shall only want this.'

Then came two footmen in livery and carried the fir-tree to a
large and beautiful room. There were pictures hanging on the
walls, and near the Dutch stove stood great Chinese vases with
lions on their lids; there were armchairs, silk-covered sofas,
big tables laden with picture-books and toys, worth hundreds of
pounds-at least, so the children said. The fir-tree was placed
in a great tub filled with sand, but no one could see that it was
a tub, for it was all hung with greenery and stood on a gay
carpet. How the tree trembled! What was coming now? On its
brances they hung little nets cut out of coloured paper, each
full of sugarplums; gilt apples and nuts hung down as if they
were growing, over a hundred red, blue, and white tapers were
fastened among the branches. Dolls as life-like as human
beings--the fir-tree had never seen any before were suspended
among the green, and right up at the top was fixed a gold tinsel
star; it was gorgeous, quite unusually gorgeous!

'To-night,' they all said, 'to-night it will be lighted!'

'Ah!' thought the tree, 'if it were only evening! Then the
tapers would soon be lighted. What will happen then? I wonder
whether the trees will come from the wood to see me, or if the
sparrows will fly against the window panes? Am I to stand here
decked out thus through winter and summer?'

It was not a bad guess, but the fir-tree had real bark-ache from
sheer longing, and bark-ache in trees is just as bad as head-ache
in human beings.