At seven o'clock a bell was rung, and then the folding doors of the
room where the Christmas-tree stood were thrown open, and a crowd of
children came trooping in.
They laughed and shouted and pointed, and all talked together, and
after a while there was music, and presents were taken from the tree
and given to the children.
How different it all was from the great wide, still sky house!
But the star had never been so happy in all its life; for the little
boy was there.
He stood apart from the other children, looking up at the star, with
his hands clasped behind him, and he did not seem to care for the toys
and the games.
At last it was all over. The lights were put out, the children went
home, and the house grew still.
Then the ornaments on the tree began to talk among themselves.
"So that is all over," said a silver ball. "It was very gay this
evening--the gayest Christmas I remember."
"Yes," said a glass bunch of grapes; "the best of it is over. Of course
people will come to look at us for several days yet, but it won't be
like this evening."
"And then I suppose we'll be laid away for another year," said a paper
fairy. "Really it seems hardly worth while. Such a few days out of the
year and then to be shut up in the dark box again. I almost wish I were
a paper doll."
The bunch of grapes was wrong in saying that people would come to look
at the Christmas-tree the next few days, for it stood neglected in the
library and nobody came near it.
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