Noel's Christmas tree

"Dinah, do hurry up!"

A small boy with close-cropped brown head and dark eager eyes was drumming with his fingers on the windowpane. He turned his head over his shoulder as he spoke, and his tone was impatient.

Dinah, or Diana as she was really called, lay flat on her chest by the schoolroom fire. Big sheets of paper were before her, and with a good deal of sucking of her pencil she was writing rapidly. She was very thin and pale; her nurse said she was wiry, and her fair hair was bobbed in the usual fashion.

"How do you spell alarming, two l's and two m's?" she asked, without raising her head.

"Hurray! Here's the taxi! Such a lot of luggage! You're too late; you can't see it now."

Diana had dashed to the window. They were at the top of a high London house, in one of the quiet roads of South Kensington, but try as they could, they could neither see the cab nor its occupants now, and the windows were too heavy to be raised.

"Aha!" shouted the boy, dancing round the room. "I saw, and you didn't!"

"What did you see?"

"A monkey, and a parrot, and a black, and a huge bunch of coco-nuts!"

"I don't believe you. Did you see—Mother?" She added the last word in an awed whisper.

He looked at her, then impishly shook his head.

"I dare say she hasn't come. P'r'aps she's drowned in the sea."

"You wicked, wicked boy!"

"You're always making those kind of things in your stories."

Diana stole out of the room on tiptoe. Her brother Chris followed her. Hanging breathlessly over the staircase, they vainly tried to see what was going on in the hall. How could Granny have ordered them to stay up in the schoolroom till sent for, when an unknown mother and brother were arriving from India! It was too tantalizing! They could hear a great bustle in the hall, and then a little shrill voice made itself heard:

"I've gotted new boots with buttons."

"That's him," said Diana.

Chris danced up and down in excitement.

"We must see them," he cried.

"Then Granny or Nurse will only send us to bed. Of course Nurse is down there. I hear her voice. Mean old thing! As if we oughtn't to see Mother before she does!"

But the next moment Nurse came panting upstairs.

"You're to go down at once. Your mother wants to see you. She's in the drawing-room. Are you tidy?"

She passed her hands over their hair, pulled Diana's short brown velvet frock straight, then sent them down. And strange to say, they went very slowly.

"My heart is thumping!" whispered Diana.

Chris stuck his chest out with some bravado.

"My heart never thumps me!" he said. "I wouldn't let it!"

But when they reached the drawing-room door he hesitated.

When you have looked forward to a thing very much and talked about it every day, and many times a day, for quite a month, it is rather stupendous when it actually arrives.

And then he turned the door handle, and politely stood back and let his sister go in before him.

"Ladies first," was one of Nurse's favourite maxims. And just now Chris felt rather glad of it!

Granny was in her easy chair with her arm round a tiny fair curly-haired boy who stood leaning against her knees. Standing on the hearthrug with her back to them, warming her delicate-looking hands on which were many sparkling rings, was their mother. She was tall and slender, and wore a close-fitting green cloth gown. She had thrown off her thick fur coat, but wore a little sable toque over her sunny brown hair. And when she turned round and opened her arms exclaiming, "And here are my big boy and girl!"

Diana felt a lump rise in her throat. Inwardly she said to herself: "My beautiful mother—"

In another moment Diana and Chris were being embraced.

Little Noel regarded them with a pucker in his baby brow. He did not quite like seeing his mother kiss them as she kissed him.

"Now speak to your little brother. He has been longing to see you—haven't you, Noel?"

Noel stood out straight with his hands behind him.

"I've see'd them now, Mummy, and they're just like uvver chil'en. Like the chil'en on board."

He did not offer to kiss them, but Diana put her arms round him and kissed him warmly.

"I think you're a dear little boy," she said. "I like your curls!"

Chris shook hands with him, and said nothing.