"Isn't it a beauty!" repeated Millicent.

"Ay!--lop-sided though."

"Put something on, you two!" came the woman's high imperative voice,
from the kitchen.

"We aren't cold," protested the girls from the yard.

"Come and put something on," insisted the voice. The man started off
down the path, the little girls ran grumbling indoors. The sky was
clear, there was still a crystalline, non-luminous light in the under
air.

Aaron rummaged in his shed at the bottom of the garden, and found a
spade and a box that was suitable. Then he came out to his neat, bare,
wintry garden. The girls flew towards him, putting the elastic of
their hats under their chins as they ran. The tree and the box lay
on the frozen earth. The air breathed dark, frosty, electric.

"Hold it up straight," he said to Millicent, as he arranged the tree
in the box. She stood silent and held the top bough, he filled in
round the roots.

When it was done, and pressed in, he went for the wheelbarrow. The
girls were hovering excited round the tree. He dropped the barrow
and stooped to the box. The girls watched him hold back his face--
the boughs pricked him.