
+would make me worse than a beggar."
+
+A little, tingling thrill shot through Elinor's veins. She felt
+ashamed, for this outburst was genuine. Not even a cynic could
+mistake it, and she hated herself because she was a cynic. Still,
+she would not give up her point--less than ever would she give it
+up; for now she began earnestly to want the man to have her money.
+
+"You shouldn't feel like that," she argued. "You didn't ask me for
+anything. I give of my own free will. You see, I wish to be even
+with you. You've done me a kindness. Let me repay it."
+
+It seemed to her that Paul Valois looked at her almost pityingly.
+"Madame," he said, "will you not grant a man the happiness of
+giving, not of selling, the one thing in his power, on the eve of
+Christmas? It has made me happy that through us, in a way, you have
+been saved from pain at this time when the world should be glad. To
+pay me for that joy would kill it."
+
+Elinor blushed. "But--but--my little girl tells me--" She stumbled
+on, awkwardly, and abashed by her awkwardness. "I think by accident
+she overheard that--that--you had some trouble. Do you think you're
+right to refuse? Wouldn't your wife feel--"
+
+"She would feel as I do. I can always be sure of her." Paul Valois
+lifted his head with a radiant look; and Elinor Odell, gazing at
+him, fascinated, suddenly realized something Christ-like in his
+type. With that light in his eyes he might have stood as a model to
+an artist for a portrait of Christ. Elinor wondered how she had
+dared to offer such a man money. She felt humble before him, and
+asked herself how, since he would accept no payment, she could
+atone for the mean way in which she had misjudged him.
+
+"We didn't know that the fairy heard what we said to each other,"
+he went on. "My children call the palm under which she sat their
+'summer-house,' because the long fronds fall down and touch the
+ground. It is like a green tent. But I am sorry if she felt sad for
+us. Tell her she must not be sad. We have each other, and that is
+everything. Some way will open. Meanwhile, it is Christmas! Now,
+Madame, you understand, I have left my children's tree unfinished.
+I must make haste. Adieu. Bonne Nolë."
+
+Before she could speak again, he was gone.
+
+Five hundred francs! How mean the notes looked, how paltry seemed
+the spirit in which she had offered it, grudging and judging, and
+thinking herself generous!
+
+Springing up on the impulse, she flung open the door between the
+sitting-room and Angela's bedroom. "Your man from the fairy garden
+has been here," she said in a strained, nervous way. "He has
+brought back the ring you tied to the kitten's neck."
+
+"Oh, isn't that too bad!" exclaimed Angel, looking up from her
+grandfather's letter, which she had held in her own hands for
+Mademoiselle to read aloud. "Didn't you beg him please to keep it
+for the children?"
+
+"No, I didn't do that, but--" she hesitated--"I tried to make him
+take some money instead."
+
+Angel opened her eyes very wide. "I s'pose he wouldn't take it,
+Mummy."
+
+"Why do you 's'pose' that?" Elinor wanted to know.
+
+"O-oh--just because. He isn't--he isn't _that_ kind of a man. Don't
+you remember, Mummy, you say that often to me, when I ask you in
+the street to give money to some one who looks poor?"
+
+Elinor hung her head like a child. Angel knew more about character
+by instinct, it seemed, than she had learned through her years of
+experience! But then, it occurred to her, perhaps, after all, she
+had not gone about learning her lessons in the right way. Maybe it
+was just as wise, if not wiser, to believe people _might_ be good
+until you found out that they were bad, instead of beginning the
+other way around!
+
+"What would you have done in my place?" she asked Angel.
+
+The child was silent for a moment. "If he wouldn't keep the ring,
+why, I s'pose I should have thought and thought of some other way
+to make him and big Suze and little Suze and Paulette--and the
+kitten--all happy for Christmas!" she exclaimed, on an inspiration.
+"Oh, mother, we _must_ do something. I shall have a horrid
+Christmas if we can't. And that would be a shame because grandpa's
+sent me a--a--_what_ did you call it, Mademoiselle?"
+
+"A check," said Rose, starting out of a brown study about _her_
+Christmas, and how she was to spend a part of it with Claude.
