"You tell us a story, Uncle Derry," Teddy pleaded as he ate his taffy.

"I'd rather listen to your mother."

"They are tired of me," Margaret told him.

"We are not ti-yard," her small son enunciated carefully, "but you said
you had to fix the f'owers."

"Well, I have. May I turn them over to you, Derry?"

"For a minute. But you must come back."

She came back presently, to find the lights out and only the glow of
the fire to illumine faintly the three figures on the sofa. She stood
unseen in the door and listened.

"And so the Tin Soldier stood on the shelf where the little boy had put
him, and nothing happened in the old, old house. There was just an
old, old man, and walls covered with old, old portraits, and knights in
armor, and wooden trumpeters carved on the door who blew with all their
might, 'Trutter-a-trutt, Trutter-a-trutt'--. But the old man and the
portraits and the wooden trumpeters had no thought for the Tin Soldier
who stood there on the shelf, alone and longing to go to the war. And
at last the Tin Soldier cried out, 'I can't stand it. I want to go to
the wars--I want to go to the wars!' But nobody listened or cared."

"Poor 'itte sing," Margaret-Mary crooned.

"If I had been there," Teddy proclaimed, "I'd have put him on the floor