"Come and look--over at Sheila's!"
There on the strip of lawn before the old brick house was a Christmas tree, hung with tinsel and twinkling with lighted candles that swayed and blinked in the darkness.
That was Mrs. Quinn's merry Christmas! She and the children had hung ropes of tinsel, red and gold balls, sparkling hearts and rings and little candles out on the old spruce that grew in the corner of the yard.
"To give to any poor body going by that maybe hasn't any Christmas just a bit of the brightness!" she had explained.
Renée, watching from between the library curtains, thought it very beautiful! It was like a fairy tree, placed there in the darkness by spirit hands, breathing from its fragrant brightness a joy that all could share! Even at that moment they could see a bent old man, leading a little boy by the hand, lingering to stare at the twinkling lights!
Many years before this the Everett Works had been moved from the modest factory not far from the Everett home, where it had had its beginning, to the great pile of steel and concrete buildings distantly removed from the business center of the city. Immediately there sprang up on the stretches of fields intervening between the smoky walls of the new plant and the quiet shaded streets where the Lees and the Everetts and the Randolphs lived, a community of small, shapeless houses, one exactly like the other, divided by half-paved streets with their rows of sickly infant elms and maples; with muddy backyards barricaded by miles and miles of clothes-line, and thousands of window-panes blackened by the incessant rain of soot from the belching chimneys. Though the suburb had the beautiful name of Riverview, suggestive of cool breezes and open spaces, it was always and more fittingly known as "The Neighborhood."
To the hundreds of little dingy homes had come men, women and children from every land of the globe--here Liberty offered them asylum and the Everett Works an honest living. In the center of the community the Works had erected a splendid schoolhouse and had presented it to the city. Although its outer walls were soon stained and blackened like the rows of houses, its interior was as fresh and attractive as clean paint, pictures and many growing plants could make it! Here the children of the foreign-speaking parents were taught to be true Americans. And in its big assembly room, whose windows looked out over the rows and rows of railroad tracks with their solid wall of motionless freight cars, to the river and open fields beyond, the girls of Troop Six held their Christmas party.
Even before the last holly wreath had been fastened in place the guests began to come--whole families at a time, in holiday attire that to Pat made them look like pictures in some fairy-tales; old men and old women, younger men with hands still grimy from their work, younger women with tired faces and babies in their arms; some eager, some a little shy, all smiling.
Pat, peeping out from behind the curtain, declared that there were hundreds there and that they were talking in every language known--except Latin! But when some one at the piano began to play "America," in some way or other the strange words melted into a common tongue--the high treble of the children carrying the song along!
A hush fell on the audience when the curtains of the stage slowly parted to show the first of the tableaux. Briefly John Randolph, Keineth's father, told in Polish the story of the landing of the Pilgrims on "the stern and rockbound coast" while on the stage the Pilgrims, with painfully suppressed laughter, struggled to keep the Mayflower, made out of old canvas and chairs, from falling to pieces!