+
+"Yes, a big check. Mummy, how much money did you want to give the
+children's father?"
+
+"A hundred dollars," Elinor replied.
+
+"Is that much?"
+
+"It must have seemed so to him."
+
+"Well, it doesn't to me. Grandpa's sent me five hundred to buy
+myself just what I like, to make my Christmas happy."
+
+"And what would you like?" asked Elinor, thinking that the child's
+mind had slid away from the Valois family.
+
+"I'd like to make the people in the fairy garden happy."
+
+"But, a check's the same as money," her mother explained. "You just
+said yourself he isn't the kind of man--"
+
+"Oh, but I wouldn't give _him_ the check," Angel cut in,
+importantly. "I--I'd lend it to him. No, I mean I'd lend him all
+he'd paid the nasty man who really owned the garden. And then I'd
+buy the garden from the nasty man myself if I had enough left, or
+if I hadn't I'd ask you to. And when the garden was ours, the
+children's father could have it _rented_ to him, couldn't he?
+Wouldn't that be a good idea?"
+
+"A splendid idea," said Elinor, "But what do you know about rents
+and such things?"
+
+"I heard grown-up Suze talk about them to Paul," explained Angel,
+calmly.
+
+"What a head she has! Is it not so, Madame!" cried Rose, working up
+to the favor she meant to beg for to-morrow.
+
+"Grandpa is always saying I have a great business head," Angel
+remarked, with extreme self-satisfaction. "And, Mummy, if you think
+it's a splendid idea, can't we go out now and 'range it all with
+Paul and Suze? I should love to. It's the _only_ thing I'd like to
+make my Christmas happy with grandpa's money. If we went in a
+carriage and made the horses run fast maybe we could see the
+Christmas tree."
+
+Again the small, hard voice whispered in Elinor's ear. "Yes, you
+could see the Christmas tree, which Paul Valois is rich enough to
+decorate. Then you will know for _certain_ if he rings true."
+
+She did already know "for certain"; the best side of her reminded
+the other side. But Angel was clamoring, spoiled-child fashion, for
+her to say "yes," so she said it. Conscience and inclination and
+the child's pleading forced it from her, and the rest followed like
+a whirlwind. Angel seized her lately discarded hat and coat.
+Mademoiselle rang for a servant to call a cab. Elinor hurried off
+to get ready. And in less than ten minutes they were on their way
+to the fairy garden, without having so much as opened father's
+present from Paris.
+
+Many months, perhaps even years, had passed since carriage-wheels
+rolled over the grass-grown road that led in from the big, rusty
+iron gates. Horses' hoofs under their windows made so strange a
+sound in the ears of the Valois family that they stopped singing
+the beautiful hymn of Noel they had begun round the Christmas tree.
+They stood still, listening in great surprise; and though the room
+was lit only by one kitchen lamp and a tallow candle (not counting
+the lights on the tree) Elinor Odell in the act of descending from
+her cab could see through an uncurtained window the man, the woman,
+and their two children, hand in hand, making a ring round the
+dark-green pyramid of pine-branches.
+
+She and Angel had come alone. Mademoiselle Rose was staying at home
+to write Claude that Madame Odell had given her Christmas free--the
+charming, kind lady! Now "the charming, kind lady" and her little
+girl knocked almost timidly at the front door of the red-roofed
+white cottage--a queer, low-browed cottage built for peasants, in
+the old days when Mentone belonged to the Prince of Monaco. In a
+minute the door opened. Paul had answered the knock, carrying the
+lamp, and, lighted in that theatrical way from below, his face
+looked more than ever like the face in a picture. Happiness had
+been washed from it by the pallor of dismay for an instant, Suze
+having suggested the advent of Siegel; but even in the midst of his
+amazement he smiled a welcome for Elinor and Angel.
+
+"This is an unexpected pleasure, Madame," he said, with the
+graciousness of a banished prince. "Yet it is a real pleasure. Have
+you brought the fairy to see our Christmas tree?"
+
+"Yes," answered Elinor. "She wanted to come. And--to propose a
+plan. It's all hers. May we really see the Christmas tree?"
+
+"Indeed we shall be glad," said Paul, and, making no excuses for
+the poorness of his show, he ushered the beautifully dressed woman
+and her child into the room.
+
+It was a small, plain room, with white-washed walls and little
+furniture; but he or his wife had made it charming with trails of
+ivy and wreaths of mistletoe and holly. The kitchen lamp had a
+shade of red chiffon fashioned from some old hat trimming of
+Susan's. The tree (center of the picture for which all else was a
+frame) stood bravely up in a green-painted tub packed with earth.
+Over the brown sandy surface Paul had laid velvety bits of moss and
+ferns from the mountainside. Odds and ends of tallow candle saved
+from time to time had their ugliness hidden in orange-red globes of
+mandarins, cleverly emptied of their pulp, and hung from the
+branches by handles of thin wire. Through the semi-transparent
+skins the light filtered with a soft, warm glow. Susan had threaded
+red berries and scarlet geraniums from the garden into long chains,
+which Paul had looped intricately over the tree. He had collected
+silver paper from tobacco-smoking friends, and cut out stars and
+crescents to sprinkle here and there. Tufts of cotton stolen from
+an old quilt gave an effect of scattered snowflakes, and a
+quantity of powdered isinglass which had once formed a stove window
+glittered on the green pine-needles like diamonds. As for presents,
+Santa Claus seemed to have thought that with so beautiful a
+tree they would scarcely be needed. He had provided two dolls,
+brightly painted and cut out of cardboard. They were dressed in
+accordion-pleated, pink tissue-paper and had hats to match. One
+hung on the right side of the tree, and one on the left, and midway
+between each a gingerbread elephant was suspended.
+
+There were the "decorations" which Elinor had sagely told herself
+no poor man could afford.
+
+"Oh, mother!" gasped Angel, "did you ever, ever see such a
+_lov-elly_ Christmas tree in all your life?"
+
+Elinor's eyes saw the mandarin lanterns shine through tears. "Never
+one so sweet," she said. And sensitive Susan Valois knew that she
+was not "making fun."
+
+The woman of experience found herself stammering like a school-girl
+as she tried to explain Angel's plan without hurting the dear
+creatures' feelings. But the child, with no such fear in her heart,
+made it quite clear, without embarrassment. "You see," she said,
+"the fairy garden will belong to all of us together. And I shall be
+like a grown-up person because you will have to pay me the rent,
+the way people do to grandpa's agent, such a _nice_ man with a bald
+head and a wart on his nose. Perhaps if you take care of the garden
+well, and plant lots of flowers, we shall all get rich from it like
+grandpa is. You _will_ say yes, won't you? And it'll be the very
+happiest night of my life."
+
+"Of mine, too," vowed Elinor, and meant it. So what could Paul and
+Suze do but say "yes," and add that it was the happiest night of
+their lives also.
+
+"Then it's settled, isn't it, mother?" breathed Angel. "Is that
+all, or have I forgotten anything?"
+
+Elinor bent over her, on a sudden impulse. "Father has sent you a
+wonderful doll from Paris, dear," she whispered. "I haven't opened
+the box, but I know what's in it, for a letter came in the post: a
+doll that talks and walks and has real hair and eyelashes. So,
+would you like to spare a family of dolls I bought for you before I
+had the letter? Would you like to spare them to these little
+girls?"
+
+"I know what I forgot!" exclaimed Angel. "I forgot to tell Paulette
+and Suze that Santa Clause left something with me for them. I
+'spect he hadn't time to come back himself. He has so much to do
+for all the children 'most everywhere in the world, whose fathers
+are in the war. I shouldn't wonder if what he left is dolls--lots
+of dolls. Maybe quite big dolls."
+
+Paulette rushed to her mother and whispered, as Angel's mother had
+whispered.
+
+"She says, now she _knows_ your little girl is a fairy," Susan
+explained aloud.
+
+"I think," said Elinor, "this house is full of fairies to-night.
+And they've brought me a better Christmas present than was ever
+brought by Santa Claus--a present of something I lost a long time
+ago: a warm spot that had fallen out of my heart."
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Angel Unawares, by 
+C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42919 ***